The Hawthorne: A Christmas and New Years Present

by Unknown

"My mother is so ill that Jenny could not leave her, and she had nobody else to send to ask you to come and help her."

"Come John, get up directly!" said the woman, rousing her husband, who under the influence of a previous day of hard labour, had slept too soundly to hear what passed. "Get up! for you will very likely have to go for the doctor. And come in, Sally dear, till I get something on me, and I will go with you in a minute."

Very little preparation was necessary, and in a few minutes the kind hearted woman hastened to the house of sickness, accompanied by the little girl, and followed by her husband, who though no less willing, was much less able to throw off the lethargic influence of sleep, and trudged after the nimble feet of his wife as if scarcely conscious whither he was going. As the distance was very short, he had no time to get fully awake, before the little Sally opened the door of her mother's house and ushered himself and his wife in; but on entering, a sight presented itself to their view that instantly roused every feeling of the soul to pity and commiseration. On a humble bed, in the corner of a very humble apartment, lay stretched the form of her to whose assistance they had been summoned; not, however, either writhing with pain or burning with fever, but cold, stiff, and lifeless; whilst a bowl stood near, which told at once, by its contents, that the rupture of a blood vessel had produced the sad catastrophe. By the side of the bed knelt her daughter, a girl about sixteen, who, "struck with sad anguish at the stern decree," seemed to retain little more of life than the corpse, the hand of which she grasped between hers, whilst her eyes were riveted on the motionless face, with an expression of the most heartrending agony. Grief wears a variety of forms, according to the nature of the mind of which it takes possession; but it assumes no appearance that imparts so immediate a sense of its intensity to the heart of the spectator, as that silent and speechless sorrow that finds no relief from utterance. In vain did the benevolent neighbours endeavour to rouse the poor girl from her trance of wo; the stroke had been so sudden, so unlooked-for, and was so appalling in its nature, that poor Jenny, though she had been long familiar with adversity, seemed ready to sink under it, without a single effort to resist its overpowering influence.

"Jenny! dear Jenny! don't take on this way!" said the humane neighbour, whilst her husband raised the almost insensible girl from her kneeling posture by the bed-side, and placed her on a chair. The little Sally imagining, from the stillness that prevailed, that her mother had fallen asleep, had kept at a distance from the bed-side, lest she should by any means disturb her; but now beginning to wonder why her sister should thus be the chief object of anxiety, she had crept softly forward to investigate the cause, and set her eyes, for the first time in her life, on the features of death. The sudden cry which she gave, was the first sound that reached the heart of the grief-stricken Jenny; and as the weeping child ran toward her, she opened her arms, and clasping her to her bosom, wept over her in all the luxury of sorrow. Her compassionate neighbours knew enough of the human heart, to judge it best to leave her to herself; and, therefore, summoning some other of their friends to their assistance, they busied themselves about the various offices for the dead, and left poor Jenny to the undisturbed indulgence of her wo. But Jenny's grief was too intense to allow her long the relief of tears, and she sat, almost motionless, clasping the little Sally in her arms, who had soon wept herself to sleep, and waited till she was permitted again to throw herself by the side of her lifeless parent, and watch over the remains of what she had so fondly loved. This indulgence was all that she desired, and all of which she was capable of partaking; and she sat watching the body almost without either speaking, or moving, till the moment arrived when it was to be deposited in its last silent mansion. Then it was, that the poor girl felt that she had indeed lost her beloved parent for ever. Whilst the lineaments still remained before her view, on which she had so long delighted to gaze, even though they were cold and motionless, she felt as though she had still something to rest upon; but when these too were taken away, when the very shell which the soul of affection had once inhabited, was removed from a world in which she herself was still to remain, she, for the first time, became sensible of that total destitution of soul that is felt after the loss of those we love. Happily, however, for poor Jenny, she was forbidden, by the calls of imperative necessity, to indulge in unavailing sorrow; and the exertions that her forlorn situation demanded, proved the most effectual balm to her wounded bosom; and gradually, a meek submission to the will of Him to whom she had been taught from her earliest infancy to bow in humble confidence, superseded that bitter anguish which had at first swelled her heart almost to bursting.

