CHAPTER XXI
“A gin-sling, waiter! Strong, hot, and quick; none of your temperance mixtures for me; and waiter, here, a beef-steak smothered in onions; and waiter, some crackers and cheese, and be deuced quick about it, too. I’m not a man to be trifled with, as somebody besides you will find out, I fancy,” said Mr. Scraggs, hitching his heels to the mantel, as the waiter closed the door.
Mr. Scraggs was a plethoric, pursy, barrel-looking individual, with a peony complexion, pink, piggy eyes, and a nose sky-wardly inclined. His neck-cloth was flashy and greasy; his scarlet vest festooned with a mock chain; his shirt bosom fastened with green studs, and his nether limbs encased in a pair of snake-skin pantaloons. As the waiter closed the door to execute his order, he delivered himself of the following soliloquy, between the whiffs of his cigar:
“Ha-ha! pardoned out, was he? turned peddler, did he? fathered the little gal, and sold tape to pay her board, hey? put her to boarding-school, and went to New Orleans to seek his fortin’? got shipwrecked and robbed, and the Lord knows what, and then started for Californy for better luck, did he? Stuck to gold-digging like a mole – made his fortin’, and then came back to marry the little gal, hey? That’ll be as I say. She’s a pretty gal – may I be shot, if she ain’t; a deuced pretty gal – but she don’t come between me and my revenge. Not ’xactly! That blow you struck in the prison, my fine fellow, is not forgotten quite yet. John Scraggs has a way of putting them little things on file. Hang me if it don’t burn on my cheek yet. Your fine broadcloth suit don’t look much like your red and blue prison uniform, Mr. Percy Lee. Your crop of curly black hair is rather more becoming than your shaven crown; wonder what your pretty love would say if she knew all that? if she knew she was going to marry the man who killed her own mother? and, pretty as she is, by the eternal, she shall know it. But, patience – John Scraggs; a little more billing and cooing first; a little more sugar before the drop of gall brims over the cup. Furnish the fine house you have taken, Mr. Percy Lee, pile up the satin and damask, and picters, and statters, and them things – chuckle over the happiness you are not a going to have – for by the eternal, the gal may go the way the mother did, but my hand shall crush you; and yet, I ain’t got nothing agin the gal, neither: she’s as pretty a piece of flesh and blood as I’ve seen this many a day. A delicate mate for a jail-bird, ha – ha.”
“Waiter! waiter another gin-sling; hotter and stronger than the last; ’gad – fire itself wouldn’t be too strong for me to swallow to-day. Percy Lee’s wedding-day, is it? We shall see!
“He will curl his fine hair, don his broad-cloth suit, satin vest and white gloves; look at his watch, and be in a devil of a hurry, won’t he? ha – ha. He will get into a carriage with his dainty bride, and love her all the better for her blushing and quivering; he will look into her pretty face till he would sell his very soul for her; he will lead her by the tips of her little white gloved fingers into church; then they’ll kneel before the parson, and he will promise all sorts of infernal lies. Then the minister will say, ‘if any one present knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in the holy state of matrimony, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace.’
“Then is your time, John Scraggs – leap to his side like ten thousand devils; hiss in the gal’s ear that her lover is a jail-bird – that he’s her mother’s murderer – laugh when she shrinks from his side in horror, and falls like one stone dead; for by the eternal, John Scraggs is the man to do all that – and yet I ain’t got nothing agin the gal either.
