Well, to resoom backwards for a spell. Josiah and I wuzn’t goin’ to stay only two days and one night, but, good land! they wouldn’t hear a word to our goin’ so soon, so we stayed three days right along. But then, as Tamer said, think of the visits that they had made to us that wuz onpaid. Well, I thunk on ’em and thought likely as not it wuz our duty to stay. But I see lots of things there I didn’t like to see. I hate to talk about relations; I don’t think it the right thing to do. But I can’t help sayin’ that I did see lots of things that I wanted changed. Not Anna, she wuzn’t one of the things I wanted changed, no, indeed! she and Jack wuz the flowers of the family in full blow. Anna is jest as different from the rest of her family as light is from darkness, and a good deal the same way, and I believe Jack would come up a good deal like her if he got a chance.
One reason is why Anna is so different from her Ma, she wuz brung up by a aunt of her father’s, brung up by hand by Aunt Judith Smith, who, bein’ a old maid, couldn’t, it stands to reason, bring her up in any other way. For years after Anna wuz born Tamer wuz really sick, and this aunt lived with ’em and took care of Anna and thought all the world of her till her death, which occurred when Anna wuz fourteen. She wuz brought up dretful good, curious, hain’t it, she bein’ a old maid, but old maids are sometimes real religious, with good common horse sense, too, and Aunt Judith wuz. And I have always spozed it wuz her bringin’ up and her precepts and examples that made Anna so different.
You see, the ideals she held up in front of Anna wuzn’t fashion and expediency and outside show and vanity, no, indeed! they wuz truth and honesty and honor and simple living and high thinking. She held ’em up in front of her, and held ’em high, too, and propped ’em up by her own simple, straightforward, noble, self-sacrificin’ life. For it wuzn’t any comfort to her to leave her little quiet, comfortable home to take up her abode in the house of a Tamer or even a Hamen. But she shouldered her crosses wherever she found ’em and marched on with ’em silently and oncomplainin’ly and bravely, and folks didn’t know from her groanin’s how heavy they bore down on her shoulders.
She didn’t want to take the care of this worse than motherless child into her own tired hands. And she had plenty of means and no need to, if she hadn’t felt it to be her duty. But she see the little bark jest settin’ out, swashin’ and dashin’ round on the jagged rocks of life, and she felt it to be her duty to take holt of the hellum. Hamen had always been her favorite nephew, and she wuz dretful sorry for his poor little peaked lookin’ baby. So, as I say, she gin up her comfort and ease and histed this cross onto her tired-out back, and commenced trudgin’ along the road of life with it.
And wuzn’t it queer how things will turn out? This job she had tackled only from a sense of duty and in a real martyr sperit become the greatest comfort and pleasure of her life. For pretty soon Love, the great high priest, come in and sanctified her offerings of comfort and ease, and made her way glorious. How she did love Anna, and how Anna did love her. Of course clouds sometimes dimmed the horizon, shadders from Tamer’s personality and influence dimmed the clear sky that she wanted always to shine down onto her darling, also some lighter shadders from Hamen’s onwisdom.
But take it as a hull, Aunt Judith’s influence and sweet wise teachings carried the day, and Anna grew up a girl of a thousand, and at Aunt Judith’s death (which almost broke her heart) she wuz so headed in the right way that she couldn’t be turned very fur from it either way, not by Pa or Ma or any other onwise influence. The money she left Anna wuz the least of the riches she give her.
She died jest about the time that Tamer recovered her health, or as much of it as she ever did recover, so Tamer had the care of Cicero and poor little Jack. But then Jack had Anna, too, to kinder lean on, for Tamer had another spell for some years after Jack wuz born. But Cicero never would hear a word to Anna, he had got thoroughly headed in his Ma’s ways, and then I spoze it wuz kinder hereditary in him, too; he wuz born that way.
