Narcissa or the Road to Rome Part 4

You may not find Verona on the county-map; you certainly will not see it as you flash by on the Maine Central Railway, on your way to Bar Harbor. But if you travel for a certain length of time on a certain quiet road, gra.s.s-grown for the most part, and with only a few straggling cottages dotting it here and there,--if, as I say, you travel long enough, and do not get out of patience and turn back towards Vi-enny, you will come suddenly round a bend of the road, and there will be Verona before you, all white and smiling, tucked away under the great hill-shoulder that curls lovingly round it. The cleanest, freshest, sleepiest little New England village! No myrtle, no laurel, not the faintest suggestion of a fountain! Yet here lived and loved, not so very long ago, Romeo and Juliet.

They were simple young people; they did not even know their own names, for Juliet answered to the name of Betsy Garlick, while Romeo was known only as Bije Green; and they worked for the Bute girls.

It is well known that the Bute girls--who might better be spoken of, if the custom of the country allowed it, as the Misses Bute--did not speak to each other. They lived in two white cottages, side by side, on the Indiana road; and though they could not avoid seeing each other every day, no communication had taken place between them since the time of their mother's death, some ten years ago. Old Mrs. Bute had been partly responsible, all the neighbors thought, for this unfortunate state of things. She was a masterful woman, and never allowed her daughters to call their souls their own, even when they were middle-aged women. Though both gifted with strong wills, they lived in absolute subjection to the small withered autocrat who hardly ever stirred from her armchair in the chimney-corner.

She persisted in treating her daughters, either of whom could have picked her up with one hand and set her on the mantelpiece, as if they were little children; and they accepted the position with meekness.

It was even said that when Mrs. Bute felt called on to die, as we say in Verona, she insisted on having her daughters' mourning made and tried on in her presence, that she might be sure of its being respectable, and fitting properly. "Neither one of you has sense to know when a gown wrinkles in the back," she said. "I couldn't lay easy in my grave, and you going round all hitched up between the shoulders."

So the village dressmaker cut the clothes (black stuff dresses, and black cambric pelisses lined with flannel), and came in fear and trembling to try them on. It must have been a grim scene: the two gaunt, middle-aged women standing meekly before the bed, turning this way and that at command; the dying woman issuing, in halting whispers, her directions for "seam and gusset and band," while death had her by the throat, fitting her for the straight white garment which was making in the next room. Not till she had seen her daughters arrayed in the completed costumes, with bonnet and veil to match, would Eliza Bute turn her face to the wall and go, feeling that she had done her duty.

Perhaps it was hardly to be wondered at, if, so soon as the iron grasp was loosened which had held them all their days, the two women went to the other extreme, and could brook no suggestion of authority from any one, least of all from each other. Perhaps each was sure that Mother (awful shade, still hovering on the borders of their life!) would be of her way of thinking; however it was, the two sisters quarrelled the day after the funeral. The will was read, and it was found that the property was to be evenly divided between them. Evenly divided! It was a dangerous phrase. Miss Duty had her idea of what "even" meant, and Miss Resigned Elizabeth had hers; and neither was likely to give up to the other. They listened in grim silence as the lawyer read the will; and each decided that she knew what Mother meant, and 'twasn't likely the other did.

The strife that followed was grim, though not loud. No wrangling was heard; no neighbor was called in to keep the peace; but after three days, Miss Resigned Elizabeth sent for a man and a wheelbarrow, and removed with all her goods and chattels to the house next door, which was hers by right of inheritance from her grandmother.

A neighbor calling on Miss Duty the day after the separation, found her in the spare chamber, seated before the bed, on which were spread out divers articles of the personal property which had been her mother's. There was one black lace mitt, six white stockings and six gray ones, half of an embroidered ap.r.o.n, ditto of a nankeen waistcoat in which Father Bute had been married; item, one infant's sock; item, three left-hand shoes. Here, on what was evidently the half of a green veil, lay a slender store of trinkets: one mosaic earring, one garnet one, half of a string of gold beads, and--piteous sight!--half of a hair bracelet, its strands, roughly cut, already half unbraided, and sticking out in silent protest against the inhuman treatment they had received.

