Narcissa, or the Road to Rome; In Verona

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

All that day, Bije went about in a dream. When Miss Duty asked him what he had been doing all the morning, he answered "Milk-pails;" and when she asked what they used to keep off potato-bugs out his way, he could only say "Pink calico." At this atrocious statement, Miss Duty turned sharply on him. "Bijah Green," she said, "if you are goin' loony, I'll thank you to take yourself off home. I don't want no naturals round here, so now you know."

Bije was terribly frightened at this. Yesterday it would have been rather a good joke to be discharged by the old lady, and go home to the farm with a month's wages in his pocket; to-day, it seemed the most dreadful calamity that could happen to him; and he hastened to give such an eloquent description of the potato-bug war, as carried on in West Athens (pronounced Aythens) that Miss Duty was mollified, and reckoned she must try paris green herself. When evening came, Bije went early for his cow, and milked that good beast with undue haste and trepidation. Then, having carried the brimming pails into the kitchen, he returned to the shed, and looked about him with gleaming eyes. Yes, there it was! the knot-hole that he had found the other day, when he was brushing down the cobwebs,—just opposite the back-porch of the house across the way. She would be coming out again in a minute; it wasn't likely that she had done milking yet. He drew up a broken stool, and seating himself on it, flattened his face against the rough boards of the shed, and waited. The door of the house across the way opened, and Miss Resigned Elizabeth came slowly out. She was younger than Miss Duty, but she looked older, being near-sighted, and walking with a stoop and a shuffle. She was rather good-looking, with soft brown hair, and a little autumnal red in her thin cheeks; but to Bije's distorted vision, she seemed the most horrible old hag that had ever darkened the earth. Her scant gray skirt (made out of her half of a dress of Mother Bute's, who wore her skirts full), her neck-handkerchief, her carpet slippers, all were an offence to him; and he could hardly resist the impulse to call out to her to take herself out of his field of vision, and leave it clear for the desired one. The dreadful old woman! how she stood round, as if folks wanted to see her, instead of wishing she was in Jericho. She was actually sitting down, taking out her old knitting! Such things ought not to be allowed. There ought to be a law against ugly women—Hark! what was that? Miss Resigned Elizabeth was calling to somebody,—to somebody in the house. "Betsy! Betsy Garlick! come out here, will you?"

Why, this was not such a horrid old lady after all. Now he thought of it, she was rather nice-looking, for an old one. The door was opening, opening wider. There she came with her pails. The wonderful girl! not flashing and sparkling, as in the morning light, but with the softness of twilight in her eyes and her lovely waving hair. What was it the other lad said, over there in the old Verona, at a minute like this?

"Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear!"

and so on, in his glowing, tropical way. But Bije could not say anything of that sort. His heart was as high as Borneo's, and seemed to be beating in his throat, as he gazed at the fair vision; but he knew nothing of language, and if he had tried to put his thoughts into words, he would only have said: "Ain't she slick!" A most un-Shakespearian Bije! an ordinary, good country-boy! But no fiery gallant of them all was ever thrilled with purer fire than burned now in his veins. He wanted to do something, something wonderful, for this girl. What did all those fellers do, in the story-books Delilah was everlastingly reading? He wished he had read some of the stories, instead of laughing at them for girl's fool-talk. She was smiling now; did anybody ever smile like that before? Of course not! He wished he were Miss Resigned Elizabeth, to be smiled at in that way; he wondered what it felt like. But no! the poor old lady was deef! (she was not in the least deaf, be it said, by the way). Deef, and that girl talking to her! Poor old lady! It was a dreadful thing to be deef.

And so on, and so on: Ossa on Pelion of rapture and young delight and wonder, when suddenly a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. The boy started as if he had been shot. Miss Duty Bute whirled him round, away from the opening into Paradise,—I should say the knot-hole,—and stooping down, applied her eye to the aperture.

The little scene on the porch of the opposite house had no special charm for Miss Duty: she only saw her sister, Resigned Eliz, as she had called her in former days, and her hired girl. The butcher had told her that Resigned Eliz had hired a girl; also, she, Miss Duty, had rheumatism in her joints, which made stooping painful to her. Therefore, when she straightened her poor back, and turned once more upon the trembling Bije, her mood was none of the softest.

Briefly, he was told that if ever she caught him spying upon the other house, whensoever or howsoever, he would pack off that moment of time. He had no more to do with the other house than he had with the Plagues of Egypt, she'd have him to know; and when she wanted spying done, she could do it herself, without hiring no shif'less, long-legged, trifling boys to do it for her. Finally, was she to have any kindling-wood split that night, or was she not?