Samantha at Saratoga, Marietta Holley [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

Sez I, considerin’, “I can’t get her up there alone, I haint strong enough.” Sez I, sort a mekanikly, “I have got the rheumatez.”

“So you scoff me do you? I came to you to get bread, am I to get worse than a stun—a scoff?”

“I haint gin you no scoff,” sez I, a spunkin’ up a little, “I haint thought on it. I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I can’t do merikles, I can’t compel the public to like things if they don’t.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “You are jealous of her, you hate her.”

“No, I don’t,” sez I, “I haint jealous of her, and I like her looks first-rate. I love a pretty young girl,” sez I candidly, “jest as I love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty rose-bud with the sweet fragrance layin’ on its half-folded heart. I love ’em,” sez I, a beginnin’ to eppisode a little unbeknown to me, “I love ’em jest as I love the soft unbroken silence of the early spring mornin’, the sun all palely tinted with rose and blue, and the earth alayin’ calm and unwoke-up, fresh and fair. I love such a mornin’ and such a life, for itself and for the unwritten prophecis in it. And when I see genius in such a sweet, young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through all the tender prophetic beauty of the mornin’ skies, a big white dove a soarin’ up through the blue heavens.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you know you do.”

“No!” sez I, “I would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I would honest, but I can’t look into them mornin’ skies and say I see a white dove there, when I don’t see nothin’ more than a plump pullet, a jumpin’ down from the fence or a pickin’ round calmly in the back door-yard. Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove, jest as honerable, but you mustn’t confound the two together.”

“A hen,” sez Miss Tutt bitterly. “To confound my Ardelia with a hen! And I don’t think there wuz ever a more ironieler ‘hen’ than that wuz, or a scornfuller one.”

“Why,” sez I reasonably. “Hens are necessary and useful in any position, both walkin’ and settin’, and layin’. You can’t get’em in any position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable, only jest flyin’. Hens can’t fly. Their wings haint shaped for it. They look some like a dove’s wings on the outside, the same feathers, the same way of stretchin’ ’em out. But there is sunthin lackin’ in ’em, some heaven-given capacity for soarin’ an for flight that the hens don’t have. And it makes trouble, sights and sights of trouble when hens try to fly, try to, and can’t!

“At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back yard and stay there, hard and tegus. She can and duz sometimes, but never till after her wings have been clipped in some way. Poor little dove! I am always sorry for ’em to see ’em a walkin’ round there, a wantin’ to fly—a not forgettin’ how it seemed to have their wings soarin’ up through the clear sky, and the rush of the pure liquid windwaves a sweepin’ aginst ’em, as they riz up, up, in freedom, and happiness, and glory. Poor little creeters.

“Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and walk, but hens CAN’T fly, not for any length of time they can’t. No amount of stimulatin’ poultices applied to the ends of their tail feathers and wings can ever make ’em fly. They can’t; it haint their nater. They can make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin’ round, and make a good honerable appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings, and fly—then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin’; no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see ’em, tuff to see the floppin’, tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see ’em fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come there in the end; they are morally certain to.

“Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin’ girl, she can set down in a cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a clusterin’ around her and some man’s face like the sun a reflectin’ back the light of her happy heart. But she can’t sit up on the pinnacle of fame’s pillow. I don’t believe she can ever get up there, I don’t. Honestly speakin’, I don’t.”

“Envy!” sez Miss Tutt, “glarin’, shameless envy! You don’t want Ardelia to rise! You don’t want her to mount that horse I spoke of; you don’t want to own that you see genius in her. But you do, Josiah Allen’s wife, you know you do—“

“No,” sez I, “I don’t see it. I see the sweetness of pretty girlhood, the beauty and charm of openin’ life, but I don’t see nothin’ else, I don’t, honest. I don’t believe she has got genius,” sez I, “seein’ you put the question straight to me and depend a answer; seein’ her future career depends on her choice now, I must tell you that I believe she would succeed better in the millionary trade or the mantilly maker’s than she will in tryin’ to mount the horse you speak on.

