The Morgesons Part 6

She laughed, and by the time father returned we were quite chatty.

After dinner I asked him to go to some shops with me. He took me to a jeweler's, and without consulting me bought an immense mosaic brooch, with a ruined castle on it, and a pretty ring with a gold stone.

"Is there anything more?" he asked, "you would like?"

"Yes, I want a pink calico dress."

"Why?"

"Because the girls at Miss Black's wear pink calico."

"Why not get a pink silk?"

"I must have a pink French calico, with a three-cornered white cloud on it; it is the fas.h.i.+on."

"The fas.h.i.+on!" he echoed with contempt. But the dress was bought, and we went back to Barmouth.

When I appeared in school with my new brooch and ring the girls crowded round me.

"What does that pin represent, whose estate?" inquired one, with envy in her voice.

"Don't the ring make the blood rush into your hand?" asked another; "it looks so."

"Does it?" I answered; "I'll hold up my hand in the air, as you do, to make it white."

"What is your father's business?" asked Elmira Sawyer, "is he a tailor?"

Her insolence made my head swim; but I did not reply. When recess was over a few minutes afterward, I cried under the lid of my desk. These girls overpowered me, for I could not conciliate them, and had no idea of revenge, believing that their ridicule was deserved. But I thought I should like to prove myself respectable. How could I? Grand'ther _was_ a tailor, and I could not demean myself by a.s.suring them that my father was a gentleman.

In the course of a month Aunt Mercy had my pink calico made up by the best dressmaker in Barmouth. When I put it on I thought I looked better than I ever had before, and went into school triumphantly with it. The girls surveyed me in silence; but criticised me. At last Charlotte Alden asked me in a whisper if old Mr. Warren made my dress.

She wrote on a piece of paper, in large letters--"Girls, don't let's wear our pink calicoes again," and pus.h.i.+ng it over to Elmira Sawyer, made signs that the paper should be pa.s.sed to all the girls. They read it, and turning to Charlotte Alden nodded. I watched the paper as it made its round, and saw Mary Bennett drop it on the floor with a giggle.

It was a rainy day, and we pa.s.sed the recess indoors. I remained quiet, looking over my lesson. "The first period ends with the carboniferous system; the second includes the saliferous and magnesian systems; the third comprises the oolitic and chalk systems; the fourth--" "How attentive some people are to their lessons," I heard Charlotte Alden say. Looking up, I saw her near me with Elmira Sawyer.

"What is that you say?" I asked sharply.

"I am not speaking to you."

"I am angry," I said in a low tone, and rising, "and have borne enough."

"Who are _you_ that you should be angry? We have heard about your mother, when she was in love, poor thing."

I struck her so violent a blow in the face that she staggered backward. "You are a liar," I said, "and you must let me alone."

Elmira Sawyer turned white, and moved away. I threw my book at her; it hit her head, and her comb was broken by my geological systems. There was a stir; Miss Black hurried from her desk, saying, "Young ladies, what does this mean? Miss C. Morgeson, your temper equals your vulgarity, I find. Take your seat in my desk."

I obeyed her, and as we pa.s.sed Mary Bennett's desk, where I saw the paper fall, I picked it up. "See the good manners of your favorite, Miss Black; read it." She bit her lips as she glanced over it, turned back as if to speak to Charlotte Alden, looked at me again, and went on: "Sit down, Miss C. Morgeson, and reflect on the blow you have given. Will you ask pardon?"

"I will not; you know that."

"I have never resorted to severe punishment yet; but I fear I shall be obliged to in your case."

"Let me go from here." I clenched my hands, and tried to get up. She held me down on the seat, and we looked close in each other's eyes.

"You are a bad girl." "And you are a bad woman," I replied; "mean and cruel." She made a motion to strike me, but her hand dropped; I felt my nostrils quiver strangely. "For shame," she said, in a tremulous voice, and turned away. I sat on the bench at the back of the desk, heartily tired, till school was dismissed; as Charlotte Alden pa.s.sed out, courtesying, Miss Black said she hoped she would extend a Christian forgiveness to Miss C. Morgeson, for her unladylike behavior. "Miss C. Morgeson is a peculiar case."

She gave her a meaning look, which was not lost upon me. Charlotte answered, "Certainly," and bowed to me gracefully, whereat I felt a fresh sense of my demerits, and concluded that I was worsted in the fray.

Miss Black asked no explanation of the affair; it was dropped, and none of the girls alluded to it by hint or look afterward. When I told Aunt Mercy of it, she turned pale, and said she knew what Charlotte Alden meant, and that perhaps mother would tell me in good time.

