“Why, father!” was the surprised and cheerful exclamation of Mrs. Gilman, as her husband entered the room. It was an unusually early hour for him, and besides, she saw his step was steady. No wonder that she left the bread she was kneading, and came forward, her hands still covered with flour, to meet him. As she stood in the fire-light, she was handsome even yet, though her face looked careworn, and her figure was bent, as if she had been much older. Her ninepenny calico dress was neatly made, and though she had no collar, a small plaid silk handkerchief, tied closely around the throat, supplied the place of one. She must have had a cheerful, sunny temper originally, for in spite of her many trials, there was not a trace of despondency or fretfulness in her face or manner.
“Didn’t you go to the Corner? Oh, was that you in Squire Merrill’s sleigh? I thought I heard it stop. Abby, get father his shoes—Hannah, just look at the bannock, it must be almost done by this time, and we don’t have father home every day. Come, children, step round:” and Mrs. Gilman made a lively motion to quicken the tardy Hannah, who was straining her eyes out over a book by the very faint twilight of the west window.
Mr. Gilman felt that he did not deserve this hearty welcome, in a home to which he had brought only sorrow and trouble. There were other thoughts that kept him silent too, for after explaining that Squire Merrill had brought him home, he sat down by the fireplace and watched his wife and daughters while they prepared tea, as if it had been a holiday. Cold brown bread, that substantial New England loaf, and the smoking corn meal bannock, were all that they had to set forth, with a simple garnishing of butter and a bowlder of apple-sauce, made, also, by the good mother in the autumn. The largest and driest sticks of wood were added to the fire, so, though there was but one candle, and that but a “dip,” any thing in the room was plainly visible. The Windsor chairs and side-table were scoured clean and white; through the open door of the buttery was seen a dresser in perfect order, even to the row of shining, but, alas, too often empty milk-pans, turned up under the lower shelf, and the bread-bowl, covered by a clean towel. The looking-glass between the windows, surmounted by curious carving and gilding, and the tall peacocks’ feathers, the thin legs of the table at which they sat, indeed nearly every thing in the room were old friends of Mrs. Gilman’s childhood. The house and farm had been her father’s homestead, and she an only child. She often said she was too thankful that she did not have to go off among strangers, as so many young girls did when they were married, for she knew every rock and tree on the farm. Here she had been married, here her children were born, and here she hoped to die.
“Sam won’t be home in time to milk, I don’t believe,” observed Abby, the oldest girl, reaching her plate for a second supply of bannock. “He’s always out of the way when he’s wanted, seems to me.”
“I don’t know,” “mother” answered good-naturedly. “I think he’s worked most hard enough all day to earn a good long play-spell. Sam’s getting very handy, father. He fixed the well-sweep after dinner as well as you could have done it yourself. So after he’d brought in the wood, and gone to the store, I let him go over to Deacon Chase’s. I thought you’d have no objection.”
Mr. Gilman was home too little to know much about his children’s movements, but his wife always kept up a show of authority for him, that he might be respected at home at least. Abby had found time for another theme. “Mother, I should think you might let Hannah and me have some new hoods. Julia Chase has got an elegant one, lined with pink silk, and a new merino cloak. And there’s Anne Merrill and Jane Price. I’m sure we’re as good as any body; ain’t we, father?” for Abby, being her father’s favorite, was always sure of a hearing from him.
“So you are, Abby—every bit, and you shall ride over their heads yet. I tell you what, mother; I can’t stand this much longer; I don’t see why you shouldn’t have your silks and satins as well as Eliza Merrill, and Hannah, go to boarding school if she wants to, when she’s old enough. I’ve about made up my mind to go to California—there—and there’s the end of it!” and the excited man struck his knife upon the table so that every dish rattled.
Mrs. Gilman looked up with an anxious, questioning face. She was afraid that he had been drinking after all, and her hopes of a quiet evening, “like old times,” vanished. Hannah ceased to wonder absently what would have became of the Swiss Family Robinson, if it had not been for their mother’s wonderful bag, out of which every thing came precisely at the moment it was needed. Abby improved the opportunity to help herself to an extra quantity of “apple butter,” unobserved. Abby certainly had a strong fancy for all the good things of life, dainties and new hoods included.
