FRESH LEAVES.

A BUSINESS MAN’S HOME;
OR, A STORY FOR HUSBANDS.

CHAPTER I.

“There’s your father, children.”

The piano was immediately closed by the young performer, and the music-stool put carefully away, that the new-comer might have an unrestricted choice of seats; a wide space was immediately cleared before the grate which had been carefully replenished with coal but half an hour before; a stray cricket was hastily picked up and pushed beneath the sofa, and an anxious glance was thrown around the room by Mrs. Wade as her husband entered the room.

“Too much light here,” said the latter, as he turned down the gas burner. “I hate such a glare. Waste of coal, too; fire enough to roast an ox, and coal seven dollars a ton;” and Mr. Wade seized the poker and gave the grate a vindictive poke.

Mrs. Wade sighed—she had too long been accustomed to such scenes to do any thing else. It was not the first time, nor the second, nor the hundredth, that her unwearied endeavors to make home cheerful had been met with a similar repulse; the young people, so gay but a moment before, skipped, one by one, out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind them as culprit-like they glided away.

“Heigh-ho,” muttered Mr. Wade, as he threw himself down, boots and all, on the sofa, “heigh-ho.”

“Does your head ache?” asked his patient wife.

“I want my tea,” growled Mr. Wade, without deigning a reply.

Mrs. Wade might have answered—most women would—that it had been ready this half-hour. She might also have said that she had just come up from the kitchen, where she had been to see that his favorite dish of toast was prepared to his liking. She might also have said that she did not like to order tea till he had signified his wish for it—but as I said before, Mrs. Wade had been too long in school not to have learned her lesson well. So she merely touched her forefinger to the bell, for Betty to bring in the tea.

It was strong and hot—Mr. Wade could not deny it;—the milk was sweet; so was the butter, the toast was unexceptionable, and enough of it; the cake light, and the sweetmeats unfermented. Poor, ill-used Mr. Wade—he was in that most provoking of all dilemmas to a petulant temper, there was nothing to fret about.

“There’s the door bell,” he exclaimed, inwardly relieved at the idea of an escape-valve; “now I suppose I shall be talked deaf by that silly Mrs. Jones and her daughter, or bored by that stupid Mr. Forney; it’s very strange that a man can not enjoy his family one evening free from interruption.”

No such thing—Mr. Wade was cheated out of a fresh growl; the new arrival being a carpet-bag, and its accessory, Mr. John Doe, a brother-growler, whom Mr. Wade would rather have seen, if possible, than a new gold dollar. Mr. John Doe, as sallow as a badly-preserved pickle, and about as sweet—a man all nerves and frowns—a walking thunder-cloud, muttering vengeance against any thing animate, or inanimate, which had the temerity to bask in the sunshine. Mr. John Doe, a worse drug than any in his apothecary’s shop, who believed in the eternal destruction of little dead babies; turned the world into one vast charnel-house, and reversed the verdict of Him who pronounced it “very good.”

“Ah—how d’ye do—how dy’e do?” said Mr. Wade, with an impromptu lugubrious whine, as Mr. Doe ran his fingers through his grizzled locks, and deposited his time-worn carpet-bag in the corner; “it is pleasant to see a friend.”

“Thank you, thank you,” replied Mr. Doe, lowering himself as carefully into his chair as if he was afraid his joints would become unriveted; “there’s no knowing how many more times you may have to say that; these sudden changes of weather are dreadful underminers of a man’s constitution. Traveling, too, racks me to pieces; I can’t sleep in a strange bed, nor get any thing I can eat when I wake, my appetite is so delicate;—sometimes I think it don’t make much difference—we are poor creatures—begin to die as soon as we are born—how do you do, Mr. Wade? You look to me like a man who is going to have the jaundice, eye-balls yellow, etc.—any appetite?”

“Not much,” said Mr. Wade, unbuttoning his lower vest button, under which were snugly stowed away a pile of buttered toast, three cups of tea, and preserved peaches enough to make a farmer sick—“not much;—a man who works as hard as I do, gets too exhausted to eat when it comes night, or if he does, his food does not digest; how’s your family?”

“So, so,” muttered Doe, with an expressive shrug; “children are a great care, Mr. Wade, a great care—my John don’t take that interest in the drug business that I wish he did; he always has some book or other on hand, reading; I am afraid he never will be good for any thing; your book-worms always go through the world, knocking their heads against facts. I shouldn’t wonder, after all my care, if he turned out a poor miserable author; sometimes I think what is to be, will be, and there’s no use trying.”

