The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 56

"Mr. Brown, sir!" cried our poor young friend, finally plucking up a spirit.

"Go it, lemons!" shouted a listening drayman, as he hung over the scene from one of his cart stakes.

"Captain Brown," suggested the furious man, with smothered rage.

"Well then, _Captain_ Brown," said Brown, 2d., spitefully, "the lady you allude to is a total stranger to me. She was put under my care by a benevolent-looking old gentleman, with gold-bowed spectacles, and she has already cost me ten dollars, money advanced on her account."

"All persons are forbidden to trust the same, as I will pay no debts of her contracting," said the furious man, with gleams of unmitigated ferocity and savage exultation.

"Then I'm done brown, that's all," said the young man, gloomily. "As for Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Sophonisba Brown, I never want to see her face again.

She is at the American House, and you can recover her by proving property and paying charges. And, for my part, I hope I may be kicked to death by gra.s.shoppers if ever I take charge of a lady again."

This was the largest speech, probably, that the sandy-haired young man had ever made in his life. It was a regular "stunner," though. It convinced Miss Sumker, who had for a moment thought of withdrawing the light of her freckles from him forever, and who now hastened to replace her arm in his; and it convinced Captain Brown, who became suddenly as mild as moonbeams, shook his new acquaintance by the hand, and declared him a "fine young fellow."

But the drayman was disgusted at the affair ending without a fight, and expressed his feelings, as he laid the lash across his horse, by the single exclamation, "Pickles!" thereby insinuating that the nauseous sweetness of the reconciliation required a strong dash of acidity to neutralize its flavor.

The captain regained his strong-minded wife, and our sandy-haired friend went home with Miss Sumker, metamorphosed into Mrs. Brown, having "taken charge" of her for life.

THE NEW YEAR'S BELLS.

How the wind blew on the evening of the 31st December, in the year--but no matter for the date. It came roaring from the north, fraught with the icy chillness of those hyperborean regions that are lost to the sunlight for six months, the realm of ice-ribbed caverns, and snow mountains heaped up above the horizon in the cold and cheerless sky. On it came, that northern blast, howling and tearing, and menacing with destruction every obstacle that crossed its path. It dashed right through a gorge in the mountains, and twisted the arms of the rock-rooted hemlock and the giant oak, as if they were the twigs of saplings. Then it swept over the wild, waste meadows, rattling the frozen sedge, and whirling into eddies the few dry leaves that remained upon the surface of the earth. Next it invaded the princ.i.p.al street of the quaint old village, and played the mischief with the tall elms and the venerable b.u.t.tonwoods that stood on either side like sentinels guarding the highway. How the old gilt lion that swung from the sign post of the tavern, hanging like a malefactor in irons, was shaken and disturbed! Backwards and forwards the animal was tossed, like a bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a somerset and circ.u.mnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory.

The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the old oak parlor, and little recked the guests of the elemental war without. In fact, they knew nothing of it, till the driver of the village stage coach, making his appearance with a few flakes of snow on his snuff-colored surtout, announced, as he expanded his broad hands to the genial blaze, that it was a "wild night out of doors."

But on--on sped the wild wind, driving the snow flakes before it as a victorious army sweeps away the routed skirmishers and outposts of the enemy. Away went the night wind on its wild errand, reaching at last a solitary cottage on the outskirts of the village. Here it revelled in unwonted fury, ripping up the loose s.h.i.+ngles from the moss-grown rooftree, and forcing an entrance through many a yawning crevice.

The scene within the cottage presented a strange and painful contrast to the interior of most of the comfortable houses in the flouris.h.i.+ng village through which we have been hurrying on the wings of the cold north wind. The room was scantily furnished. There were two or three very old-fas.h.i.+oned, rickety, straw-bottomed chairs, an oaken stool or two, and a pine table. The hour hand of a wooden clock on the mantel piece pointed to eleven. A fire of chips and brushwood was smouldering on the hearth. In one corner of the room, near the fireplace, on a heap of straw, covered with a blanket, two little boys lay sleeping in each other's arms. Crouched near the table, her features dimly lighted by a tallow candle, sat a woman advanced in life, clad in faded but cleanly garments, whose hollow cheeks and sunken eye told a painful tale of sorrow and dest.i.tution. Those sad eyes were fixed anxiously and imploringly upon the stern, grim face of a hard-featured old man, who, with hat pulled over his s.h.a.ggy gray eyebrows, was standing, resting on a stout staff, in the centre of the floor.

"So, you haven't got any money for me," said the old man, in the harshest of all possible voices.