“Why, what on earth has put that into your head, father?” Mrs. Gilman said, after a moment, still addressing him by the familiar household name, at first so endearing and afterwards habitual. She did not think it possible he could have any serious thoughts of such a scheme. Her husband’s plans very often ended in “talking over,” and from the time they were married some project occupied him.
“It ain’t any new plan; I’ve been turning it over ever since the last steamer, and I only waited to see if the luck would hold out. Now the news is come, and I’m goin’. That’s just all there is about it. I don’t see why I should stay here and be a poor man to the end of time, when other folks has only got to turn round and make a fortune. Why there was one man took five ounces of gold out of one hole, in among the rocks! The paper says so, and gold’s nineteen dollars an ounce. Five times nineteen is——”
“Ninety-five,” responded Abby, quickly. She had been a diligent student of Smith’s Arithmetic, at the district school all winter, and when her father was speaking considered she had a perfect right to join in the conversation.
“Yes—ninety-five dollars in ten minutes, just as fast as he could scoop it out, and I might work six months for it here on this plaguy farm. Why, it tells about lumps of real solid gold, as big as my fist! and one man’s just as good as another there. None of your Deacons and Squires, settin’ themselves up above other folks.”
Poor Mr. Gilman, like many other persons whose own faults have degraded them, had a bitter envy towards those who continued to do well. It must certainly be on the principle that “misery loves company;” there is no better way to account for this selfish desire to see others in trouble, when we are suffering from our own rashness or folly, “selfish,” to say the least.
“Is any body going from the Corner?” Mrs. Gilman had laid down her knife and fork, and pushed back her plate. She felt a sick, choking sensation, that would not let her eat. She saw her husband was in his sober senses, and more determined than he had been on any subject for a long time.
“Yes,” he answered doggedly, as if he did not wish to be questioned further.
“Who?” persisted his wife, with an anxious foreboding of the name she would hear.
“Well, if you must know, it’s Bill Colcord, and we’ve agreed to go into partnership. I know you don’t like him, but it’s just like one of your woman’s notions. Bill’s a first-rate fellow, and gives as long as he’s got a cent.”
Mrs. Gilman did not remonstrate. She knew it was of no use. The time had been when her husband would scarcely have spoken to this man, who had always been idle and dissolute. How he lived no one exactly knew. He was very clever at making a bargain, was always betting, and, it was said, could overreach any body he dealt with. It was only of late years that he had become Mr. Gilman’s companion. His wife had warned and entreated him in vain. Mr. Gilman would sometimes promise to give him up, but the man always had a hold on him, treating at Mooney’s, or lending him small sums of money.
In spite of herself, Mrs. Gilman drew a heavy sigh when she heard him mentioned; but she saw Hannah looking up earnestly, and Abby listening, and remembering every word.
“You can clear away the table, girls—come, be spry,”—she said, rising with a great air of alacrity herself; but she had a heavy heart, as she took up her knitting from the side-table, and sat down in her low arm-chair in the corner of the fireplace. Mr. Gilman followed and squared himself on the other side, leaning his elbows on his knees, with a show of obstinate determination, as he looked from his wife to the fire.
“Mustn’t we wait for Sam?” asked Hannah, who had already seized on volume second of her beloved history. She had a natural disinclination to household tasks, an indolence inherited from her father, and but partly excused to the notable Mrs. Gilman, by the love of reading, which kept her out of mischief.
“No; Sam knows when we have tea, and the table can’t be kept waiting for him.”
“He don’t deserve any, I’m sure,” Abby was quite ready to add. “I hate to strain the milk after dark, and he knows it, and stays away just to plague me. Come, Hannah, take the bread into the buttery, while I pile up the things. You know it’s your week for putting away, and you try to get things off on other people. Mother—mustn’t Hannah come and help me?”
The book was reluctantly closed, and Hannah’s tardy step made a slow accompaniment to her sister’s bustling movements. There was much more clatter than was necessary in piling up the four cups and saucers, emptying the tea tray, folding the cloth, and setting back the table. It was quite a picture to see the handy little housewife, tucking back her dress and apron, as she dexterously carried the still smoking tea-kettle into the buttery, and filled a large milk pan with clean hot water, while Hannah expended all her energies in reaching down a towel and preparing to dry the few dishes.
