Narcissa, or the Road to Rome; In Verona

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

All this is natural, but it will not do. Here in Verona are no fountains, but half a dozen old well-sweeps, and all the rest cucumber-wood pumps; no palaces, but neat white houses with green blinds, and flowers in their front-yards; no laurel, but good honest sunflowers instead; finally, no tomb of Juliet, for our Juliet did not die; briefly, and to have done with mystery, our Verona is in the State of Maine.

Ihave often wondered what manner of men they were, who named the towns in the good old State. Lyceum teachers for the most part, one would think,—men who had read books, and whose hearts yearned for the historic glories of the old world, glories which their narrow lives might never see. So, disagreeing with this same Juliet in the matter of names, they did what they could, and not being able to go to Europe, did their best to bring Europe over into their own new country. So we have here in Maine Rome and Paris, Palermo and Vi-enny (miscalled "Vienna" by pedants, and those thinking themselves better than other people), Berlin Falls and South China,—in fact, half the continent to choose from, all in our own door-yard, as it were.

You may not find Verona on the county-map; you certainly will not see it as you flash by on the Maine Central Railway, on your way to Bar Harbor. But if you travel for a certain length of time on a certain quiet road, grass-grown for the most part, and with only a few straggling cottages dotting it here and there,—if, as I say, you travel long enough, and do not get out of patience and turn back towards Vi-enny, you will come suddenly round a bend of the road, and there will be Verona before you, all white and smiling, tucked away under the great hill-shoulder that curls lovingly round it. The cleanest, freshest, sleepiest little New England village! No myrtle, no laurel, not the faintest suggestion of a fountain! Yet here lived and loved, not so very long ago, Romeo and Juliet.

They were simple young people; they did not even know their own names, for Juliet answered to the name of Betsy Garlick, while Romeo was known only as Bije Green; and they worked for the Bute girls.

It is well known that the Bute girls—who might better be spoken of, if the custom of the country allowed it, as the Misses Bute—did not speak to each other. They lived in two white cottages, side by side, on the Indiana road; and though they could not avoid seeing each other every day, no communication had taken place between them since the time of their mother's death, some ten years ago. Old Mrs. Bute had been partly responsible, all the neighbors thought, for this unfortunate state of things. She was a masterful woman, and never allowed her daughters to call their souls their own, even when they were middle-aged women. Though both gifted with strong wills, they lived in absolute subjection to the small withered autocrat who hardly ever stirred from her armchair in the chimney-corner.

She persisted in treating her daughters, either of whom could have picked her up with one hand and set her on the mantelpiece, as if they were little children; and they accepted the position with meekness.

It was even said that when Mrs. Bute felt called on to die, as we say in Verona, she insisted on having her daughters' mourning made and tried on in her presence, that she might be sure of its being respectable, and fitting properly. "Neither one of you has sense to know when a gown wrinkles in the back," she said. "I couldn't lay easy in my grave, and you going round all hitched up between the shoulders."

So the village dressmaker cut the clothes (black stuff dresses, and black cambric pelisses lined with flannel), and came in fear and trembling to try them on. It must have been a grim scene: the two gaunt, middle-aged women standing meekly before the bed, turning this way and that at command; the dying woman issuing, in halting whispers, her directions for "seam and gusset and band," while death had her by the throat, fitting her for the straight white garment which was making in the next room. Not till she had seen her daughters arrayed in the completed costumes, with bonnet and veil to match, would Eliza Bute turn her face to the wall and go, feeling that she had done her duty.

Perhaps it was hardly to be wondered at, if, so soon as the iron grasp was loosened which had held them all their days, the two women went to the other extreme, and could brook no suggestion of authority from any one, least of all from each other. Perhaps each was sure that Mother (awful shade, still hovering on the borders of their life!) would be of her way of thinking; however it was, the two sisters quarrelled the day after the funeral. The will was read, and it was found that the property was to be evenly divided between them. Evenly divided! It was a dangerous phrase. Miss Duty had her idea of what "even" meant, and Miss Resigned Elizabeth had hers; and neither was likely to give up to the other. They listened in grim silence as the lawyer read the will; and each decided that she knew what Mother meant, and 'twasn't likely the other did.

The strife that followed was grim, though not loud. No wrangling was heard; no neighbor was called in to keep the peace; but after three days, Miss Resigned Elizabeth sent for a man and a wheelbarrow, and removed with all her goods and chattels to the house next door, which was hers by right of inheritance from her grandmother.