“Is not that fatalism?” quietly interposed Mrs. Wade, blushing the next moment that she had so far departed from “The Married Woman’s Guide,” as to question an opinion which her husband had indorsed by his silence. “Children are a great care, ’tis true, but it always seemed to me that the care brought its own sweet reward.”

Mr. Doe wheeled round to look in the face this meek wife, whose disappointed heart, turning to her children for that comfort which she had in vain looked for from her husband, could ill brook that the value of this coveted treasure should have such depreciating mention.

“Pshaw! what signify words?” said her husband. “I hate argument; besides, women can’t argue—every body knows that; and every body knows that if a man wants his children to do, or be, one thing, they are sure to do, or be, just the opposite. I’ve no doubt it will turn out just so with ours; there is no counting on ’em. In my day, if a man was a farmer, his son was a farmer after him, and never thought of being any thing else. Nowadays, children have to be consulted as to ‘their bent.’ Fudge—fiddlestick; their bent is for mischief and dodging work, and a tight rein and a good smart rod is the best cure for it.”

Just at this point Mr. Doe gave a dismal groan, and doubled himself up like a jack-knife. “A touch of my old complaint,” said he, holding on to his waist-band. “Rheumatism—it will carry me off some day. Mrs. Wade, if you will be so good as to look in my carpet-bag, you will find a plaster which I never travel without; and I will trouble you, Mrs. Wade, to have my bed warmed, and a fire in the room where you intend I should sleep; and if there should be any cracks in the windows, will you have the goodness to nail up a blanket over them? and I would like a very warm comforter, if you please, and a jug of hot water at my feet, if it would not be too much trouble.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Wade, settling himself very comfortably down into his ample easy-chair; “of course not; Mrs. Wade, won’t you attend to it?”

“And, Mrs. Wade, if you’d be so kind as to put the feather bed uppermost, and give me cotton sheets instead of linen; I should also prefer a hair to a feather pillow: I consider feathers too heating for my head; I am obliged to be careful of my head.”

“Certainly,” repeated Mr. Wade. “Mrs. Wade will see to it.” And as she moved out of the room to execute these orders, these two despondent Siamese drew their chairs closer together, to bemoan the short-comings of two of the most long-suffering wives who ever wore themselves to skeletons, trying to please husbands who were foreordained not to be pleased.

CHAPTER II.

Mother’s room! How we look back to it in after years, when she who sanctified it is herself among the sanctified. How well we remember the ample cushioned chair, with its all-embracing arms, none the worse in our eyes for having rocked to sleep so many little forms now scattered far and wide, divided from us, perhaps, by barriers more impassable than the cold, blue sea. Mother’s room—where the sun shone in so cheerily upon the flowering plants in the low, old-fashioned window-seats, which seemed to bud and blossom at the least touch of her caressing fingers; on which no blight or mildew ever came; no more than on the love which outlived all our childish waywardness—all our childish folly. The cozy sofa upon which childish feet were never forbidden to climb; upon which curly heads could dream, unchidden, the fairy dreams of childhood. The closet which garnered tops, and dolls, and kites, and whips, and toys, and upon whose upper shelf was that infallible old-fashioned panacea for infancy’s aches and pains—brimstone and molasses! The basket, too, where was always the very string we wanted; the light-stand round which we gathered, and threaded needles (would we had threaded thousands more) for eyes dimmed in our service; and the cheerful face that smiled across it such loving thanks.

Mother’s room! where our matronly feet returned when we were mothers; where we lifted our little ones to kiss the wrinkled face, beautiful with its halo of goodness; where we looked on well pleased to see the golden locks we worshiped, mingling lovingly with the silver hairs; where, as the fond grand-mamma produced, in alarming profusion, cakes and candies for the little pets, we laughingly reminded her of our baby days, when she wisely told us such things were “unwholesome;” where our baby caps, yellow with time, ferreted from some odd bag or closet, were tried on our own babies’ heads, and we sat, wondering where the months and years had flown between then and now; and looking forward, half-sighing, to just such a picture, when we should play what seemed to us now, with our smooth skins, round limbs, and glossy locks, such an impossible part.