"We had a good many troubles in our young days, Ca.s.sy."

CHAPTER X.

The atmosphere of my two lives was so different, that when I pa.s.sed into one, the other ceased to affect me. I forgot all that I suffered and hated at Miss Black's, as soon as I crossed the threshold, and entered grand'ther's house. The difference kept up a healthy mean; either alone would perhaps have been more than I could then have sustained. All that year my life was narrowed to that house, my school, and the church. Father offered to take me to ride, when he came to Barmouth, or carry me to Milford; but the motion of the carriage, and the conveying power of the horse, created such a fearful and realizing sense of escape, that I gave up riding with him. Aunt Mercy seldom left home; my schoolmates did not invite me to visit them; the seash.o.r.e was too distant for me to ramble there; the storehouses and wharves by the river-side offered no agreeable saunterings; and the street, in Aunt Mercy's estimation, was not the place for an idle promenade. My exercise, therefore, was confined to the garden--a pleasant spot, now that midsummer had come, and inhabited with winged and crawling creatures, with whom I claimed companions.h.i.+p, especially with the red, furry caterpillars, that have, alas, nearly pa.s.sed away, and given place to a variegated, fantastic tribe, which gentleman farmers are fond of writing about.

Mother rode over to Barmouth occasionally, but seemed more glad when she went away than when she came. Veronica came with her once, but said she would come no more while I was there. She too would wait till the end of the year, for I spoiled the place. She said this so calmly that I never thought of being offended by it. I told her the episode of the pink calico. "It is a lovely color," she said, when I showed it to her. "If you like, I will take it home and burn it."

As I developed the dramatic part of my story--the blow given Charlotte Alden, Verry rubbed her face shrinkingly, as if she had felt the blow.

"Let me see your hand," she asked; "did I ever strike anybody?"

"You threw a pail of salt downstairs, once, upon my head, and put out my sight."

"I wish, when you are home, you would pound Mr. Park; he talks too much about the Resurrection. And," she added mysteriously, "he likes mother."

"Likes mother!" I said aghast.

"He watches her so when she holds Arthur! Why do you stare at me? Why do I talk to you? I am going. Now mind, I shall never leave home to go to any school; I shall know enough without."

While Veronica was holding this placable talk with me, I discovered in her the high-bred air, the absence of which I deplored in myself.

How cool and unimpressionable she looked! She did not attract me then.

My mind wandered to what I had heard Mary Bennett say, in recess one day, that her brother had seen me in church, and came home with the opinion that I was the handsomest girl in Miss Black's school.

"Is it possible!" replied the girl to whom she had made the remark. "I never should think of calling her pretty."

"Stop, Veronica," I called; "am I pretty?" She turned back. "Everybody in Surrey says so; and everybody says I am not." And she banged the door against me.

She did not come to Barmouth again. She was ill in the winter, and, father told me, queerer than ever, and more trouble. The summer pa.s.sed, and I had no particular torment, except Miss Black's reference to composition. I could not do justice to the themes she gave us, not having the books from which she took them at command, and betrayed an ignorance which excited her utmost contempt, on "The Scenery of Singapore," "The Habits of the Hottentots," and "The Relative Merits of Homer and Virgil."

In October Sally and Ruth Aiken came for the fall sewing. They had farmed it all summer, they said, and were tanned so deep a hue that their faces bore no small resemblance to ham. Ruth brought me some apples in an ochre-colored bag, and Sally eyed me with her old severity. As they took their accustomed seats at the table, I thought they had swallowed the interval of time which had gone by since they left, so precisely the same was the moment of their leaving and that of their coming back. I knew grand'ther no better than when I saw him first. He was sociable to those who visited the house, but never with those abiding in his family. Me he never noticed, except when I ate less than usual; then he peered into my face, and said, "What ails you?" We had the benefit of his taciturn presence continually, for he rarely went out; and although he did not interfere with Aunt Mercy's work, he supervised it, weighed and measured every article that was used, and kept the cellar and garden in perfect order.

It was approaching the season of killing the pig, and he conferred often with Aunt Mercy on the subject. The weather was watched, and the pig poked daily, in the hope that the fat was thickening on his ribs.

When the day of his destiny arrived, there was almost confusion in the house, and for a week after, of evenings, grand'ther went about with a lantern, and was not himself till a new occupant was obtained for the vacant pen, and all his idiosyncracies revealed and understood.