“But, stay a bit; that will be dispatching the rascal too quick. I’ll make slower work of it. I’ll prolong his misery. I’ll watch him writhe and twist like a lion in a net. I’ll let the marriage go on – I’ll not interrupt it; and then I’ll make it the hottest hell! The draught shall be ever within reach of his parched lips, and yet, he shall never taste it; for his little wife shall curse him. She shall be ever before him, in her tempting, dainty beauty, and yet a great gulf shall separate them. That’s it —slow torture; patience – I won’t dispatch him all at once. I’ll lop off first a hand, then a foot, pluck out an eye, touch up a quivering nerve, maim him – mangle him – let him die a thousand deaths in one. Good! I’ll teach the aristocrat to fell me to the earth like a hound. A jail-bird – ha, ha; salt pork and mush, instead of trout cooked in claret; water in a rusty tin cup, instead of old Madeira, and Hock, and Sherry, and Champagne. Mush and salt pork – ha, ha. Too cursed good, though, for the dainty dog. I wish I’d been warden of the Bluff Hill prison. I’d have lapped up his aristocratic blood, drop by drop.”
CHAPTER XXII
“Mine forever,” whispered Percy, as he drew Fanny’s hand within his arm, on their wedding morning, and led her to the carriage.
Not a word was spoken on the way; even the rattling Kate vailed her merry eyes under their soft lashes, and her woman’s heart, true to itself, sent up a prayer for the orphan’s happy future. And Percy; he was to be all to Fanny – father, brother, husband; there were none to divide with him the treasure he so jealously coveted.
Happy Percy! The lightning bolt, indeed, had fallen; riving the stately tree, dissevering its branches, but again it is covered with verdure and blossoms, for lo – the cloud has rolled away, the rainbow arches the blue sky, and hopes, like flowers, sweeter and fresher for nature’s tears, are springing thick in his pathway.
All this and more, passed through Percy’s mind as he watched the shadows come and go on Fanny’s changeful cheek.
“Get out of the way,” thundered the coachman, to a man who, with slouched hat, and Lucifer-ish frown, stood before the carriage. “Get out of the way, I say;” and he cracked his whip over his shoulders. “Staring into the carriage window that way, at a young ’oman as is going to be married. Get out of the way!”
“Go to – ,” muttered the man. “Get out of the way! ha – that’s good – it will be a long time before I get out of the way, I can promise you. But, drive on – drive on – I’ll overtake you – and ride over you all, too, rough-shod, hang me, if I don’t. ‘The horns of the altar,’ as the ministers call it, will prove the horn of a dilemma to you, Mr. Percy Lee, or there was no strength in the horn I swallowed this morning.”
The words were said which never may be unsaid; the twain were one – joy to share together – sorrow to bear together – smooth or rough the path, life’s journey to travel together. A few words from holy lips – a short transit of the dial’s fingers – a blush – perchance a tear – a low response – and heaven or hell, even in this world, was to be their portion.
The bridal party turn from the altar. Through the stained windows – under the grand arches – past the fluted pillars, the dim light slants lovingly upon the soft ripples of the young bride’s hair – upon the fleecy folds of her gossamer vail – upon the sheen of her bridal robe; the little satin shoe peeps in and out from under the lustrous folds, whose every rustle is music to Percy’s ear.
Hark! Fanny’s lip loses its rose – as she clings, tremblingly, to Percy’s arm. A scuffle – curses – shouting – the report of a pistol – then a heavy fall – then a low groan!
“Is he quite dead? Does his pulse beat?”
“Not a flutter,” said the policeman, laying the man’s head back upon the church steps.
“How did it happen?”
“Well, you see, he was intoxicated like, and ’sisted upon coming in here, to see the wedding, though I told him it was a private ’un. Then he muttered something about jail-birds and the like ’o that – intending to insinivate something ag’in me, I s’pose. Well, I took him by the shoulder to carry him to the station-house, and in the scuffle, a loaded pistol he had about him went off; and that’s the end of him. His name is in his hat, there. ‘John Scraggs.’ A ruffianly-looking dog he is, too; the world is none the worse, I fancy, for his being out of it.”
As at the birth, so at the bridal, Life and Death passed each other on the threshold; new-born love to its full fruition; the still corpse to its long home.
There are homes in which Love folds his wings contented forever to stay. Such a home had Fanny and Percy.