Mother’s room! where we watched beside her patient sick-bed through the long night, gazing hopelessly at the flickering taper, listening to the pain-extorted groan, which no human skill, no human love, could avert or relieve; waiting with her the dawning of that eternal day, seen through a mist of tears, bounded by no night.

Mother’s room! where the mocking light strayed in through the half-opened shutters, upon her who, for the first time, was blind to our tears, and deaf to our cries; where busy memory could bring back to us no look, no word, no tone, no act of hers, not freighted with God-like love. Alas!—alas for us then, if, turning the tablets, they showed us this long debt of love unappreciated—unpaid!

No blossoming plants luxuriated in the windows of Mr. Wade’s house; no picture attracted attention upon the walls; with the exception of a huge map of the United States in the hall, their blank whiteness was pitilessly unrelieved. The whole house seemed to be hopelessly given up to the household god—utility. If Mrs. Wade ever had any womanish leaning toward the ornamental, she had long since learned to suppress it; and what woman, how poor soever she may be, does not make some feeble attempt to brighten up the little spot she calls home? Beautiful to me, for this reason, is the crude picture, the cheap plaster-cast, or the china mug with its dried grass, or the blue ribbon which ties back the coarse but clean white curtain under humble roofs. Who shall say that such things have not a moral influence—a moral significance? Who shall say that there is not more hope of that young man on the walls of whose bachelor attic hangs a landscape, or a sweet female head, though not “by an old master?” Who that has been so unfortunate as to sojourn in that mockery of a home, called a boarding-house, has not, when passing through the halls, and by the open doors of rooms, formed favorable or unfavorable opinions of its occupants from these mute indications of taste and character? Let no one, particularly if he has children, wait till he can command the most costly adornments; have one picture, have one statue, have one vase, if no more, for little eyes to look at, for little tongues to prattle about.

If Mr. Wade had but understood this! If he had but brushed from his heart the cobwebs of his counting-room—for he had a heart, buried as it was under the world’s rubbish; if he had not circumscribed his thoughts, wishes, hopes, aims, by the narrow horizon of his ledger. If—If! Dying lips falter out that word regretfully;—alas! that we should learn to live only when we come to die!

I have said Mr. Wade had a heart, ossified as it now was by the all-absorbing love of gain. At the age of seven years, he was left, with a younger brother, the only legacy to a heart-broken, invalid mother, who found herself suddenly thrown upon the world for that charity that she had been accustomed to bestow. To say that she found none, would be false; the world is not all bad; but there were months in which Mr. Wade, then a bright, handsome lad, was glad to carry home to her and his little brother, the refuse food of the neighbors’ kitchens. They who have felt in early youth the griping hand of poverty, unfortunately learn to attach undue value to the possession of money. Day after day, as the boy witnessed his feeble mother struggling vainly with her fate—day after day the thought, for her sake to become rich, haunted his waking dreams and his boyish pillow. With his arms about her neck, he would picture the blessings and comforts of a future home, which his more hopeful eyes saw in the distance. The road to it, to be sure, was rough and thorny, but still it was there; no cloud of adversity could wholly obscure it to the boy’s vision; and even in the darkest night, when he woke, in fancy the lamps gleamed brightly from its curtained windows; and so the boy smothered down his swelling heart, when the refuse food was tossed carelessly into his beggar’s basket, and was thankful for the little job which brought him even a penny to place in her hand, as an earnest of what should come—God willing; and at night, when the younger brother shivered with cold, John would chafe his chilled feet, and, taking him in his arms, soothe him to blissful slumbers. That the world should ever chill such a heart! That the armor buckled over it in so righteous a cause, should contract around it and prove but its shroud!

Nobly the boy struggled: they who are not fastidious as to the means, seldom fail of securing the result they aim at. John Wade’s pride never stood like a lion in his path; he heeded not the supercilious glance or careless tone of his employers, so that he received the hard-earned reward of his toil. At length, from loving money for what it would bring, he learned to love it for its own sake; and when death removed from him those for whom he toiled, he toiled on for love of the shining dross. Pity that gold should always bring with it the canker—covetousness.

CHAPTER III.

