Saxe Holm's Stories / First Series

by Helen Hunt Jackson

"It was a very kind letter, and the salary, of which Mr. Maynard spoke almost apologetically, saying that it would be increased in a few years as the village grew, was more than twice as large as papa had ever received, and there was a nice parsonage besides.

"We moved in April. I always associate our moving with blue hepaticas, for I carried a great basketful of them, which I had taken up roots and all, in the woods, the morning we set out; and what should I find under papa's study window but a great thicket of wild ferns and cornel bushes growing--just the place for my hepaticas, and I set them out before I went into the house. The house was very small, but it was so pretty that papa and I were perfectly happy in it. Poor mamma did not like the closets and the kitchen. The house we had left was a huge, old-fashioned house, with four square rooms on a floor; one of these was the kitchen, and mamma missed it very much. But she lived only a few days after we moved in. I never knew of what disease she died. She was ill but a few hours and suffered great pain. They said she had injured herself in some way in lifting the furniture. It was all so sudden and so terrible, and we were surrounded by such confusion and so many strange faces, that I do not remember anything about it distinctly. I remember the funeral, and the great masses of white and purple flowers all over the table on which the coffin stood, and I remember how strangely papa's face looked.

"And then Aunt Abby came to live with us, and we settled down into such a new, different life, that it seemed to me as if it had been in some other world that I had known mamma. My sister Abby was two years old, and my darling brother Nat was ten, when mamma died. It is very hard to talk about dear Nat, I love him so. He is so precious, and his sorrow is so sacred, that I am hardly willing to let strangers pity him, ever so tenderly. When he was a baby he sprang out of mamma's lap, one day, as she was reaching up to take something from the mantel piece. He fell on the andiron-head and injured his spine so that he could never walk. He is twenty years old now; his head and chest and arms are about as large as those of a boy of sixteen, but all the rest of his poor body is shrunken and withered; he has never stood upright, and he cannot turn himself in his chair or bed. But his head and face are beautiful. It is not only I who think so. Artists have seen him sitting at the window, or being drawn about in his little wagon, and have begged permission to paint his face, for the face of a saint or of a hero, in their pictures. It is the face of both saint and hero; and after all that must be always so, I think; for how could a man be one without being the other? I know some very brave men have been very bad men, but I do not call them heroes. Nat is the only hero I ever knew; if I were a poet I would write a poem about him. It should be called 'THE CROWNLESS KING.' Oh, how he does reign over suffering, and loss, and humiliation, and what a sweet kingdom spreads out around him wherever he is! He does everybody good, and everybody loves him. Poor papa used to say sometimes, 'My son is a far better preacher than I; see, I sit at his feet to learn;' and it was true. Even when he was a little fellow Nat used to keep up papa's courage. Many a time, when papa looked dark and sad, Nat would call to him, 'Dear papa, will you carry me up and down a little while by the window? I want the sky.' Then, while they were walking, Nat would say such sweet things about the beauty of the sky, and the delight it gave him to see it, that the tears would come into papa's eyes, and he would say, 'Who would think that we could ever forget for a moment this sky which is above us?' and he would go away to his study comforted.

"As I said, when mamma died, Nat was ten and I was thirteen. From that time I took all the care of him. Aunt Abby, was not strong, and she did not love children. She was just, and she meant to be always kind to us; but that sort of kindness is quite different from loving-kindness. Poor Nat never could bear to have her do anything for him, and so it very soon came about that I took all the care of him. It was not hard, for he was never ill; he suffered constant pain but in spite of it he was always cheerful, always said he felt well, and never had any of the small ailments and diseases which healthy children are apt to have. 'I shouldn't know what to do without the ache, Dot,' he said to me one day when he was only twelve years old. 'I've got so used to it, I should miss it as much as I should miss you said it helps me to be good. I don't think I should dare have it go away.' A few years later he wrote some lovely little verses called 'The Angel of Pain,' which I will show you. Our life after mamma died was very happy and peaceful. It makes me grieve for her, even now, to think how little she was missed. We had all loved her. She was always pleasant and good, and took the best possible care of us and of everything; but she was not one of those persons whose presence makes itself necessary to people. It seems hardly right to say such a thing, but I really think papa seemed more cheerful without her, after the first. I think that while she lived he was always groping and reaching after something in her which did not exist. The hourly sight of her reminded him hourly of his ideal of what a wife might be, and he was forever hoping that she might come a little nearer to it--enter a little more into his world of thought and feeling. This is how it has looked to me since I have been married, and can understand just how terrible it must be to have the person whom you love best, disappoint you in any way.