The buttery, a long wide closet at one end of the kitchen, added very much to the neatness of the family sitting-room. It was Abby’s especial pride to keep the sink, the numerous pails and buckets, in order, and the one low window as clear as hands could make it. Hannah, though a year the eldest, hated the buttery, and always made her escape as soon as possible. To use her own favorite word—she “hated” washing dishes, and dusting, and peeling potatoes, in fact, every thing like work. She liked reading and walking in the woods, especially in spring-time, making wreaths of wild flowers, and fanciful cups and baskets from the twigs and leaves, Hannah’s imagination was already captured by these wonderful golden visions. Plenty of money, stood for plenty of time to do just as she pleased. Her mother could not be always telling her, “you must learn to be industrious, for you are a poor man’s child, and have got to make your own way in the world.”
“I hope father will go to California,” was the first symptom of consciousness she showed, while Abby splashed away in the water, regardless of scalded hands and mottled elbows.
“My goodness, Hannah! do see what you are about—letting the end of the towel go right into the dishwater. I’m sure I don’t want my father to go clear off there and die, if you do.”
“People don’t always die—there’s Robinson Crusoe, taken home after all he went through, and I’m sure the Swiss Family will. I don’t like to look at the last chapter ever, but of course they will be. I heard father tell mother, when I was folding up the table-cloth, that he wouldn’t be gone over a year and a half, and was sure to make ten or twenty thousand dollars.”
“Twenty-thousand-dollars! Why, Hannah, that’s more than Squire Merrill’s worth! Why, how rich we’d be! perhaps we’d have a new house.”
“And a big book-case in the parlor, full of—every thing!” added Hannah, intent only on her personal accommodation.
“And handsome carpets all over it, and a mahogany sofa, and a big looking-glass. Just ’spose it once.”
“I hope we’ll have a garden, with an elegant arbor, as shady as can be.”
“With grapes, and lots of fruit-trees, and plenty of dahlias! Well, it would be nice,” and Abby suffered the knife handles to slip into the hot water, a piece of carelessness expressly forbidden by the careful Mrs. Gilman, while she rested her chubby hands thoughtfully on the rim of the milk pan.
“But come, the water’s all getting cold, and there’s Sam round by the barn whistling. There’s the knives.”
“It’s always cold here,” shivered Hannah, fretfully; “I should think mother might let us wash dishes on the table in the kitchen. I’m most frozen here every night. It takes twice as long—”
“There’s Sam slamming the door as usual,” interrupted Abby, “tracking up the whole floor, of course.”
And there stood Sam, as she looked over her shoulder into the centre room, his face glowing with the quick walk, a woollen comforter knotted about his throat, and the torn vizor of a seal-skin cap hanging over his eyes. His old round-about, buttoned up close to the chin, was powdered with feathery flakes of snow, and his gray satinet pantaloons, with “eyes,” as he called the patches on the knees, scarcely reached to his boots. But for all this, he was a fine, hardy-looking boy, full of life, and health, and spirits, and would have demonstrated the latter by an impromptu war dance, on the kitchen floor, if he had not caught his mother’s look of warning.
“Been to supper at the deacon’s—give us the milk pail, Chunk,” he called out very unceremoniously in answer to Abby’s threatened lecture. “I know you like to strain the milk after dark, so you can have me to hold the light for you. Don’t she, Nan?—hurry up there,” and snatching the pail, he was gone again in a moment, out into the darkness and increasing storm, caring neither for the loneliness nor the exposure.
Mrs. Gilman’s face lighted as she looked after him. She had been listening to her husband’s plans, clearer, and more capable of being carried out, than most of them, showing that some one else had been assisting to make them. Mr. Gilman had persuaded himself, with this adviser’s assistance, that he would be perfectly right in selling the remnant of the farm, with the house, to pay for his passage and outfit to California. “As he only went to make money for his wife and children, they ought not to complain,” he reasoned, “and he would return so soon, to give them all that heart could wish. Meantime,” he said he would leave them something, and by time winter came he would send money from California. Mrs. Gilman well knew that she must be the entire dependence of her family, however fair all might seem in prospect.