The parent, whom Jenny so deeply mourned, had been left a widow some months before the little Sally was born. She had two children then living; Jenny, who was at that time about nine years old, and a boy, five years her senior. The mother had, before her marriage, been an upper servant in a genteel and respectable family, and had acquired, in consequence, a degree of cultivation superior to the situation in which her marriage afterwards placed her. The chief ambition of her heart was to keep her children under her own eye, and to train their infant minds to religion and virtue. But William, her boy, who was fourteen at the time of his father's death, soon began to be anxious to do something for himself; and, as the surest and shortest means of attaining that desirable end, he had fixed his mind upon the sea. In vain did his mother remind him that the salt wave had been the grave of his father, or endeavour to impress upon his mind the many anxious days and sleepless nights he would thus impose upon her; he saw no other means half so likely to enable him, in the course of a few years, to provide for her and his sisters, and to relieve her delicate frame from the hardship, which it was so ill calculated to bear, of labouring for their subsistence. "Besides, mother," remonstrated he, "I have no other chance of seeing the world, but by being a sailor, and I could never be happy without seeing some of the strange countries that my father used to tell me about. And you know, too," continued the generous boy, looking as he spoke, at his elder sister, to whom he was exceedingly attached, "by the time that I am out of my apprenticeship, Jenny will be almost grown up, and with the wages I can then earn, and your good management, we shall be able to give her some good schooling, and keep her at home with you; for she is too pretty and too delicate to go to service." Jenny was indeed beautiful, even at that early age, and every year, as it added to her height, increased also the grace and loveliness of her form. Her features were regular, her complexion not only fair but almost transparent, while her bright auburn locks hung in luxuriance about her face and shoulders. But it was not in the symmetry of feature or the grace of form, that Jenny's beauty was centered. It was the inward harmony which presided over all, and gave to her full blue eyes an expression of the most touching sensibility, that made her an object so delightful to look upon: and her mother felt, as she gazed upon her, that she must perform her own duties ill indeed, if, even without any higher advantages of education than she could herself give her, the lovely bud, as it expanded into maturity, did not become a flower worthy of being transplanted into the most highly cultivated garden.

William went to sea, and his mother had all the satisfaction that a mother's heart can enjoy, of hearing his master express, at every return of the vessel, the highest approbation of his conduct. Thus supported and comforted by her children, she laboured incessantly but cheerfully for her own and their support, at first as a seamstress; but this sedentary occupation being unfavourable to her constitution, she afterward rented a small cottage to which was attached a garden of considerable extent, which Jenny and she managed to cultivate themselves, with the aid of very little hired assistance; and, from the sale of the produce, she contrived to make a scanty but respectable livelihood. Time thus rolled on, Jenny had completed her thirteenth year, and her William was within a few weeks of being out of his time. But alas! William was away, and many weeks, nay months, had passed over without his having been heard of. Again and again, had she gone to the owners to inquire after him, but in vain; no tidings had been received of the vessel since she had left the port at which she had taken in her lading, and had sailed homeward bound; and though the usual length of the passage was that of two or three weeks at furthest, above thrice that number had elapsed without any tidings of her having been received.

