Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

"I am wrong," persisted the lady; "let me sit here till the dusk comes on; then I will find my way to the house—perhaps I may sleep there to-night, Jacob, who knows?" She paused a moment, and added, "If they are alive, but surely I need not say if. They must be alive."

"I hope so," answered Jacob, pitying the wistful look with which the poor lady searched his features, hoping to gather confidence from their expression.

"And yet my heart is so heavy, so full of this terrible pain, Jacob. Leave me now; if any thing can make me cry, it will be sitting here alone."

Jacob turned away, without a word of remonstrance. His own rude, honest heart was full, and the sickening anxiety manifest in every tone and look of his mistress was fast undermining his own manhood. He did not return to the tavern, however, but clambering over a fence, leaped into the clover field, and wading, knee-deep, through the fragrant blossoms, made his way toward the old farm-house, whose chimney and low, sloping roof became more and more visible with each step.

On he went, with huge, rapid strides, resolute to carry back some tidings to the unhappy woman he had just left. "I will see them first," he muttered; "they might not know her, or may have heard. It ain't likely, though—who could bring such news into these parts? Anyhow, I will see that nothing is done to hurt her feelings."

Full of these thoughts, Jacob drew nearer and nearer to the old house. He crossed the clover lot, and a fine meadow, whose thick, waving grass was still too green for the scythe, lay before him, bathed in the last rays of a midsummer sunset. Beyond this meadow rose the farm-house, silent and picturesque in the waning day, with gleams of golden light here and there breaking over the mossed old roof. Jacob paused, with his hand upon an upper rail of the fence. His heart misgave him. Every object was so painfully familiar, that he shrunk from approaching nearer. There was the garden sloping away from the old dwelling, with a line of cherry trees running along the fence, and shading triple rows of currant and gooseberry bushes, now bent to the ground with a load of crimson and purple fruit. There was the well sweep, with its long, round bucket swinging to the breeze, and the pear tree standing by, like an ancient sentinel staunch at his post, and verdant in its thrifty old age. A stone or two had fallen from the rough chimney, and on the sloping roof lay a greenish tinge, betraying the velvety growth of moss with which time had dotted the decayed shingles, while clumps of house-leeks clustered here and there in masses from under their warped edges.

Silent and solemnly quiet stood that old dwelling amid the dying light which filled the valley. A few jetty birds were fluttering in and out of a martin-box at one end, and that was all the sign of life that appeared to the strained eyes of Jacob Strong. He stood, minute after minute, waiting for a sight of some other living object—a horse grazing at the back door—a human being approaching the well, anything alive would have given relief to his full heart.

He could contain himself no longer: a desperate wish to learn at once all that could give joy or pain to his mistress possessed him. He sprang into the meadow, found a path trodden through the grass, and sweeping the tall, golden lilies aside, where they fell over the narrow way, he strode eagerly forward, and soon found himself in a garden. It was full of coarse vegetables, and gay with sun-flowers; tufts of "love-lies-bleeding" drooped around the gate, and flowering beans, tangled with morning-glories, half clothed the worm-eaten fence.

Coarse and despised as some of these flowers are, how eloquently they spoke to the heart of Jacob Strong! The very sun-flowers, as they turned their great dials to the West, seemed to him redolent and golden with the light of other days. They filled his heart with new hope; since the earliest hour of his remembrance, those massive blossoms had never been wanting at the old homestead.

Again the objects became more and more familiar. The plantain leaves about the well seemed to have kept their greenness for years. The grindstone, with a trough half full of water, stood in its old place by the back porch. Surely, while such things remained, the human beings that had lived and breathed in that lone dwelling, could not be entirely swept away!