Anna is real good lookin’, her cheeks are as pink as fresh young damask roses, her complexion is clear and white and as smooth as satin, and her eyes are very dark, and soft, and bright, too, her hair is dark and wavy and kinks up in cunnin’ little curls on her forward and neck, she can’t do it up so but what them little curls will escape from the comb and cluster round her white neck and forward as if it loved ’em. Oh, she looks well enough, as I have told her time and agin:
“Anna, if you will only be as good as you look, you will git along first rate.” As I sez to her anon or oftener, “Handsome is that handsome duz.”
And she sez, “That is jest what Aunt Judith always said, Aunt Samantha.”
But I’d look at her all the time with that admirin’, appreciative look on my eyebrow that she knew, the witch, jest how pretty I thought she wuz (and I not helpin’ it to save my life). Yes, Anna liked me dretful well, which wuzn’t so strange when one comes to think how well I liked her. And she told me right out plain and square that her feelin’s towards that young Von Crank wuz almost murderous, and she owned up to me that sometimes when he wuz standin’ up so straight and stiff she wuz tempted to tip him over, and sez she, “I don’t believe he would bend at all, but fall right over straight like a clothes pin or a telegraph pole.”
“Well,” sez I, “don’t try to do that in the parlor, Anna, for if it is so, think of the damage he would do to the furniture on the other side of the room.” And I guess I kinder got her mind offen it. But she sez, “You can’t bear him yourself, Aunt Samantha, and I know it.”
“Well, dear,” sez I, “everybody has their own station house in life to fill, and I spoze he has his, or else why should he have a station house?”
Sez she, “He needn’t come round me with his mouldy old compliments, for I would rather live with Tom Willis on bread and water than with him in a palace.”
Anna loves Tom, loves him as she duz her eyes, and as I say, Hamenses wife had invited him there and let ’em grow up together like a mornin’ glory vine round the pillow of a porch, never sayin’ a word aginst their bein’ together, never noticin’ that under the divine spring of youth and love her heart’s tendrils wuz puttin’ out livin’ branches and twinin’ round the pillow of his steadfast devotion, jest as firmly and jest as onbeknown to her as the vines she had planted wuz twinin’ round their supports in the spring and summer of the year.
She waited, Tamer did, till the heart’s tendrils wuz wropped so completely round the heart of Tom Willis that nothin’ but death could ontwine ’em (and I don’t believe that death can, nor Josiah don’t). But, howsumever, at this time Tamer Ann stepped in and begun to tear ’em off. Just because Tom wuz poor, or that is poor in money, for he wuz rich in all the qualities that go to make a young man wealthy in himself, and there wuzn’t any doubt that he would be rich in money in a few years the way he wuz going on now. But his family wuz poor but pious, and Von Crank wuz rich. And Tamer begun to tell me the very next mornin’ after I got there what a great family he had descended from.
And I sez, “How big!”
And she sez, “One of the greatest families in the State.”
“Well,” sez I, “that don’t raise him in my estimation any. There is a man in Loontown that has had thirty-two children by his different wives, but he is a shiftless creeter, and so are most of his children.”
Sez she, “I don’t mean that; I mean an old family.”
“How old?” sez I calmly. And I went on, “There is a man in Spoon Settlement that has got a grandchild over seventy. And that you know, Tamer Ann, must make the old man pretty old, and, in fact, a pretty old family, for they are all livin’, father, son, and grandson. But, good land! nobody ever thought of lookin’ up to old Father Minkler, why, he is on the town, and has been on it for years, and they say now his son is on it and his grandson is jest thinkin’ of gittin’ on it. Good land! I should never think of lookin’ up to a family because they wuz old.”
“Well,” she sez, “they’ve descended from a long line of ancestors, they have great reason to be proud of it, there is where they have the advantage of us.”
“Oh, shaw!” sez I, “that is jest what we’ve all done, or it stands to reason that we shouldn’t be here. We have had to have ancestors, everybody has. I don’t see that he has any more than we have, so fur as that is concerned. I don’t spoze he has had more’n one father, or any of ’em have had more’n one father apiece, and that is jest what we’ve all had. If he had had several fathers and mothers it might be sunthin’ to boast over, and I don’t know as it would after all, for the text sez ‘every man stands and falls on himself,’ or words to that effect.”