“I have a great mind to go to bed,” said Susy Wade, yawning; “I’m not sleepy, either, but I don’t know what do do with myself; there’s that tiresome Mr. Doe down stairs—he croaks, and croaks, and croaks, till I feel almost as sick as he pretends to. Now he will keep mother nursing up his rheumatism, as he calls it, till ten o’clock, when he is no more sick than she is, nor half so much; mother never complains when any thing ails her; but I am not like mother; I am not patient a bit. Were it not for mother, Neddy, I should like to sail way off across the ocean, and never come back; I get so tired here at home, and I know she does, too, though she never says any thing; sometimes she sighs such a long sigh, when she thinks nobody hears her; I should rather she would cry outright; it always makes me feel better to have a good cry. I wish that our father was like Carey Hunt’s father.”

“So do I,” said Neddy, fixing his humming-top—“so do I—they have such fun there. Tom told me that his father played games with them evenings, and showed them how to make kites, and brought them home story-books, and read them aloud, and sometimes the whole family go out together to some place of amusement. I wonder what makes our father so different from Tom Hunt’s father? Tommy always runs down street to meet his father when he comes home, and tells him what has happened on the play-ground; I wonder why our father never talks to us about such things? I wonder how father felt when he was a boy—don’t you suppose he ever played?”

“I don’t know,” said Susy, mournfully; “I’m only fifteen, but I mean to get married just as soon as I can, and then I won’t have such a gloomy house, and you shall come and live with me, Neddy.”

“But mother—” said Neddy.

“O, mother shall come to see us all the time,” said Susy; “won’t we have fun?”

“But perhaps your husband will be a sober man, like father, and won’t want company, only people like Mr. Doe.”

“But my husband will be young, you little goose,” said Susy.

“Well—wasn’t father young when mother married him?” said the persistent Neddy, whirling off his top.

“I suppose so,” said Susy, with a sigh, “but it don’t seem as if he ever was. Where’s the Arabian Nights, Neddy, that you borrowed of Tom Hunt? let’s read a story.”

“Father made me carry it back,” said Neddy; “he said it was nonsense, and I shouldn’t read it.”

“That’s just why I like it,” said Susy; “of course, nobody believes it true—and I’m so tired of sense! Isn’t there any thing up in the book-rack there, Neddy?”

“I’ll see,” said Neddy, stretching his neck up out of his clean white collar—“I’ll see—here’s Moral Philosophy, Key to Daboll’s Arithmetic, Sermons by Rev. John Pyne, Essays by Calvin Croaker, Guide to Young Wives, Rules for Eating, Walking and Talking, Complete Letter Writer, Treatise on Pneumatics, Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. Which will you have?” asked Neddy, with a comical whine.

“Hush!” said Susy, “there’s father’s step.”

Mr. Wade had come up to get his soft lamb’s-wool slippers for Mr. Doe, that gentleman having experienced a chill in his left toe joint.

“Playing top,” said he, contemptuously, looking at Neddy; “at your age, sir, I was wheeling stone for a mason, in the day-time, and studying arithmetic evenings. Where’s your Daboll, sir? Study your pound and pence table; that’s what’s to be the making of you; how do you expect to become a man of business without that? You’ll never drive a good bargain—you’ll be cheated out of your eye-teeth. Get your Daboll, sir, and Susy, do you hear him say it. Tops are for babies, sir; a boy of your age ought to be almost as much a man as his father. How should I look playing top? God didn’t make the world to play in.” And Mr. Wade and his lamb’s-wool slippers slipped down stairs.

“He didn’t make it for a work-shop either,” thought Susy, as she took down the offensive Daboll.

They to whom the word father comprises all that is reverent, tender, companionable and sweet, may refuse to recognize the features of this portrait as a true likeness of the relation for which it stands; they may well doubt—they whose every childish hope and fear was freely confided to a pitying, loving, sympathizing heart—they whose generous impulses were never chilled by the undeserved breath of suspicion and distrust—they whose overflowing love was never turned back in a lava tide to devastate their fresh young hearts—happy they for whom memory daguerreotypes no such mournful picture! Still, let them not for that reason doubt, that through the length and breadth of the land, are men and women who look back sorrowing on what they might have been, but for their blighted childhood!

“Blessed night!” the words often fell from Mrs. Wade’s lips, as she closed her chamber-door, and, laying her weary head upon her pillow, sought oblivion in sleep.

“Blessed night;” the children did not hear it, for whose sakes she often repressed the rising sigh, and sent back to their fountain the scalding tears, and whose future, as her health and strength declined, she would have trembled to contemplate, but for her faith in God.