The neighbor broke out into indignant inquiry, but was quickly silenced. Miss Duty was satisfied, and so was her sister; that being so, she didn't know that the neighbors had any call to be distressed.

Good Mrs. Dill went home in high indignation, and before night all Verona knew how "ridiklous" the Bute girls had behaved, and joined with Mrs. Dill in thinking that Old Ma'am Bute had better have left them a "gardeen," if that was all they knew about how to treat good stuff, as had cost more money than ever they were likely to earn.

When Bije Green came to work for Miss Duty Bute, he knew nothing of the feud between the two houses. He was not a Veronese, but came from that mysterious region known as "out back," meaning the remote country. When, working in the garden, he saw on the other side of the fence an old woman (any person above thirty was old to Bije) who looked almost exactly like the old woman who had hired him, it seemed the proper thing to say "hullo!" to her, that being the one form of salutation known to Bije; but instead of an answering "hullo!" he met a stony stare, which sent him back in confusion to his potatoes.

"She's deef!" said Bije to himself, charitably. "And my old woman's nigh about dumb,--quite an asylum between 'em." And he whistled "Old Dog Tray" till Miss Duty came and told him to stop that racket!

Poor Bije! he found life dull, at first, on the Indiana road. He was shy, and not one to make acquaintances easily, even if Miss Duty had approved of his running down to the village, which she did not. But he was used to cheerful conversation at home, and felt the need of it strongly here. His innocent attempts at entertaining Miss Duty were generally met with a "H'm!" which did not encourage further remarks.

"Nice day!" he would say in a conciliating manner, when he brought in the wood in the early morning. "H'm!" Miss Duty would reply, with a frosty glance in his direction.

"Havin' nice weather right along!"

If he met with any reply to this suggestion, it would be a "H'm!" even more forbidding; while a third remark, if he ever ventured on one, would be answered by swift dismissal to the woodshed, with the admonition not to be "gormin' round here, with all the work to do."

These things being so, Bije was sad at heart, and pined for a certain corner of the fence at home, and his sister Delilah leaning over it, talking while he hoed. Delilah was only a girl, but she could be some company; and what was the use of having a tongue, if you never used it, 'cept just to jaw people? Jawing never did no good that he could make out, though he didn't know but he'd ruther be jawed than hear nothing at all from get up to go to bed.

Such thoughts as these were in Bije's mind one morning, as he wrestled with the witch-gra.s.s on the strip of green near the fence which divided Miss Duty's lot from her sister's. He did not like witch-gra.s.s; he never could see the use of the pesky stuff. Delilah was always saying that there was use for everything; Bije wished she were here, to tell him the use of witch-gra.s.s. He guessed--At this moment the tail of his eye caught a flutter, as of a petticoat, beyond the dividing fence. Now Miss Resigned Elizabeth's petticoats never fluttered; they were not full enough. Bije looked up, and saw--a girl.

She was standing in the porch, polis.h.i.+ng the milk-pails. She had curly, fair hair, which she kept shaking back out of her eyes,--blue eyes, as bright as the little pond at home, when the sun shone on it in the morning. The red-and-white of her cheeks was so pure and clear, that Bije thought at once of a snow-apple; and his hand made an instinctive movement towards his pocket, though it was not near the time for "snows." There was not much wind, and yet this girl's things seemed "all of a flutter;" her pink calico gown, her blue-checked ap.r.o.n, her flying curls,--all were full of life and dancing motion.

The milk-pails twinkled in the morning sun, catching fresh gleams as she turned them this way and that. They were not common milk-pails, it appeared, but pure silver, or they could not twinkle so. Also, the sun was brighter than usual. Bije stood gazing, with no knowledge that his mouth was open and his brown eyes staring in a very rude way. The witch-gra.s.s took breath, and rested from the fierce a.s.saults of the hoe. Bije knew nothing of witch-gra.s.s. He had never heard of such a thing. There were only two things in the whole world, so far as he knew: a milk-pail and Betsy Garlick.

When Betsy looked up, as of course she did in a moment, she saw no fairy vision, but only a boy: a brown boy, in brown overalls, with his mouth open, staring as if he had never seen a girl in his life before.

