Read Ebook: Five years of youth by Martineau Harriet

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Ebook has 755 lines and 51525 words, and 16 pages

"About her little girl that died? O yes, I remember that letter, and I want to see it again."

"You shall, my dear; and you will soon see Mrs. Fletcher too. She is coming to stay with us for a few days."

"Any body with her, papa?"

"Yes, her husband, of course; and perhaps two of her daughters. They come on Wednesday; so you must consult Mrs. Rickham how you are to make room for them all, and I am sure you will try to make their visit pleasant."

Mary and Anna were troubled with no fears on the subject, for they were accustomed to receive their father's friends, and had never been conscious of any awkwardness in doing so. If they had now any doubts, it was about the pleasure they might have in Miss Fletcher's society; for they had never had any companions of their own age, or any playmates except the farmers children.

When their father called them into his study to repeat the lessons which had been omitted in the morning, Anna stretched herself and yawned, preparatory to collecting her books and exercises.

"What, Anna! yawning at the very idea of being employed! Better wait till you are tired, surely."

"I can stretch again then, papa. I wonder whether you ever do. I never saw you; but I suppose you are tired sometimes, like other people."

"Very tired, my dear; and never more so than when you are rattling nonsense, instead of opening your books. There is a time for all things."

It was now Anna's time for looking grave; and she read her page of Virgil as steadily as if she had been ten years older. Nothing was heard in the study for the next two hours, but the single voice of the reader, and the scratching pen of the writer. When the last school-book was closed, the girls looked at their father. He pointed to the book-case, where the large Bible was placed; and while Mary took it down, Anna drew a seat to each side of her father's large study-chair. They read and talked, and read again, till the servant came to say that tea had been ready some time. Anna forgot her intention of yawning again. They never remembered having been weary of reading the Bible with their father; for he made them understand it clearly, as far as they went: he talked and encouraged them to talk freely on the thousand subjects which made religion interesting; and his voice was never so soft, or his manner so tender, as at those times.

After tea, Mary, who saw that her father was troubled with headache, as was often the case, pointed to the field, where the evening shadows were lengthening in the golden light of the setting sun, and asked him if a walk would not do him good. He was too tired to go out, he said; but he should like some music, which generally refreshed him more than any thing. So he established himself on the sofa; and Mary, who played very well, opened her piano, and amused him till it was quite dark. Before he dismissed his children for the night, he called Anna to sit on the low stool beside him.

"Our days fly away fast, Anna; do not they?"

"Yes, papa; but not so fast as I should like. I want to be older, that I may have more of my own way."

"You unreasonable child! People tell me I let you run wild already. What more do you want?"

"I want to take journeys, and to leave off learning some things that are tiresome, and to learn others that must be very entertaining; and I want to send Farmer Rickham's children to school, and to build an hospital here, and several other things. What a will I would make, if I was a woman!"

"If you had any thing to leave, I suppose you mean," said her father, laughing. "But, seriously, my dear, don't you think it as well that people should be taught to do no harm before they form grand schemes for doing good; and that they should learn to do good in a small way, before they form plans too large for them to manage?"

"Like Sally Benson and her bird."

"What was that?"

"She thought she should like to help her brother's birds in building their nests; so she got them some moss that she thought better than what he had provided, and she went a great distance to get it; and she was a long time searching for a plant that she was told they would like to eat; and she watched and watched them, and was very busy trying to make them build. But O, papa!"

"Well, what happened?"

"Why, she frightened them so with putting her fingers between the wires, that they would not make their nests properly; and she had got the wrong plant after all, and one of them died from eating it. And what was far worse, she forgot, all the time, to feed her own canary; and she found it dead at the bottom of the cage one day."

"Aye, that is the way with young minds till they get experience; and I am afraid it would be the way with you, if you had more of your own will, as you say."

"Why, papa, what harm do you think I should do?"

"Consider whether you do none already. Have you done nothing on this one day that can be hurtful to anybody? You need not tell me, if you find you have; but satisfy yourself--that's all."

"I will tell you, however, papa. I ran away when nurse was going to say something I did not wish to hear. I saw she looked vexed, and I am afraid little Kitty saw it too; and perhaps I have put it into her head to do the same."

"You must put a better behaviour into her head as soon as you can, then. Now try and recollect if you have done any good to-day."

Anna thought some time, and looked sad when she owned she could recollect nothing.

"I am afraid you are hardly fit for building an hospital yet, Anna," said Mr. Byerley. "However, to comfort you, I can assure you that you have done me some good to-day."

"You mean, by making you forget your headache. But that was accident, so it does not suit what we were talking about; but I will try to make it better another time, for fear you should be the first person to go into my hospital, when I build it."

Mr. Byerley smiled as he kissed her and sent her to bed.