He did not hear it—one kind word from whom, one look, or smile, to say that he appreciated all her untiring efforts, would have brought back the roses of health to that faded cheek. He did not hear it, as he sat there over the midnight-fire, with groaning Mr. Doe, ringing the changes on dollars and cents, dollars and cents, which had come between him and the priceless love of those warm hearts.

Ay—Blessed night!

CHAPTER IV.

“I think it must be time for Henry to come home,” and the speaker glanced at a little gold watch on the mantel. “What a noise those children are making. I told them to keep still, but after all, I’m glad that they didn’t mind me; the most pitiful sight on earth to me, is a child with a feeble body and a large head, who never plays. Let them romp—broken chairs are easier mended than broken spines; who would be a slave to an upholstery shop, or a set of porcelain; who would keep awake at night to watch the key which locks up a set of gold or silver? Who would mew children up in the nursery for fear of a parlor carpet? My parlor is not too good for my children to play in, and I hope it never will be. Now I will go down and take out some cake for tea; how glad I am Henry loves cake, because I know so well how to make it; who would have thought I should have had such a good husband, and such a happy home—poor mamma—and she deserves it so much better than I. Sometimes I think I ought never to have left home while she lived, but have staid to comfort her. Oh my children must be very—very happy; childhood comes but once—but once.”

So said Mary Hereford, Mr. Wade’s married daughter, as she picked up the toys, and picture-books, and strings, and marbles, with which her romping children had strewed her chamber floor.

Mary Hereford was no beauty. She had neither golden brown, nor raven hair; her skin was not transparently white, nor her eyes dazzlingly bright, nor her foot and hand miraculously small. She was simply a plump, healthy, rosy, cheerful little cricket of a woman—singing ever at her own hearth-stone—proud of her husband—proud of her children, knowing no weariness in their service. Many a beautiful woman has wrung her white hands in vain for the love which lent wings to this unhandsome, but still lovely little wife, dignified even the most common-place employment, and made her heart a temple for sweet and holy thoughts to gather.

“Yes, there comes Henry now,” said Mary, and before the words were well out of her mouth, her husband held her at arm’s length, and looked into her face.

“You have been sewing too steadily, little wife,” said he; “I must take you out for a walk after tea. I shall get a sempstress to help you if these children out-grow their clothes so fast.”

Mary laughed a merry little laugh; “No such thing—I am not tired a bit—at least not now you are here; beside, don’t you work hard down in that close counting-room, your poor head bothered with figures all day? Do you suppose a wife is to fold her hands idly, that her husband may get gray hairs? No—you and I will grow old together, but that is a long way off yet, you know,” and Mary shook her brown hair about her face. “Come—now for tea. I have such nice cakes for you; the children have been so good and affectionate; to be sure they tear their aprons occasionally, and perhaps break a cup or plate, but what is that, if we are only kind and happy? Oh, it is blessed to be happy!” And Mary would have thrown her arms around her husband’s neck, but unfortunately she was too short.

The smoking tea and savory cakes were set upon the table—Followed the children, bouncing and rosy—fairly brightening up the room like a gay bouquet. With one on either knee, Henry Hereford listened, well pleased, to tales of soaring kites, and sympathized with disastrous shipwrecks of mimic boats, nor thought his dignity compromised in discussing the question, whether black, blue, or striped marbles were prettiest, or whether a doll whose eyes were not made to open and shut, could, by any stretch of imagination, be supposed by its youthful mamma to go to sleep. How priceless is the balm of sympathy to childhood! The certainty that no joy is too minute, no grief too trivial to find an echo in the parental heart. Blessed they—who, like little children, are neither too wise, nor too old to lean thus on the Almighty Father!

“Where’s my umbrella, Susan?” said Mr. Wade, “it is raining, and I am in a hurry to go to my business.”

“It is Sunday, Mr. Wade; did you forget it was Sunday?”

“Sunday!” ejaculated Mr. Wade, in well-feigned surprise, “we didn’t have salt fish, I believe, for dinner yesterday.”

“No,” replied his wife, penitently, “but I believe it is the first time it has been omitted since our marriage.”

“It was an omission,” said Mr. Wade, solemnly, as he laid aside his hat and coat. “Sunday, is it, Mrs. Wade, I wish I hadn’t got up so early—I suppose you are going to take the children off to church, are you not? I’d like to be quiet, and go to sleep till dinner time.”

“Perhaps you would step over to Mary’s some part of the day,” suggested his wife. “She came here yesterday to leave some nice jelly that she had been making for me, and said you had not been there for nearly two months.”