“The love born of sorrow, like sorrow is true.”
MORAL MOLASSES; OR, TOO SWEET BY HALF
The most thorough emetic I know of, is in the shape of “Guide to Young Wives,” and kindred books; as if one rule could, by any possibility, apply to all persons; as if every man living did not require different management (bless me, I did not intend to use that torpedo word, but it is out now); as if, when things go wrong, a wife had only to fly up stairs, read a chapter in the “Young Wife’s Guide,” supposed to be suited to her complaint, and then go down stairs and apply the worthless plaster to the matrimonial sore. Pshaw! as well might a doctor send a peck of pills into a hospital, to be distributed by the hands of the nurse, to any and every male patient brought there, without regard to complaints or constitutional tendencies. I have no patience with such matrimonial nostrums.
“Always meet your husband with a smile.” That is one of them. Suppose we put the boot on the other foot, and require the men to come grinning home? no matter how many of their notes may have been protested; no matter how, like Beelzebub, their business partner may have tormented them; no matter how badly elections go – when they do it, may I be there to see! Nor should they. Passing over the everlasting monotony of that everlasting “Guide Book” smile, let us consider, brethren (sisters not admitted), what matrimony was intended for. As I look at it, as much to share each other’s sorrows, as to share each other’s joys; neither of the twain to shoulder wholly the one or the other. Those of you, brethren, who agree with me in this lucid view of the subject, please to signify it by rising.
’Tis a vote.
Well then, do people in moments of perplexity generally grin? Is it not asking too much of female, and a confounded sight too much of male nature, to do it when a man’s store burns down, and there is no insurance? or when a misguided and infatuated baby stuffs beans up its nose, while its mamma is putting new cuffs on her husband’s coat, hearing Katy say her lesson, and telling the cook about dinner? And when this sorely afflicted couple meet, would it not be best to make a clean breast of their troubles, sympathize together over them, have a nice matrimonial cry on each other’s shoulders, and wind up with a first-class kiss?
’Tis a vote.
Well then – to the mischief with your grinning over a volcano; – erupt, and have done with it! so shall you love each other more for your very sorrows; so shall you avoid hypocrisy and kindred bedevilments, and pull evenly in the matrimonial harness. I speak as unto wise men.
Lastly, brethren, what I particularly admire, is the indirect compliment to your sex, which this absurd rule I have quoted implies; the devotion, magnanimity, fortitude, and courage, it gives you fair-weather sailors credit for! But what is the use of talking about it? These guide books are mainly written by sentimental old maids; who, had they ever been within kissing distance of a beard, would not so abominably have wasted pen, ink, and paper; or, by some old bachelor, tip-toeing on the outskirts of the promised land, without a single clear idea of its resources and requirements, or courage enough to settle there if he had.
A WORD TO SHOP-KEEPERS
In one respect – nay, in more, if so please you – I am unfeminine. I detest shopping. I feel any thing but affection for Eve every time I am forced to do it. But we must be clean and whole, even in this dirt-begrimed, lawless city; where ash-barrels and ash-boxes, with spikes of protruding nails for the unwary, stand on every sidewalk, waiting the bidding of balmy zephyrs to sift their dusky contents on our luckless clothes. All the better for shop-keepers; indeed, I am not at all sure, that they and the street-cleaning gentry do not, as doctors and druggists are said to do, play into each other’s hands!
Apart from my natural and never-to-be-uprooted dislike to the little feminine recreation of shopping, is the pain I experience whenever I am forced to take part in it, at the snubbing system practiced by too many shop-keepers toward those whose necessities demand a frugal outlay. Any frivolous female fool, be she showily dressed, may turn a whole storefull of goods topsy-turvy at her capricious will, although she may end in taking nothing away but her own idiotic presence; while a poor, industrious woman, with the hardly-earned dollar in her calico pocket, may not presume to deliberate, or to differ from the clerk as to its most frugal investment. My blood often boils as I stand side by side with such a one. I, by virtue of better apparel, receiving respectful treatment; she – crimsoning with shame, like some guilty thing, at the rude reply.