"Nat was in all my classes in school. Although he was three years younger he was much cleverer than I, and had had nothing to do, poor dear, all his life, but lie in his chair and read. I used to draw him to and from school in a little wagon; the boys lifted it up and down the steps so carefully it did not jar him; and papa had a special desk built for him, so high that part of the wagon could roll under it, and the lid could rest just wherever Nat needed it for writing or studying. When we went home, there was always a sort of procession with us; a good many of the children had to go in the same direction, but many went simply to walk by Nat's wagon and talk with him. Whenever there was a picnic or a nutting frolic, we always took him; the boys took turns in drawing him; nobody would hear a word of his staying at home; he used to sit in his wagon and look on while the rest played, and sometimes he would be left all alone for a while, but his face was always the happiest one there. At school the boys used to tell him everything, and leave things to his decision. Almost every day, somebody would call out, at recess or intermission, 'Well, I'll leave it to Nat'--or 'I'll tell Nat.' One day somebody shouted, 'Take it before the king--let's call him King Nat.' But it almost made Nat cry. He exclaimed, 'Oh, boys, please don't ever say that again;' and they never did. He had a great deal more influence over them than any teacher. He could make them do anything. Sometimes the teachers themselves used to come to him privately and tell him of things they did not like, which the boys were getting into the way of doing, and ask him to try to stop them. If Nat had not been a saint, as I said before, all this would have spoiled him; but he never thought of its being any special power in him. He used to think it was only because the boys were so kind-hearted that they could not bear to refuse any request which a poor cripple made.

"When I think how happy those days were and how fast the darkest days of our lives were drawing near, it makes me shrink from happiness almost as much as from grief. It seems only grief's forerunner. On the evening of my sixteenth birthday, we were all having a very merry time in papa's study, popping corn over the open fire. We had wheeled Nat near the fire, and tied the corn-popper on a broom-handle, so that he could shake the popper himself; and I never saw him laugh so heartily at anything. Papa laughed too, quite loud, which was a thing that did not happen many times a year. It was the last time we heard the full sound of dear papa's voice. Late that night he was called out to see a poor man, one of the factory operatives, who was dying. It was a terrible snow-storm, and papa had been so heated over the fire and in playing with us that he took a severe cold. The next morning he could not speak aloud. The doctor said it was an acute bronchitis and would pass off; but it did not, and in a very few weeks it was clear that he was dying of consumption. Probably the cold only developed a disease which had been long there.

"I can't tell you about the last months of papa's life. I think I shall never be able to speak of them. We saw much worse days afterward, but none that seemed to me so hard to bear; even when I thought Nat and I would have to go to the almshouse it was not so hard. The love which most children divide between father and mother I concentrated on my father. I loved him with an adoration akin to that which a woman feels for her husband, and with the utmost of filial love added. Nat loved him almost as much. The most touching thing I ever saw was to see Nat from his wagon, or wheeled chair, reaching out to take care of papa in the bed. Nobody else could give him his medicine so well; nobody could prepare his meals for him, after he was too weak to use a knife and fork, so well as Nat. How he could do all this with only one hand--for he could not bend himself in his chair enough to use the hand farthest from the bed--nobody could understand; but he did, and the very last mouthful of wine papa swallowed he took, the morning he died, from poor Nat's brave little hand, which did not shake nor falter, though the tears were rolling down his cheeks.

"Papa lived nearly a year; but the last nine months he was in bed, and he never spoke a loud word after that birthday night when we had been so happy in the study. He died in November, on a dreary stormy day. I never shall forget it. He had seemed easier that morning, and insisted on our all going out to breakfast together and leaving him alone, the doors being open between the study and the dining-room. We had hardly seated ourselves at the table when his bell rang. Aunt Abby reached him first. It could not have been a minute, but he did not know her. For the first and only time in my life I forgot Nat, and was out of the room when I heard him sob. Dear Nat! not even then would he think of himself. I turned back. 'Oh, don't stop to take me, Dot,' he said. 'Run!' But I could not; and when I reached the door, pushing his chair before me, all was over. However, the doctor said that, even if we had been there at the first, papa could not have bid us good-by; that the death was from instantaneous suffocation, and that he probably had no consciousness of it himself. Papa's life had been insured for five thousand dollars and he had saved, during the three years we had lived at Maynard's Mills, about one thousand more. This was all the money we had in the world.

"Mr. Maynard had been very kind throughout papa's illness. He had persuaded the church to continue the salary; every day he had sent flowers, and grapes, and wine, and game, and everything he could think of that papa could eat; and, what was kindest of all, he had come almost every day to talk with him and cheer him up. But he did not mean to let his kindness stop here. The day after the funeral he came to see us, to propose to adopt me. I forgot to say that Aunt Abby was to be married soon and would take little Abby with her; so they were provided for, and the only question was about Nat and me.

"Fortunately, dear Nat was in the dining-room and did not see Mr. Maynard when he came. I have told you what a merry man Mr. Maynard is, and how kind he is, but he is also a very obstinate and high-tempered man. He had never loved Nat; I do not know why; I think he was the only human being who ever failed to love him. He pitied him, of course; but he was so repelled by his deformity that he could not love him. As soon as Mr. Maynard said, 'Now, my dear child, you must come to my house and make it your home always,' I saw that he intended to separate me from Nat.