“No,” replied Mr. Wade, “I had as lief encounter a hornet’s nest as those children of Mary’s; they are just like eels, slipping up and slipping down; slipping in, and slipping out; never still. Mary is spoiling them. The last time I was there I found her playing puss in the corner with them; puss in the corner, Mrs. Wade!—how does she expect to keep them at a proper distance, and make them reverence her, as your Bible calls it, if she is going to frolic with them that way? and Henry is not a whit better; they are neither fit to bring up a family. Mary used to be a sedate, steady girl, before she was married; I don’t know that I remember having ever heard her laugh in her life, while she was at home; I can’t think what has changed her so.”

His wife drooped her head, but made no answer.

The cold, hard man before her had no key with which to unlock the buried sorrows of those long weary years which Susan Wade was at that moment passing in review.

“Yes; I can’t think what has changed her so,” resumed Mr. Wade; “I think it must be Henry’s fault—she was brought up so carefully; but after all, a great deal depends upon the sort of man a woman marries. I dare say,” added he, complacently, “you would have been a very different woman had you married any body but me.”

“Very likely,” answered his wife, mournfully.

“To be sure, you would; I am glad you have the good sense to see it; I consider that a woman is but a cipher up to the time she is married—her husband then invests her with a certain importance, always subservient to his, of course. Then a great deal depends, too, on the way a man begins with his wife. Now I always had a great respect for Dr. Johnson, for the sensible manner in which he settled matters on his wedding day; it seems that he and his wife were to ride horseback to the church where they were to be married. Soon after starting his bride told him, first, that they rode too fast, then, too slow. ‘This won’t do,’ said he to himself; ‘I must begin with this woman as I mean to go on; she must keep my pace, not I hers:’ and so, putting spurs to his horse, he galloped out of sight; when she rejoined him at the church-door, she was in tears—in a proper state of submission—he never had any trouble with her afterward; it was more necessary as she was a widow; they need an uncommon tight rein. Sensible old fellow, that Johnson. I don’t know that I ever enjoyed any thing more than his answer to a lady who was going into ecstasies at some performance she had seen, and wondered that the doctor did not agree with her; ‘My dear,’ said he, ‘you must remember that you are a dunce, and, therefore, very easily pleased.’ Very good, upon my word—ha—ha—very good; ‘Doctor Johnson’s Life’ is the only book I ever had patience to read; he understood the sex; ha—ha—upon my word, very good”—and Mr. Wade rubbed his spectacles with such animation that he rubbed out one of the glasses.

“Two and sixpence for getting excited!” said he, as he picked up the fragments; “well—it is a little luxury I don’t often indulge in; but really that old Johnson was such a fine old fellow—I like him. Now take the children off to church, Susan; I want to go sleep.”

“I hope he may never be sorry for sending that pale, sickly woman out in such a driving rain as this,” muttered Betty, as her mistress walked over the wet pavements to church. “If there’s a selfisher man than Mr. Wade, I’d like to know it; well, he won’t have her long, and then maybe he’ll think of it. I would have left here long ago if it had not been for her; it’s work—work—work—with him, and no thanks, and that’s what is fretting the soul out of her; she can’t please him with all her trying. And Miss Susan and Neddy—cooped up here like birds in a cage, and never allowed to speak above their breath; they’ll fly through the bars sometime, if he don’t open the door wider; and Miss Susan getting to be a young lady, too—looking as solemn as a sexton, when she ought to be frisking and frolicking about like all other innocent young creturs. I used to get her down here, and make molasses candy for her, but she has out-grown candy, now—well, I don’t know what will come of it all. At her age I was going to husking and quilting frolics, and singing-school; bless me—what a time I used to have coming through the snow-drifts. I really believe Isaiah Pettibone used to upset the sleigh on purpose. I suppose I might have married him if I had been as forrard as some girls—leastways I know he gave me a paper heart, with a dart stuck through it; but when I look at Mr. Wade, I say it is all right—ten to one he might have turned out just such a cranky curmudgeon. People say that for every bad husband in the world, there’s a bad wife somewhere to balance it; I don’t believe it—but, anyhow, if there is, I wish they’d each torment their own kind, and not be killing off such patient creturs as Mrs. Wade. I’ll go up stairs and put her slippers to the fire, and then get something nice and hot for her to take when she comes back. I used to think that a poor servant-girl was not of much account in the world—I don’t think so since I came here to live; I know it is a comfort to Mrs. Wade to feel that somebody in the house is caring for her, who is always doing for other people; and though she never says a word about her troubles, and I am not the girl to let her know that I see them, yet the way in which she says, ‘Thank you, Betty; you are always kind and thoughtful,’ shows me that, humble as I am, she leans on me, and pays me a hundred times over for any little thing I do for her. I think, after all, that God made nobody of so little account that he could not at some time or other help somebody else. There’s the bell, now! Mercy on us! there’s that croaking raven, Mr. Doe, coming here to dinner; he will be sure to eat up every thing good that I make for Mrs. Wade. I wonder how a man who is eternally grumbling and growling at every thing the Lord has made, can have the face to gormandize His good things, as Mr. Doe does. I’d either let ’em alone, or say Thank you—he don’t do nary one.”