Now, gentlemen, imagine yourselves in this woman’s place. I have no need to do so, because I have stood there. Imagine her, with her fatherless, hungry children by her side, plying the needle late into the night, for the pitiful sum of seventy-five cents a week, as I once did. Imagine her, with this discouraging price of her eye-sight and strength, creeping forth with her little child by the hand, peeping cautiously through the glass windows of stores, to decide unobtrusively upon fabrics and labeled prices, or vainly trying to read human feeling enough in their owners’ faces to insure her from contemptuous insult at the smallness and cheapness of her contemplated purchase. At length, with many misgivings, she glides in amid rustling silks and laces, that drape hearts which God made womanly and tender like her own, but which Fashion and Mammon have crushed to ashes in their vice-like clasp; hearts which never knew a sorrow greater than a misfitting dress, or a badly-matched ribbon, and whose owners’ lips curl as the new-comer holds thoughtfully between her thin fingers the despised fabric, carelessly tossed at her by the impatient clerk.
Oh, how can you speak harshly to such a one? how can you drive the blood from her lip, and bring the tear to her eye? how can you look sneeringly at the little sum she places in your hand, so hardly, virtuously, bravely earned? She has seen you! – see her, as she turns away, clasping so tightly that little hand in hers, that the pained child would tearfully ask the reason, were it not prematurely sorrow-trained.
Oh, you have never (reversing the order of nature) leaned with a breaking heart, upon a little child, for the comfort and sympathy that you found nowhere else in the wide world beside. You never wound your arms about her in the silent night, drenching brow, cheek and lip with your tears, as you prayed God, in your wild despair, dearly as you loved her, to take her to himself; for, living, she, too, must drink of the cup that might not pass away from your sorrow-steeped lips.
It is because I have felt all this that I venture to bespeak your more courteous treatment for these unfortunates who can only weep for themselves.
A MUCH-NEEDED KIND OF MINISTER’S WIFE; OR, A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE FOR SOME PARISH
I once had a narrow escape from being a minster’s wife. No wonder you laugh. Imagine a vestry-meeting called to decide upon the width of my bonnet-strings, or the proper altitude of the bow on that bonnet’s side. Imagine my being called to an account for asking Mrs. A. to tea, without including the rest of the alphabet. Imagine my parishioners expecting me to attend a meeting of the Dorcas Society in the morning, the Tract Society in the afternoon, and the Foreign Mission Society in the evening, five days in the week – and make parish calls on the sixth – besides keeping the buttons on my husband’s shirts, and taking care of my “nine children, and one at the breast.” Imagine a self-constituted committee of female Paul Prys running their arms up to the elbows in my pickle-jar – rummaging my cupboards – cross-questioning my maid-of-all-work, and catechizing my grocer as to the price I paid for tea. Imagine my ministerial progeny prohibited chess and checkers by the united voice of the parish. Christopher!
Still, the world lost a great deal by my non-acceptance of that “call.” What would I have done? I would not, on Saturday afternoon (that holiday which should never, on any pretext, be wrested from our over-schooled, over-taught, children), have put the finishing touch to the crook in their poor little spines, by drumming them all into a Juvenile Sewing Society, to stitch pinafores for the Kankaroo heathen. What would I have done? I would have ate, drunk, slept, and laughed, like any other decent man’s wife. I would have educated my children as do other men’s wives, to suit myself, which would have been to turn them out to grass till they were seven years old, before which time no child, in my opinion, should ever see the inside of a school-room; and after that, given them study in homœopathic, and exercise in allopathic quantities. I would have taken the liberty, as do other men’s wives, when family duties demanded it, to send word to morning callers that I “was engaged.” I should have taken a walk on Sunday, if my health required it, without asking leave of the deacons of my parish. I would have gone into my husband’s study, every Saturday night, and crossed out every line in his forthcoming sermon, after “sixthly.” I would have encouraged a glorious beard on my husband’s sacerdotal chin, not under the cowardly plea of a preventive to a possible bronchitis, but because a minister’s wife has as much right to a good-looking husband as a lay-woman. I would have invited all the children in my parish to drink tea with me once a week, to play hunt the slipper, and make molasses candy; and I would have made them each a rag-baby to look at, while their well-meaning, but infatuated Sunday-school teachers, were bothering their brains with the doctrine of election. That’s what I would have done.