And then Tamer Ann sez agin, real hautily, “He is from one of the old Dutch families it makes folks so proud to be descended from. He is a direct descendant of the Poltroons.”
“Well,” sez I calmly, “I shouldn’t wonder a mite if he wuz, but it don’t raise him up any in my estimation, and it wouldn’t if he had had Solomon and Moses for grandfathers. When I gather a white lily I pick it for its beauty and sweetness, and not for the soil it sprung from, good land! what do I care whether it grew on sandy sile or gravelly, or swampy, or anything? I prize it for its own beauty and sweetness that it has drawn by its own life out of the earth. Good land! I should jest as soon take up a handful of this sile and treasure it up and try to see how it come to nourish so sweet a life as I would to grope back amongst the dust of them old Poltroons. Though to be sure it is nateral that a posy should strike some clingin’ roots down into the sile it grew on, it is nater and can’t be helped. You take any posey that is healthy and vigorous, and take any tree or bush whatsumever, and when you pull it out of its home it takes a wrench, a hard wrench to start it, the tendrils strike so deep. God made posies and hearts kinder clingin’ in their nater and they hang onto their old homes. It is nateral for folks to look back with pride upon the noble doin’s of their forefathers if they’ve done ’em, but to boast over a Poltroon jest from the fact of his bein’ a Poltroon—I should never boast over it, never.”
“Patroon,” sez Tamer hautily, “I have corrected you before in this.”
“Well,” sez I mildly, “they sound considerable alike, and when there are so many big words that mean about the same thing it is nateral that folks should sometimes git ’em kinder mixed.”
“They wuz high families,” sez Tamer, “they descended from the Dutch settlers on Manhattan Island, that the grandest families of to-day claim with pride as being their ancestors.”
“Oh,” sez I, “you mean them old market gardeners, them old cabbage raisers, fur hunters, and pumpkin farmers. Why, how you talk,” sez I, “I think more of Von Crank than I did. I had no idee his ancestors wuz good honest farmers, plantin’ and diggin’ their own sile. I spozed from his looks and mean that he had never done anything more useful than to gnaw canes and look through a glass eye onto nothin’, I am glad you told me, Tamer, why his ancestors must be real congenial to Josiah and me, though of course we own more land and live better than them old Dutchmen did. But they wuz likely, though poor, and put to it for things, and a sort of beer guzzlin’, ignorant set, but not to blame for not knowin’ much.”
Tamer didn’t like it, but she turned the subject off onto her resolve to not let Anna have anything to do with Tom Willis, seemin’ly not carin’ a mite what wuz goin’ on in Anna’s heart, no more than if she wuz one of the enchanted females she had read so much about.
But all this time, in spite of Tamer Ann’s perfect indifference to the life happiness of Anna, she didn’t let anything interfere with her riggin’ her up in the latest fashion, she didn’t let any of the “Enchanted Females of the Wild Forest; or, Petrified Dragons of the Dark Prairies,” or the last of the new diseases hender her from seein’ with her own eyes that Anna had the newest and curiousest kind of tattin’ on her underclothin’ and her dresses made in the latest fashion, and all the smaller things about her clothin’ wuz in first rate order.
These Tamer Ann called the essentials of life, and she allowed nothin’ to interfere with ’em, but if she had been one of the Enchanted Princesses or petrified animals she couldn’t been more dumb and deef to the real soul and heart needs of her child. It is pitiful, mighty pitiful, when the door of a child’s heart is blockaded day by day by the stupidity and ignorance of a mother, till at last the doors and winders are all shet up and the mother shot out doors, ornamentin’ the outside with shiffon and jewelry and knowin’ nothin’ of what is goin’ on inside.