CHAPTER V.

The bleak winds of March were abroad, causing even the healthy and rugged to shrink from their piercing breath, and fold more closely around their shivering limbs the warm garments of winter; while the delicate invalid, warned by his irritated lungs, ventured not beyond the equable temperature of his closely-curtained chamber.

Mrs. Wade’s accustomed place at the table was vacant; her busy fingers no longer kept the domestic treadmill in motion. Ah! how seldom we feel till the “mother” is stricken down, how never-ceasing is the vigilance, how tireless the patience that ministers to our daily wants;—dropping noiseless, like the gentle dew, too common and unobtrusive a blessing to be noticed—till absence teaches us its value.

Death had no terrors for Mrs. Wade. It was only when looking upon the children whom she must leave behind, that she prayed, with quivering lips—“Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!”

If in the thorny path her woman’s feet had trod, her daughter’s trembling feet must walk! What human arm would sustain her? what human voice whisper words of cheer? And Neddy—the impulsive, generous, warm-hearted Neddy; quick to err—as quick to repent—what human hand would weigh justly in the scales of praise and blame, his daily deeds? What hand, save a mother’s, in uprooting the weeds, would crush not the tender flowers? Oh, what mother, while pondering these things in her heart, and looking round upon the dear faces, in the near or distant prospect of dissolution, has not felt her heart-tendrils tighten around them, with a vice-like clasp that almost defied separation? Nature’s voice is clamorous; but over, and above, and through its importunate pleadings, comes there to the Christian mother, the still, small whisper, “My grace is sufficient for thee!”

Mr. Wade at first refused to believe in the reality of his wife’s sickness. Women, he said, were always ailing, and fancying themselves dying. But, as the parlor was vacated for the chamber, and the easy-chair for the bed, and the doctor’s chaise stopped twice a day before the door, and Mrs. Hereford left her own little family to sit beside her mother, and Betty wiped her eyes with her apron every time she left the chamber door—and, more than all, when Mr. Wade’s toast was not browned as she used to brown it, and his favorite pudding was wanting, and the lamp burned dimly on the lonely tea-table, and his slippers were not always in the right place—he resigned himself to what seemed inevitable, with the air of a deeply-injured man; and slept as soundly at night, in the room next his wife’s, as if death’s shadow had not even then fallen across the threshold.

At breakfast he drove Betty distracted with orders and counter-orders about egg-boiling and toast-making, after eating which, he drew on a pair of creaking boots and an overcoat, and mounted to his wife’s room, to go through the ceremony of inquiring “how she was,” holding the door open for the cold wind to blow upon the invalid, while he received the faint “Easy, thank you,” from lips that contracted with pain, as the door closed after him in no gentle manner.

No thought of his children disturbed Mr. Wade’s equanimity. He did not see, day by day, the sorrowful face of his daughter lifted to his, as if in search of sympathy; nor notice the tip-toe steps of the playful little Neddy, as he passed to and fro, with messages from Mrs. Hereford to Betty.