PARENT AND CHILD; OR, WHICH SHALL RULE
“Give me two cents, I say, or I’ll kick you!”
I turned to look at the threatener. It was a little fellow about as tall as my sun-shade, stamping defiance at a fine, matronly-looking woman, who must have been his mother, so like were her large black eyes to the gleaming orbs of the boy. “Give me two cents, I say, or I’ll kick you,” he repeated, tugging fiercely at her silk dress to find the pocket, while every feature in his handsome face was distorted with passion. Surely she will not do it, said I to myself, anxiously awaiting the issue, as I apparently examined some ribbons in a shop-window; surely she will not be so mad, so foolish, so untrue to herself, so untrue to her child, so belie the beautiful picture of healthy maternity, so God-impressed in that finely-developed form and animated face. Oh, if I might speak to her, and beg her not to do it, thought I, as she put her hand in her pocket, and the fierce look died away on the boy’s face, and was succeeded by one of triumph; if I might tell her that she is fostering the noisome weeds that will surely choke the flowers – sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind.
“But the boy is so passionate; it is less trouble to grant his request than to deny him.” Granting this were so; who gave you a right to weigh your own ease in the balance with your child’s soul? Who gave you a right to educate him for a convict’s cell, or the gallows? But, thoughtless, weakly indulgent, cruel-kind mother, it is not easier, as you selfishly, short-sightedly reason, to grant his request than to deny it; not easier for him – not easier for you. The appetite for rule grows by what it feeds on. Is he less domineering now than he was yesterday? Will he be less so to-morrow than he is to-day? Certainly not.
“But I have not time to contest every inch of ground with him.” Take time then – make time; neglect every thing else, but neglect not that. With every child comes this turning point: Which shall be the victor – my mother or I? and it must be met. She is no true mother who dodges or evades it. True – there will be a fierce struggle at first; but be firm as a rock; recede not one inch; there may be two, three, or even more, but the battle once won, as won it shall be if you are a faithful mother, it is won for this world – ay, perhaps for another.
“But I am not at liberty to control him thus; when parents do not pull together in the harness, the reins of government will slacken; when I would restrain and correct him, his father interferes; children are quick-witted, and my boy sees his advantage. What can I do, unsustained and single-handed?” True – true – God help the child then. Better for him had he never been born; better for you both, for so surely as the beard grows upon that little chin, so surely shall he bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; and so surely shall he curse you for your very indulgence, before he is placed in the dishonored one your parental hands are digging for him.
These things need not be – ought not to be. Oh! if parents had but a firm hand to govern, and yet a ready ear for childish sympathy; if they would agree – whatever they might say in private – never to differ in presence of their children, as to their government; if the dissension-breeding “Joseph’s coat” were banished from every hearthstone; if there were less weak indulgence and less asceticism; if the bow were neither entirely relaxed, nor strained so tightly that it broke; if there were less out-door dissipation, and more home-pleasures; if parents would not forget that they were once children, nor, on the other hand, forget that their children will be one day parents; if there were less form of godliness, and more godliness (for children are Argus-eyed; it is not what you preach, but what you practice), we should then have no beardless skeptics, no dissolute sons, no runaway marriages, no icy barriers between those rocked in the same cradle – nursed at the same breast.