A Little Girl in Old Salem Part 20

The child was trying to get used to changed ideas. If her mother was glad and happy, now that they were again united, why should she be sorry? It seemed selfish to her as if she grudged them the joy. And Cousin Chilian was trying every way to entertain her, to help her on to perfect recovery. Sometimes, when she sat alone in the study, the soft eyes would overflow and the tears course silently down her cheeks. She never cried in the tempestuous way of some children. But she knew now she had counted a good deal on their having a home together. Rachel would keep the house and she and her father would take walks and have a garden, where she could cut flowers and have them in the house. Cousin Elizabeth said they made a litter. And now she should never go down to the wharf and see him standing on the deck, and wave her hand to him, as she used when he went on short journeys in India. They would have a low carry-all and ride around, as she would tell him all she had learned about Salem. And they would have people in to drink tea and have pretty dishes on the table. Perhaps he would give her a party. But she didn't know any children, except the Uphams. It might be better to go to school so that she could get acquainted.

Chilian was a good deal startled about the black garments.

"She is so little and thin," he objected. "I never did like children in black; it seems as if you weighted them down with woe. And he has been dead so many months now."

"But one ought to pay decent respect to a custom sanctioned by all civilized people. There will be a talk about it. Folks may think it our fault."

"I do not believe half a dozen people would notice it. It's only a custom after all. I never did like it. We will see how she feels about it."

"Chilian, you make that child of as much importance as if she was a woman grown. You will have your hands full by and by. She will think every one must bow down to her and consult her whims and fancies."

"We will see;" nodding indifferently.

He didn't want her around in garments of woe. Very gently he mentioned the subject.

She glanced up out of sweet, entreating eyes. She had been standing by him, looking over a very choice book of engravings.

"Yes," she returned. "Rachel spoke of it. And you know there are some people who wear white, and some who put on yellow. Black isn't a nice color. Do you like it?"

He shook his head.

"It is the inside of me that aches now and then, when I think I shall never see him come sailing back, that I must be a long while without him until I go to their land. But he must be very happy with mother, and that is what I think of when I feel how hard it is;" and the tears stole softly down her cheeks. "I have Rachel and you, and he said you would always love me and care for me. But I try not to feel sorry, and if I had on a black frock I couldn't help but think of it all the time. Then I should be sorry inside and outside both, and is it right to make yourself unhappy when you believe people have gone to heaven?"

She said it so simply that he was deeply moved. She had been alone with her sorrow all this time, when they had thought her indifferent.

"You need not wear black--I wish you would not. I want you to get real well and happy. And you are a brave little girl to think of them and refrain from grief."

She wiped away the tears lest they should fall on the book.

"At first it was quite dreadful to me. I couldn't say anything. Then I remembered how we used to talk of mother, as if she was only in the next room. And then I sit here and think, when the sky is such a splendid blue and there come little white rifts in it, as if somewhere it opened, I can almost see them. Can't people come back for a few moments?"

"Only in dreams, I imagine."

"I can _almost_ see them. And they are so glad to be together. And I know father says, 'Cynthia will come by and by.' But twenty years, or thirty years, is a long while to wait."

Perhaps she wouldn't need to wait so long, he thought, as he noted the transparent face.

"And now I should be sorry to go away from you," she said, with grave sweetness.

"I think your father meant you should stay a long while with me when he gave you to me;" and he pressed her closer to his heart.

So she did not wear mourning, to Elizabeth's very real displeasure.

There was no further talk about the school, but she did try to sew a little and began the sampler. Cousin Eunice was her guide here. She brought out hers that was over fifty years old, and all the colors were fading.

"I wonder if I shall live fifty years," she mused.

Driving about was her great entertainment. You could go to Marblehead, which was a peninsula. There were the fishery huts and the men curing and drying fish. Sometimes they took pa.s.sage in one of the numerous sailing vessels and went in and out the irregular sh.o.r.e, and saw Boston from the bay. It seemed in those times as if it might get drowned out, there was so much water around it.

"And if it should float off out to sea, some day," she half inquired, laughingly.