Betsy had seen plenty of boys, and she was not in the least afraid of them; so she returned Bije's stare with a calm survey which took him all in, from his conscious head to his awkward heels, and then, with a toss of her curls and a click of pails, disappeared into the house.

All that day, Bije went about in a dream. When Miss Duty asked him what he had been doing all the morning, he answered "Milk-pails;" and when she asked what they used to keep off potato-bugs out his way, he could only say "Pink calico." At this atrocious statement, Miss Duty turned sharply on him. "Bijah Green," she said, "if you are goin'

loony, I'll thank you to take yourself off home. I don't want no naturals round here, so now you know."

Bije was terribly frightened at this. Yesterday it would have been rather a good joke to be discharged by the old lady, and go home to the farm with a month's wages in his pocket; to-day, it seemed the most dreadful calamity that could happen to him; and he hastened to give such an eloquent description of the potato-bug war, as carried on in West Athens (p.r.o.nounced Aythens) that Miss Duty was mollified, and reckoned she must try paris green herself. When evening came, Bije went early for his cow, and milked that good beast with undue haste and trepidation. Then, having carried the br.i.m.m.i.n.g pails into the kitchen, he returned to the shed, and looked about him with gleaming eyes. Yes, there it was! the knot-hole that he had found the other day, when he was brus.h.i.+ng down the cobwebs,--just opposite the back-porch of the house across the way. She would be coming out again in a minute; it wasn't likely that she had done milking yet. He drew up a broken stool, and seating himself on it, flattened his face against the rough boards of the shed, and waited. The door of the house across the way opened, and Miss Resigned Elizabeth came slowly out. She was younger than Miss Duty, but she looked older, being near-sighted, and walking with a stoop and a shuffle. She was rather good-looking, with soft brown hair, and a little autumnal red in her thin cheeks; but to Bije's distorted vision, she seemed the most horrible old hag that had ever darkened the earth. Her scant gray skirt (made out of her half of a dress of Mother Bute's, who wore her skirts full), her neck-handkerchief, her carpet slippers, all were an offence to him; and he could hardly resist the impulse to call out to her to take herself out of his field of vision, and leave it clear for the desired one. The dreadful old woman! how she stood round, as if folks wanted to see her, instead of wis.h.i.+ng she was in Jericho. She was actually sitting down, taking out her old knitting! Such things ought not to be allowed. There ought to be a law against ugly women--Hark! what was that? Miss Resigned Elizabeth was calling to somebody,--to somebody in the house. "Betsy! Betsy Garlick! come out here, will you?"

Why, this was not such a horrid old lady after all. Now he thought of it, she was rather nice-looking, for an old one. The door was opening, opening wider. There she came with her pails. The wonderful girl! not flas.h.i.+ng and sparkling, as in the morning light, but with the softness of twilight in her eyes and her lovely waving hair. What was it the other lad said, over there in the old Verona, at a minute like this?

"Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear!"

and so on, in his glowing, tropical way. But Bije could not say anything of that sort. His heart was as high as Borneo's, and seemed to be beating in his throat, as he gazed at the fair vision; but he knew nothing of language, and if he had tried to put his thoughts into words, he would only have said: "Ain't she slick!" A most un-Shakespearian Bije! an ordinary, good country-boy! But no fiery gallant of them all was ever thrilled with purer fire than burned now in his veins. He wanted to do something, something wonderful, for this girl. What did all those fellers do, in the story-books Delilah was everlastingly reading? He wished he had read some of the stories, instead of laughing at them for girl's fool-talk. She was smiling now; did anybody ever smile like that before? Of course not! He wished he were Miss Resigned Elizabeth, to be smiled at in that way; he wondered what it felt like. But no! the poor old lady was deef! (she was not in the least deaf, be it said, by the way). Deef, and that girl talking to her! Poor old lady! It was a dreadful thing to be deef.

And so on, and so on: Ossa on Pelion of rapture and young delight and wonder, when suddenly a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. The boy started as if he had been shot. Miss Duty Bute whirled him round, away from the opening into Paradise,--I should say the knot-hole,--and stooping down, applied her eye to the aperture.