The next morning, Mr. Byerley, who was a bad sleeper, was wakened very early by the murmur of voices from the next room, which was occupied by his daughters. Though the partition between the chambers was very slight, he was not usually disturbed by noise; for the girls were asleep before he retired to rest, and he arose as early as they in the morning. Now, however, he heard the never-ceasing sound of low tones from four o'clock till six; but not a single word could he distinguish of all that was said. The girls could not be learning lessons, for it was Sunday morning; and, as he heard no tread, he thought they could not have left their beds. They were evidently stirring, however, as soon as he had rung his bell; and from behind his blind he saw them afterwards in the garden, not running or gathering flowers, as usual, but in earnest consultation. They stood before a certain balcony, looking at it from all sides, and presently from all distances; for Mary would have walked backwards into the fishpond, if her sister had not caught hold of her. Then, with each a bough, they attempted to disperse the chickweed which had overspread the pond; and then they repaired to the arbour where the honeysuckle trailed on the ground, and a film of gossamer overspread the entrance. When they met their father at breakfast, they looked heated and exhausted. He told them there was no occasion to toil so hard, as he should give direction to John, the gardener, to put the garden and court in good order before the arrival of their expected guests. Part of their weighty business was taken off the girls' hands, but apparently no great deal; for they were found, more than once that day, in the little parlour which opened upon the balcony, as eager in consultation as they had been before breakfast. This parlour was so small that it might almost have been called a closet; but the balcony was larger than the room, and communicated so easily with it, by means of a French window, that the deficiency of size was a small objection. The parlour would just contain Mr. Byerley, his daughters, and a tea-table; and when they had guests with them, the balcony held the visitors and their host, and the green parlour the young tea-maker and her apparatus. It was a favourite place, the view from it being particularly pretty, and its retirement complete. The simple ornaments of the dwelling were all collected there; Mary's harp-lute, Anna's flower stands, and the precious picture of their mother. The room was so darkened by the colour of its furniture, by the roof of the balcony, and the creepers which hung thickly about it, that the picture conveyed no very distinct impression to strangers. Mr. Byerley, however, liked it better in this obscurity than in a fuller light: the girls had long been too familiar with its features not to feel as if they had been equally familiar with the original.

While they were drinking tea in this place on the Sunday evening of which I speak, Mr. Byerley told the girls that he was going, in the morning, to London, to attend a public meeting, and that he should not return till the Tuesday night, or perhaps the Wednesday morning; but that he would take care to be at home when their guests arrived. Mary asked what should be done for their entertainment; for she thought the house must be very dull to strangers. Her father thought not, as their friends came to see and talk with friends, and not to see sights and be entertained as they might be in the house of any stranger. Mary knew her father's dislike of bustle, and of any interruption of his daily plans which was not caused by public business; but she felt quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher and their daughters would enjoy seeing more of the pretty country near, than could be brought within the limits of a walk; and she therefore pressed the point. "You shall have no trouble, papa, but just to get on your horse and go with us."

"Where, my dear? I will go to the world's end if you show me that it will do any good; but you know I dislike frolicking."

"It will do a great deal of good to make Mrs. Fletcher admire Audley bridge and the castle; and you need not call it frolicking, but only a morning's ride."

"A morning's ride stretched out till near midnight! Think of the distance, my dear."

"Suppose it should be past midnight," said Anna; "it would still be a morning's ride."

"Well, well; don't talk to me any more about it, but settle it all your own way. I have no time for such nonsense." So saying, Mr. Byerley took out of his pocket his list of resolutions for the public meeting, and began to read very attentively. He soon seemed sorry, however, for his hastiness; for he folded up his paper, drew his girls to him, and put an arm round each of them as they stood.

"I hope, my dears," said he, "that your heads have not been quite full of these little plans all this day."

"Are you quite sure what you were thinking of when Tommy was reading?" asked Anna. "Did you make no mistake that you remember?"

"Mistake! What mistake?"

"I must have been thinking of the pony you are to ride; but you should have told me."

"I set it right with Tommy afterwards; but I did not want to make Kitty laugh, so I let it pass at the time."

"Then, papa," said Mary, "I am afraid I can't answer for not having had any silly thoughts about this at church."

"It is always wisest not to answer for any such thing, Mary; for the wisest and best of us are troubled with vain thoughts at the most solemn times, and in the most sacred employments."

"The very wisest and best, papa?" said Mary, looking at her mother's picture.

"Your mother used to say so," said Mr. Byerley, as his eyes followed Mary's and rested on the picture. "If ever there was an example of entire self-command, it was she; and if ever there was one who fully understood and felt the blessings of this day, it was she: and yet she used to make the same complaint that we have made."

"I remember," said Mary, in a low voice, "that I thought she looked differently on a Sunday from every other day; and I felt differently. The feeling comes over me now, of those bright summer mornings when I used to be taken up earlier than on weekdays; and the washing, and the clean frock and pinafore, and mamma making breakfast, in her neat white gown. And then, after breakfast, she used to take me into the garden, and let me gather a flower for her. I don't know what makes me remember crocuses so particularly; but I never see a gay crocus bed without thinking of one of those bright old Sunday mornings."

He stopped, but the girls looked at him so earnestly that he soon went on.

"You know, though you cannot remember, that you once had a little brother: nurse often tells you about him, I know, and how he died. Nothing could be more sudden than the accident, and, of course, neither your mother nor any body else could be at all prepared for such a shock; for a heartier child could not be. It happened on a Friday afternoon, and all that night and the next day the struggle which your mother underwent was fearful. Early on the Sunday morning, she slept for the first time since the accident, and I would not have her wakened when it was broad day. She started up, at last, with the confused feeling of something very dreadful having happened; but when the tide of grief was just flowing in upon her again, the church-bells rang out. She was calm instantly; and that day did more towards restoring the tone of her mind than any previous exertion, though she had striven hard for composure. She walked in the garden with me, and sat by this very window, sometimes reading, and sometimes listening to the chimes; but looking so like herself that I was no longer anxious about her."

"She was ill then, nurse says."

"Yes; her strength had declined very much, and that was the reason why I was so uneasy about her. While she was in health, she was the one to give, not to need, support; and, to the last, the strength of her mind never failed."

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