“Why,” sez I, candidly, “some folks can’t get up on that horse, their legs haint strong enough. And if they do manage to get on, it throws ’em, and they lay under the heels for life. I don’t want to see Ardelia there, I don’t want to see her maimed and lamed and stunted so early in the mornin’ of life, by a kick from that animal, for she can’t ride it,” sez I, “honestly she can’t.

“There is nothin’ so useless in life, and so sort a wearin’ as to be a lookin’ for sunthin’ that haint there. And when you pretend it is there when it haint, you are addin’ iniquity to uselessness; so if you’ll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will stop lookin’, for I tell you plain that it haint there.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “Josiah Allen’s wife, you have for reasens best known to your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality. You have willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense, immediate income to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry, charity, etc. But I can at least claim this at your hands, I demand honesty. Tell me honestly what you yourself think of them poems.”

Sez I (gettin’ up sort a quick and goin’ into the buttery, and bringin’ out a little basket), “Here are some beautiful sweet apples, won’t you have one?”

“Apples, at such a time as this;” sez Miss Tutt “When the slumberin’ world trembles before the advancin’ tread of a new poet—When the heavens are listenin’ intently to ketch the whispers of an Ardelia’s fate—Sweet apples! in such a time as this!” sez she. But she took two.

“I demand the truth,” sez she. “And you are a base, trucklin’ coward, if you give it not.”

Sez I, tryin’ to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery; “Poetry ort to have pains took with it.”

“Jealousy!” sez Miss Tutt. “Jealousy might well whisper this. Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took pains with. But I can see through it,” sez she. “I can see through it.”

“Well,” sez I, wore out, “if they belonged to me, and if she wuz my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a trade.”

She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them eyes. Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my very spirit, and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin’ umberell as if to pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful seen.

At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin’ onto the floor at my feet—and sez she, “I scorn ’em, and you too.” And she kinder stomped her feet and sez, “I fling off the dust I have gethered here, at your feet.”

Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so shinin’ and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin’ that she collected dust off from it. But I didn’t say nothin’ back. She had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn’t feel like addin’ any more to her troubles.

But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round and held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a despondent and sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly. I like Ardelia. And what I said, I said for her good, and she knew it. I like Ardelia.

Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley’s. They are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from us. The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they can’t bear her mother. There has been difficulties in the family.

But Ardelia stayed there mor’n two weeks right along. She haint very happy to home I believe. And before she went back home it wuz arranged that she should teach the winter’s school and board to Miss Pixley’s. But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there two weeks—and, for all the world, if the deestrict didn’t want us to board her. Josiah hadn’t much to do, so he could carry her back and forth in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come. And it wuz Josiah’s wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light—for him. And so I consented after a parlay.

But I didn’t regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin’ needle. I like Ardelia: so does Josiah.

Chapter III.
THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.

We have been havin’ a pound party here in Jonesville. There wuz a lot of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an old grandma to take care of ’em, and she wuz half bent with the rheumatiz, and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.

They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The father wuz, I couldn’t deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured, always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn’nt no faculty. And I don’t know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if they are born without a faculty, than if they are born with only one eye. Faculty is one of the things that you can’t buy.

He loved to hunt. That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things. He never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail of it till he evertook success and captured it. No, he druther hunt after catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts haint mounted, and painters haint painted sence he wuz born.

He generally killed nothin’ bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks. The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself. He shot himself one cold day in the fall of the year. He wuz gettin’ over a brush fence, they s’posed the gun hit against somethin’ and went off, for they found him a layin’ dead at the bottom of the fence.

I always s’posed that the shock of his death comin’ so awful sudden unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long spell, she had consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth, for a long time, and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn’t live a week. She thought her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I could ever see. How strange, how strange a dispensation of Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy versey and the same.

But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin’ his name, and reachin’ out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of her. And I told Josiah I didn’t know but she did. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if she did see him, for there is only the veil of mystery between us and the other world at any time, and she had got so nigh to it,