The little scene on the porch of the opposite house had no special charm for Miss Duty: she only saw her sister, Resigned Eliz, as she had called her in former days, and her hired girl. The butcher had told her that Resigned Eliz had hired a girl; also, she, Miss Duty, had rheumatism in her joints, which made stooping painful to her.

Therefore, when she straightened her poor back, and turned once more upon the trembling Bije, her mood was none of the softest.

Briefly, he was told that if ever she caught him spying upon the other house, whensoever or howsoever, he would pack off that moment of time.

He had no more to do with the other house than he had with the Plagues of Egypt, she'd have him to know; and when she wanted spying done, she could do it herself, without hiring no s.h.i.+f'less, long-legged, trifling boys to do it for her. Finally, was she to have any kindling-wood split that night, or was she not?

This was very dreadful, and for some days Bije hardly dared to look over the fence, much less to loiter in the shed for an instant. But what says the old song, the Lover's song, that perhaps (who knows?) may have been sung in the streets when Will Shakespeare was a little naughty boy?

"Over the mountain, And over the waves; Under the fountains, And under the graves; Under floods that are deepest, Which Neptune obey, Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way."

This being so, what could two elderly ladies, who seldom stirred from their own door-yards, save to go to meeting--what were they to do against the all-conquering little G.o.d, or against Abijah Green, his soldier and slave? Bije found out the way, unconscious of any fluttering wings about him, any mischievous, rosy imp with bow and arrow.

A posy laid on the fence; then an apple, polished on the coat-sleeve till it shone again; then two more apples and a posy beside them, to show that there could be no mistake about it.

Betsy was only eighteen, and if life was dull at Miss Duty's, it was not exciting at Miss Resigned Elizabeth's. She, too, had been cautioned to have nothing to do with "that bold-lookin' boy over t'

the other house!" But Betsy did not think the boy was bold-looking.

Anyhow, she hoped (but her hopes were not expressed aloud) she had manners enough to say thank you, when any one was pretty-behaved. So she said thank you, first with her eyes (because Miss Resigned Elizabeth was close by, watering the flower-beds), then with her lips; and it became evident to Bije that she had the sweetest voice that ever was heard in the world. The flowers were real pretty! Betsy thought a sight o' flowers. They had lots of pansies to home, and she did miss 'em, so these seemed real homelike. Did Mr.--well, there!

some might think 'twas queer for her to be talkin' to him, and never knowin' what his name was! Bijah Green? Betsy wanted to know! Why, she had an uncle named Green, over to South Beulah. Not her own uncle--he married her aunt Phrony; real nice man, he was. She wondered if he was any relation. But what she was goin' to say? She didn't suppose Mr.

Green cared for southernwood. There was a great root of it round by the back-door here; 'twas dretful sweet, and she had to set it over, Miss Bute said. He could have a piece off the root, just as well as not; only she didn't s'pose he cared for such common doin's as southernwood.

It appeared that southernwood had been Mr. Green's favorite plant from his cradle, as one might say. If there was one thing he did hanker after, it was southernwood; but he couldn't see her grubbin' up things that way. If he knew where the bush was, he could get it himself, just as easy--

Betsy would not hear of that! Besides, _she_ was dretful pernickety about folks comin' into the yard. There! Betsy didn't know what she'd say this minute, if she was to see her talkin' to him; but for her, Betsy's, part, she had allers been brought up to be neighborly. Bije chimed in eagerly. 'Twas dretful lonesome, specially come evenin's. To see her ("her" in this case meant Miss Duty) settin' there, knittin'

for dear life, and never a word to say to any one--'twas enough to make any one feel homesick. Not but what she was good, in her way, only 'twas a tormentin', up-stiff kind o' way. Drivin' the cow, too!

It did seem as though he should fly, sometimes, drivin' that critter all alone from pasture. His sister allers went with him, to home; he s'posed that's why it seemed so lonesome now. Where did _she_ (oh, New England! oh, poor little hard-worked p.r.o.nouns! this "she" was Miss Resigned Elizabeth),--where did she keep her cow? Seem's though--

Seems, Bijah? Nay, it is!