The poor widow had, on the evening previous to her death, again been at the owner's on the mournful errand of inquiring after her lost boy, and had again returned disappointed and dejected. She had, on her way thither, been overtaken by a heavy shower of rain, which had wet her clothes quite through. She had paid no attention, however, to the circumstance; for her mind was engrossed with the thought of her child, and though Jenny, on her return home, used every means in her power to prevent her taking harm from it, a cough, to which she had always been subject, and which at that time was worse than usual, soon showed how much injury she had received. In a violent paroxysm of coughing, she had ruptured the blood-vessel that put so sudden a period to her existence, and left poor Jenny alone and destitute in the world,—alone except the little helpless being, whose dependence upon her seemed only to make her situation still more deplorable. Jenny's mind, however, was one of those which, though tuned to every gentle feeling, yet possessed a native strength which rose in proportion to the pressure of misfortune; so that, as she looked upon little Sally, and considered that she was now, in all probability, her only earthly protector, she felt a tenderness almost parental rise within her, and she determined to resist every inclination to selfish indulgence of her feelings, and exert every energy for the support of her little orphan sister,—the posthumous heir of poverty and sorrow. But let not those who are surrounded by plenty, even though mourning the loss of some beloved relative, imagine that they know the difficulties of the task that poor Jenny had to perform; nor yet those who though pressed by the hard gripe of poverty, have yet some remaining friends from whom they have a right to claim the tender balm of sympathy; for of these comforts poor Jenny was equally destitute, and she found herself standing alone in the wide world, poor, friendless, and forlorn; deprived of "every stay save innocence and Heaven." It is true, some faint hope still played about her heart, that her beloved brother—her kind, her affectionate William, might yet be restored to her; but every day, as it passed over her head, made that hope more faint, till, like the hues of its own bow, which gradually fade into ether, it died away by degrees in her bosom; and at length scarce a tint remained to give its colouring to the mental horizon. Still, however, she bore up and struggled against the despondency that threatened to lay hold of her mind; and even though grim want seemed ready to stare her in the face, her steadfast spirit, relying upon the goodness of that superintending Power, that is ever ready to be a father to the fatherless, looked up to heaven with a confident hope that she would not be forgotten. "Will He," she would say, as she watched the fruit ripen, or the seed germinate, "will He who takes care of all these things and gives them the nourishment which they require, turn a deaf ear to the cry of his orphan children? It cannot be! That little bird," she continued, "is pouring forth its soul in thankfulness and joy, though it has no stores laid up for to-morrow, and I too will trust to the same protecting Power." But from what source to-morrow's fare was to be derived, poor Jenny could form but little idea. Autumn was now far advanced, and the produce of their garden had become very scanty, whilst the expenses attendant on her mother's funeral had entirely exhausted their small store of money; so that when the little Sally complained of hunger, and begged that she would give her something to eat, she put the last morsel of bread into her hands, totally at a loss to conjecture whence the money was to be derived that was to purchase more. "Why will you not eat any yourself, Jenny?" said the child, as she eagerly devoured the dry morsel. "I am sure you must be hungry, for I have not seen you eat any thing to-day." "I do not want to eat," replied Jenny, forcing herself to speak in a cheerful tone, though she felt at the same moment that the coarsest food would be to her a most delicious repast. "Is it because there is no more in the house?" asked Sally, whose mind, for the first time, received the idea of their scanty provision. Jenny was silent. "There is more bread here than I want," said the child, breaking, as she spoke, the piece of bread that she had before declared was not half so much as she could eat. "Take this piece, Jenny, I don't want it, and I am sure you will like it after you have tasted it."

Jenny had watched, with a dry eye, her little sister devouring their last morsel of food, whilst she herself was suffering under the most importunate demands of hunger; but this tender sympathy in the child, and her willingness to give up a part of what she so much needed herself, brought a flood of tears to her eyes. "He, who feeds the young ravens when they cry cannot let such sweetness and innocence suffer for want of food," said she inwardly, as clasping the child in her arms, she bathed her cheeks with her tears. "Don't cry, Jenny," said the affectionate little girl, as she wiped the tears from her sister's eyes with her little apron. "Don't cry. Indeed I don't want any more just now, and I dare say you will get another loaf before I am hungry again. And who-knows but William may come back, and then we shall have every thing that we want? You have not been at the owner's lately, Jenny, to ask about the ship," continued the child, anxious to divert her sister's mind from the sad subject of her reflections. "Why don't you go, Jenny?"

"I am afraid there is little use in it," answered her sister in a tone of despondency.

"But try, Jenny, just try once more, and perhaps good news may come when you are not expecting it."