It is pitiful, and in ninety cases out of a hundred the mother is the one to blame. Why, good land! she is inside in the first on’t, and there is nothin’ to hender her from keepin’ inside but ignorance, carelessness, neglect, lack of sympathy, or lack of time. In Tamer’s case it wuz mostly lack of time as I have shown. The elopin’ females and Dejected Denizens of the Dungeon Keep kep’ her too busy, them and her basiler menigitis and sinevetus and sangeletus and perinitus and etc., etc., etc., and her domestic duties, some on ’em which she wuz to blame for undertakin’, and I told her so. She had a new hired girl whose real name wuz Hannah, but who thought it would be more romantick to call herself Arabeller, and she made a specialty of the “beller,” she wanted it pronounced Arabeller, and Tamer Ann, thinkin’ that it would be real romantick to have a hired girl by that name, she jined forces with her, and by the time I got there the name Hannah wuz forgot, seemin’ly, and Arabeller wuz the name.
Well, Arabeller wuz a girl I wouldn’t have inside my house. She wuz big and fat, and I never see her face when it wuz what I called clean, and her dirty lookin’ hair, kinder drab color, wuz all covered with hair oil and scented with bergamont. What her complexion would be if it wuz washed clean I didn’t know, and spoze I never shall, but as it wuz it looked muddy and grimy, and wuz all covered with black heads and pimples, and coarse powder. She wore, in the afternoon, her cheap, gaudy dresses in a train draggin’ round the house, and cheap, high-heeled shues, settin’ table and washin’ dishes with them dirty ruffles floppin’ after her, wipin’ up all the dirt and nastiness that she couldn’t seem to git enough of in any other way.
She had girted her waist down into the smallest dimension she could, but bein’ fat and her buttons not to be relied on, there would be dretful gaps on the waist in different places, and between the waist and draggly skirt, and as she wuz one of the girls so common in the country, who won’t work out unless she is one of the family, her clothin’ showed up to good advantage at the table, the dirt on her face and dress bein’ emphasized by blotches of flour and grease, stove blackin’, prespiration, and sweat.
She, too, wuz most always to be seen with a dime novel in her hand. Sometimes she would stop and take up “The Queen of the Haunted Palace” in her hands and foller her fortunes while her dish water got cold. And once I see her myself readin’ the Police Gazette while she wuz fryin’ sassige, and one end of the dirty sheet drizzled down into the fat (I didn’t eat any of the sassige).
She had took music lessons. Her Ma went out washin’ and had to mortgage her cow, the only thing she possessed in the world, to pay for Arabeller’s lessons. And, though there wuz no prospects of her ever havin’ anything to practice on more melogious that the clothes wringer, no earthly prospect or heavenly, either, for I didn’t believe she would ever be good enough to play on the golden harp even if she knew the notes. But she would take lessons, and now when she could escape for a minute from the kitchen we could hear her singin’ and playin’ at the top of her rough, coarse voice, “The Bowery Boy” and the “Beauteous Ballet Girl,” which she pronounced “beauchieus ballet.”
If she had a spark of talent I should have approved of her ambition, but she couldn’t sing no more than a horse can make fried cakes. And I told Tamer that if her Ma had gin the cow music lessons and mortgaged Arabeller to pay for them, she would have got better returns for her money, though who would take the mortgage wuz more than I knew, unless it was Cicero.
Well, as I told Tamer Ann, I couldn’t have such a girl in my house overnight, bold, boastin’, insolent, lyin’, nasty inside and outside, leerin’, brazen, and altogether worthless. But Tamer said she got her real cheap, and she thought by havin’ her instead of a better girl she could save money enough to git a new sealskin cloak and a bracelet out of the household money, so she hired her for a song almost.
“Not one of her songs, I hope,” sez I.
“No,” Tamer said, she said it in a parable way. Well, as nigh as I could make out from what I see myself and from what I hearn, Cicero thought it would be kinder manly and like one of his Bandit Heroes to fall in love with her, and pay her attentions, not in the good open hullsome way of comrades and playmates, in her few hours of leisure, but in the dime novel, pirate way, brigand and burglar, romantick, sentimental way.
There wuz a cave in the woods back of Hamenses, and he used to retire there quite a good deal. And he tried time and agin to run away with her. She wuzn’t likely, so Tamer said, and she knew she would have to watch her when she hired her, but she said she thought she could, with her family’s help. She seemed to specially count on Cicero’s help from her talk to me, but ’tennyrate she owned up that it made her sights of trouble.