What are cows and country roads made for, I should like to know, save for the pleasure of youths and maidens? Miss Duty's cow was kept in the humplety field, as the children called it, a mile and more from Cuttyhunk, the pasture where Miss Resigned Elizabeth's good Brindle spent her peaceful days; yet it was strange to see the intimacy that sprung up between these two creatures in the next few weeks.

At a certain turn of the road, Brindle would stop and fall to cropping the gra.s.s by the road-side, swinging her body about and switching the flies off comfortably; while her driver, loitering a few steps behind, pulled the early golden-rod or plaited sweet rushes together, apparently absorbed in her task, and only from time to time casting shy glances down the other road, which led off, over hill and dale, to Cuttyhunk. But, by-and-by, down this other road would come another cow,--not a happy, leisurely cow like Brindle, but a breathless and much-tormented beast who had been hurried out of all nature ever since she left the pasture, absolutely goaded along the way by urgent word and gesture, by shakings of her tail, and apostrophes most unreasonable.

"Go lang, you old snail! what you gormin' all over the road for? Want to sleep here, do ye? Of all slow critters ever I see, you're the beat 'em; cold mola.s.ses kin gallop, 'longside o' you."

Poor Molly did not understand this kind of thing from one with whom she had been so friendly-intimate as Bije. She made such haste as she could, poor beast, and it was a great relief when she saw Brindle's horns round the corner; for now, she had already learned from experience, the hurry was over. Now she and her bovine friend could take their way along the gra.s.sy road, as slowly as any cow could wish.

Bijah, who had come panting along the road, breathless with haste and repeated adjurations, became suddenly compa.s.sionate. The poor beasts were tired, likely. 'Twouldn't do to hurry them; anyhow, 'twas bad for the cream. Oh, Bijah! Bijah! what would your pious grandmother say, if she were witness of your barefaced duplicity on these occasions?

But what occasions they were! It was a pretty sight, if one had been there to see. The road was pretty, to begin with,--the Indiana road, with its overhanging birches and elms, and the fringe of daisies and golden-rod along the sides. The evening light was soft and sweet, as if the sun had put on his tenderest gleam to smile on Betsy; and as the twilight deepened, in rosy gray softening into amethyst, did not the moon come up, all clear and silver, just to look at Betsy? The white light s.h.i.+mmered on the girl's soft hair, and deepened the dimples in her round cheek, and cast strange gleams into her lovely eyes. Was the other Juliet fairer, I wonder? Possibly; but, on the other hand, she could not drive cows, nor milk them, either. Surely the other Romeo was not more pa.s.sionate than this dark-eyed boy in his brown jean overalls, walking so sedately by Juliet's--I should say, by Betsy's--side. Bije felt as if the whole world were light and fire; the fire within him, the light without. He thought that Betsy gave light to the moon, not the moon to Betsy. He did not wish he were a glove upon that hand, for the little brown hand had never worn a glove, except once, at the wedding of a friend. The gloves were at home now, wrapped in silver paper; she meant to wear them at her own wedding. He did not swear by yonder blessed moon, because he was not in the habit of swearing. "By gos.h.!.+" was the only expletive Bije ever used, and he would not have thought of using that in a lady's presence. The fire within burned him; but what sweet pain it was! If he had only had the gift of language, this poor, dear Bije, what floods of glowing words he would have poured out! How he would have praised her, the beloved one, and praised the night, and blessed the moon, and the stars, and the old cows, and everything that came near him and his happiness! But if he had spoken, Bije could only have said that it was a sightly night, and Betsy would have responded that it was so.

One of these sightly nights Bijah found voice, if not language. They were pacing slowly along, letting Brindle and Molly have it all their own way. It was the full of the moon, the harvest-moon, and all the world lay bathed in silver light. They had been silent for a while, through sheer peace and content in each other; but suddenly Bije broke out with, "I wish't I had a snow-apple!"

"Why, how you startled me!" Betsy responded. "Why do you want a snow-apple now, of all times in the world? They won't be ripe for nigh onto two months, Bije."

"Do you know what I thought of, first time ever I see you?" the boy went on, with apparent irrelevance. "Well, I thought of a snow-apple then, and thought you looked the most like one of anything in the world."