He was glad to hear her soft, sweet laugh again.

She thought she liked Salem best, and even now people began to talk of old Salem, there had been so many improvements since the time Governor Bradford had written:

"Almost ten years we lived here alone,-- In other places there were few or none; For Salem was the next of any fame That began to augment New England's name."

And then it went by the old Indian name and was called Naumkeag. And she found that it was older than Boston, and had been the seat of government twice, and that Governor Burnett, finding Boston unmanageable, had convened the General Court here for two years. That was in 1728, and now it was 1800.

"But no one lives a hundred years," she said.

"Oh, yes; there are a number of persons who have lived that long. Now and then a person lives in three centuries, is born the last year of one, goes through a whole century, and dies in the next one."

"What a long, long while!" she sighed.

And there was the old Court House where the Stamp Act was denounced. She wanted to know all about that, and he was fond of explaining things, the sort of teacher habit, but there was nothing dogmatic about it. Here were houses where the Leveretts had lived, third or fourth cousins who had married with the Graingers, and the Lyndes, and the Saltonstalls, and the Hales. It is so in the course of a hundred or two years, when emigration does not come in to disturb the purity of the blood.

The little girl really began to improve. Her hair was taking on a brighter tint and in the warm weather the uneven ends curled about her forehead in dainty rings, her complexion was many shades fairer, her cheeks rounded out, and her chin began to show the cleft in it. She was more like her olden self, quite merry at times.

The summer went on as usual. Gardening, berry-picking, and she helped with the gooseberries, the briery vines she did not like. There were jars of jam and preserves, rose leaves to gather, and all the mornings were crowded full. Often in the afternoon she went up in the garret to see Miss Eunice spin--sometimes on the big wheel, at others with flax on the small wheel. She liked the whirring sound, and it was a mystery to her how the thread came out so fine and even.

Elizabeth had taken the white quilt out of its wrappings, it did not get finished the summer before. A neighbor had let her copy a new pattern for the border that had come from New York. And she heard there had been imported white woven quilts with wonderful figures in them.

"Then one wouldn't have to quilt any more. Shan't you be glad, Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Glad!" She gave a kind of snort and pushed the needle into her finger, and had to stop lest a drop of blood might mar the whiteness. "Well, I'm not as lazy as that comes to, and I don't see how they can put much beauty in them. You can change blue and white and show a pattern, but where it is all white! Why, you couldn't tell it from a tablecloth."

It was warm up in the garret, and what with drying herbs, and the sun pouring on the s.h.i.+ngles, there was a rather close, peculiar air. Cynthia stood by the open window, where the sweet summer wind went by, laden with the fragrance of newly cut gra.s.ses and the silk of the corn that was just ta.s.selling out. The hills rose up, tree-crowned; white clouds floated by overhead, and out beyond was the great ocean that led to other countries--to India she thought of so often.

Oh, how the birds sang! She was so sorry Cousin Eunice had to sit and spin, when there was such a beautiful world all around, and Cousin Elizabeth p.r.i.c.ked her fingers quilting. She heard her sigh, but she did not dare look around. She had that nice sense of delicacy, rather unusual in a child. But then she wasn't an everyday child.

"Cynthia," called Rachel from the foot of the stairs, "don't you want to go out for a walk? They've been unloading the _Mingo_, and they have a store of new things at the Merrits'."

That was the great East India emporium.

"Oh, yes!" She skipped across the floor and ran downstairs lightly.

"That child's like a whirlwind," exclaimed Elizabeth crossly.

"But we ought to be glad she's so much better. I was really afraid in the spring we wouldn't have her long."

"Oh, the Leverett stock is tough."

"But her mother died young."

"Of that horrid India fever. No, I didn't truly think she would die. If she had, I wonder where all the money would go? Chilian is awful close-mouthed about it. But it would have to go somewhere. 'Tisn't at all likely he'd leave word for it to be thrown back in the sea."

"No; oh, no."

"There's some talk about missionaries going out to try to convert the heathen. But Giles thinks it would cost more than it would amount to.