“It’s infamous!” said the latter, slamming herself down in one of the kitchen chairs. “Is that man made of flesh and blood, or is he not? All last night, Mrs. Wade sat up in bed, with that dreadful distress for breath, tossing her arms up over her head, and that man snoring away like the seven sleepers. It’s infamous! Now, I’m no eaves-dropper: I scorn it; but I was in the kitchen this morning, and the slide was open through the closet into the basement, and I heard Mrs. Hereford say to her husband, who had called to inquire after Mrs. Wade: ‘Oh, James, James, how can I love or respect my father?’ and she sobbed as if her heart would break; and then she told him that the doctor had ordered some kind of drugs to be burned in Mrs. Wade’s room to help her breathing—something expensive—I don’t remember the name, and Mr. Wade said the doctor was an old granny, and it was a useless expense, and wouldn’t give his daughter the money for it. When Mrs. Hereford had finished telling, I heard her husband say a word I never expected to hear out of his mouth, and he kissed his wife, and handing her his pocket-book, told her to get whatever was necessary. Oh, dear; the Bible says, ‘Honor your parents;’ but whether such a man as that is a parent? that’s the question. Some of the ministers must settle it; I can’t. But it never will be clear to me that bringing a child into the world makes a parent. I don’t care what they say; it’s clear as day-light that the Lord meant that after that they should see ’em safe through it, no matter how much trouble turns up for ’em. When I’m married, if I ever am, I’ll say this to my young ones: ‘Now look here; tell me every thing. If you are sorry, tell me; if you are glad, tell me; if you are wicked, tell me; and I never, never, will turn away from you, no more than I want God to turn away from me. And if you break God’s laws and man’s laws, as I hope you won’t—if you love Him and me—still, I never will shut my door in your face, no matter what you do, no more than I want my Maker to shut heaven’s door in mine.’ Now, that’s my notion of a parent. Whether I shall ever have a chance to carry it out or not—that’s another thing; but as sure as I do, there’s where you’ll find me; and it’s my belief that many a man has swung on a gibbet, and many a woman has cursed God and man with her last breath, for want of just that. As if food, and drink, and clothes was all a child wanted, or a wife either, for that matter; as if that was all a husband or a father was bound to furnish; as if that was all the Lord would hold him accountable for; as if that was—gracious Gradgrind, there’s my toast burnt all to a crisp.”

Thanks to Mrs. Hereford, who procured the herbs ordered by the doctor, the poor sufferer was temporarily relieved.

“Who is that, Mary?” she asked, as she distinguished a strange footstep in the hall.

“It is Miss Alsop,” replied Mary.

No reply from the invalid, but a weary turning of the pale face toward the pillow, and a gathering moisture in the eyes.

“Come here, Mary—nearer—nearer”—Mrs. Hereford bent her head so low that her brown curls swept her mother’s pillow.

“That—woman—will—be—your—father’s—wife when—I—am—scarcely—cold.”

“God forbid—don’t, mother—don’t;” and poor Mary’s tears and kisses covered the emaciated face before her.

“You have a home—and a husband—and a kind one, Mary, but Susan and Neddy—it is hard to leave my children to her keeping. If I could but take them with me.”

As she said this, Betty beckoned Mrs. Hereford out of the room, saying “that Miss Alsop wished to see her, to inquire how dear Mrs. Wade had passed the night.”

“Tell her,” said Mary, “that she is very ill, and that I can not leave her to receive visitors.”

“If you please,” said Betty, returning, “Miss Alsop says she is so weary that she will sit and rest for half an hour.”

“Just half an hour before father comes home; then, of course, he will invite her to partake his solitary dinner; that’s just what she came for; mother is right; how strange that I never should have thought of all this before!” and a thousand little things now flashed upon her mind in confirmation of what her mother had just said.

Miss Alsop was an unmarried woman of forty, and presented that strange anomaly, a fat old maid. Her teeth were good, her hair thick and glossy, and her voice softer than the cooing of a dove; one of those voices which are the never-failing herald of deceit and hypocrisy to the keen observer of human nature. For years she had had her eye upon Mr. Alsop, and actually claimed a sort of cousinly relationship, which she never had been able very clearly to establish, but upon the strength of which she had come, self-invited, twice a month, to spend the day. The first moment Mrs. Wade saw her, she was conscious of an instinctive aversion to her; but as she was never in the habit of consulting her own tastes or inclinations, she endured the infliction with her own gentle sweetness. No one who witnessed her offering Miss Alsop the easiest chair, or helping her to the daintiest bit on the table, would have supposed that she read the wily woman’s secret heart. Not a look, not a word, not a tone betrayed it; but when the weary day was over, and Miss Alsop had exhausted all her vapid nothings, and, tying on her bonnet, regretted that she must trouble Mr. Wade to wait upon her home, Mrs. Wade, as they passed through the door, and out into the darkness, would lean her cheek upon her hand, while tears, which no human eye had ever seen, fell thick and fast.