And I sez to her in the cause of duty, “Tamer Ann, why did you hire a girl that you thought wuzn’t likely? Why did you bring such a girl into the house with your children? I wuz never much of a hand to wave fire brands round in piles of tow and flax, or light parlor matches in powder magazines. But, howsumever,” sez I, “everybody hain’t alike, and I spoze mebby you thought you would git along.”
“Yes,” sez she, “for I knew we could watch her through the day, and then we always nail her up at night.”
“Nail her up!” sez I, agast at the idee, “what do you mean?”
Sez she, “There hain’t no lock to her door, but we have got an old door that we set aginst hern and nail it up every night.”
“Don’t you feel queer while you are doin’ it?” sez I, for truly it made me feel queer as a dog jest hearin’ it.
“Yes,” sez she, “I do feel queer, and specially when we drag her in by moonlight, for she has often tried to run away with Cicero, but we would some on us hear her, and then we would have to go out and drag her back and nail her up.”
“Wuzn’t it a sight of work?” sez I pityin’ly.
“Yes,” sez she, it wuz a sight of work, for she wuz so mean that she would let her feet drag, and they would have to pull her back by main force.
Sez I, “Tamer Ann, it seems to me that it would be easier to wash the dishes and sweep than to do this, and that is about all Arabeller duz anyway.”
Tamer said it wuz a good deal more work, but it wuz genteel to employ a servant, it give a sort of a air to a house to have a servant in it.
And I sez, “Yes, it duz give considerable air, if you have to be rushin’ round at any time of night to drag her in and nail her up.”
“Yes,” sez Tamer, “of course my family help me, but that has made me sights of worriment agin, for I most know that Cicero has kep’ up a clandestine correspondence with her, and would slip notes into her hand while he wuz helpin’ me drag her back. I have ketched him,” sez she, “leavin’ the nails loose so she could break out while he wuz helpin’ me nail her up.”
“Tamer,” sez I, real earnest, “do hear to me; do git rid of Arabeller, or you will sup sorrer from it in the end.” And I see that all that wuz keepin’ her back from it wuz the idee of style and gentility.
I didn’t dread her influence so much over Anna, for I felt that her nater wuz so healthy and wholesome and well grounded in good actions that it would reject the pizen atmosphere. And little Jack, I hoped and prayed none of her acts would even be known to him by name. But I worried more than considerable over the hull matter, and so did the neighbors, I could see. Why, one night while I wuz there a neighborin’ woman, Miss Presley, walked right into Tamer’s kitchen without knockin’, with an old shawl over her head and a lantern in both hands. Cicero had gone into her paster and took both her horses and gone off somewhere with ’em, he and Arabeller. She wuz a old maid and said she had always been imposed upon, but she demanded help to hunt her horses.
So Tamer and Hamen had to git up and pacify Miss Presley and help hunt, for sure enough when they went to Cicero’s room he wuzn’t there, and when they went to Arabeller’s room there the nails wuz pulled out and she wuz let loose, and we found out afterwards they had both run away to git married. But Hamen started off horseback, he and the hired man, and they catched them jest before they reached the minister’s house down on Stuny Creek.
Well, that broke that up, but Arabeller went about the house real surly, and Cicero, though he didn’t say much, had such mysterious looks that I most knew he wuz meditatin’ rapine or burglarly or sunthin’ or ruther. But, as it come out afterwards, he wuz plannin’ to carry Arabeller off into his cave and keep her there till he could bring a clergyman stealthily to the trysting place to unite them. That all happened after I wuz there. But I worried about him considerable nights after I went to bed, and wondered sadly how it would all come out.
But to resoom backwards. The next mornin’ after we went there Tamer got a good breakfast. She wuz sufferin’ from sinevetus, she said, and wuz dretful afraid of basler menigitus, but they didn’t hender her from gittin’ a first rate meal—good steak, creamed potatoes, hot rolls, coffee, etc., and she did it almost all herself, for Anna had her work to do, and Arabeller couldn’t git a good meal to save her life.