"Alas! no, Mr. Wurm--if I had I should have brought it to you long ago," answered the poor woman. "I had raked and sc.r.a.ped a little together--but the sickness of these poor children--poor William's orphans--swept it all away--I haven't got a cent."

"So much the worse for you, Mrs. Redman," answered the old man, harshly. "I've been easy with you--I've waited and waited--trusting your promises. I can't wait any longer. I want the money."

"You want the money! Is it possible? Report speaks you rich."

"It's false--false!" said the old man, bitterly. "I'm poor--I'm pinched. Ask the townspeople how I live. Do I look like a rich man?

No, no! I tell you I want my dues--and I will have 'em."

"I can't pay you," said the woman, sadly.

"Then you must abide the consequences!"

"What consequences?"

"I've got an execution--that's all," said the hardhearted landlord.

"An execution! what's that?"

"A warrant to take all your goods."

"My goods!" said the poor woman, looking round her with a melancholy smile. "Why I have nothing but what few things you see in this room.

You surely wouldn't take those."

"I'll take all I can get."

"And leave me here with the bare walls."

"No, no! you walk out of this to-morrow."

"In the depth of winter! You cannot be so hardhearted."

"We shall see that."

"I care not for myself; but what is to become of these poor children?"

"Send 'em to work in the factory."

"But they are just recovering from sickness; they are too young to work. O, where, where can we go?"

"To the poorhouse," said the landlord, fiercely.

The poor woman rose, and approaching the landlord's feet, fell upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked upward in his stern and unrelenting face.

"Israel Wurm," she said, "has your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember that my husband was your early friend--your schoolfellow--your playmate. Remember that when he was rich and you poor, he gave you from his plenty--freely--bountifully--not gave with the expectation of a return; his gifts were bounties, not loans."

"Therefore I owed him nothing," said the obdurate miser, turning away.

"You shall hear me out," said the woman, starting to her feet. "I ask for a further delay; I ask you to stay the hard hand of the law. You profess to be a Christian; I demand justice and mercy in the name of those sleeping innocents, my poor grandchildren, whose father is in heaven. You _shall_ be merciful."

"Heyday!" exclaimed the miser; "this is fine talk, upon my word. You _demand_ justice, do you? Well, you shall have it. The law is on my side, and I will carry it out to the letter."

"Then," said the outraged woman, stretching forth her trembling hand, "the curse of the widow and the orphan shall be upon you. Sleeping or waking, it shall haunt you; and on your miserable death bed, when the ugly shapes that throng about the pillow of the dying sinner shall close around you, our malediction shall weigh like lead upon you, and your palsied lips shall fail to articulate the impotent prayer for that mercy to yourself which you denied to others. And now begone.

This house is mine to-night, at least. Afflict it no longer with your presence. Go forth into the night; it is not darker than your benighted soul, nor is the north wind one half so pitiless as you."

With a bitter curse upon his lips, but trembling and dismayed in spite of himself, Israel Wurm left the presence of the indignant victim of his cruelty, and turned his footsteps in the direction of his home.

His _home_! It scarcely deserved the name. There was no fire there to thaw his chilled and trembling frame--no light to gleam athwart the darkness, and send forth its pilgrim rays to meet him and guide his footsteps to his threshold. No wife, no children, waited eagerly his return. It was the miser's home--dark, desolate, stern, and repulsive.

Its deep cellars, its thick walls held hidden stores of gold, and notes, and bonds, but there were garnered up no treasures of the heart.

The miser's path lay through the churchyard, a desolate place enough even in the gay noon of a midsummer day, now doubly repulsive in the wild midnight of midwinter. The wall was ruinous. The black iron gateway frowned, naked and ominous. The field of death was crowded with headstones of slate, and innumerable mounds marked the resting-place of many generations. The snow was now gathering fast over the dreary and desolate abode, as the miser stumbled along the beaten pathway, bending against the blast and drift. A strange numbness and drowsiness crept over him. He no longer felt the cold; an uncontrollable desire of slumber possessed him. He sat down upon a flat tombstone, and soon lost all consciousness of his actual situation.

Suddenly he saw before him the well-known figure of the old s.e.xton of the village, busily occupied in digging a grave. The winter had pa.s.sed away; it was now midsummer. The birds were singing in the trees, and from the far green meadows sounded the low of cattle, and the tinkling of sheep bells. Even the graveyard looked no longer desolate, for on many of the little hillocks bright flowers were springing into bloom and verdure, attesting the affection that outlived death, and decorating with living bloom the precincts of decay.

"My friend, for whom are you digging that grave?" asked Israel.

The s.e.xton looked up from his work, but did not seem to recognize the spokesman.