“No,” said Mrs. Convers, “and by all accounts is not more disorderly.”
“Well, that is not our fault, Mrs. Convers, if we plant and water, we cannot give the increase.”
Mrs. Wilson should have remembered that God does give the increase to those that rightly plant, and faithfully water. But Mrs. W.'s tongue was familiar with many texts, that had never entered her understanding, or influenced her heart. Mrs. Wilson continued—“Sister Convers, I feel it to be my duty to warn you—you, the daughter and granddaughter of worthy divines who abhorred all such sinful practices, that you should own that you send your children to dancing-school, astonishes and grieves my spirit. Do you know that Mr. C———, in reporting the awakening in his parish, mentions that not one of the girls that attended dancing-school were among the converts, whereas two, who had engaged to attend it, but had received a remarkable warning in a dream, were among the first and brightest?”
“I would as soon,” she continued, “follow one of my children to the grave, as to see her in that broad road to destruction, which leads through a ball-room.”
“It is easy enough,” replied Mrs. Convers, (adjusting her smart mourning cap at the glass) “to run down sins we have no fancy for.”
Mrs. Wilson's ready answer was prevented by the entrance of Jane's humble friend, who asked, if the ladies had determined what was to be done with the little girl.
Mrs. Wilson in her vehemence had quite forgotten the object of their meeting, but now brought back to it, and instigated by a feeling of superiority to Mrs. Convers, and a little nettled by the excuses of Mrs. Daggett, which she thought were meant as a boast of superior piety, she said, that as she had no dancing-masters to pay, and had not “that morning agreed” to adopt a Cherokee—she could afford to take Jane for a little while. The child, she said. must not think of depending upon her for life, for though she was a widow, and could do what she was a mind to her with her own, she could not justify herself in taking the children's meat"—and she would have added—"throw it to the dogs,"—but she was interrupted by a person who, unregarded by the ladies, had taken her seat among them.
This was a middle aged woman, whose mind had been unsettled in her youth by misfortunes. Having no mischievous propensities, she was allowed to indulge her vagrant inclinations, in wandering from house to house, and town, to town, her stimulated imagination furnishing continual amusement to the curious by her sagacious observations, and unfailing mirth to the young and vulgar, by the fanciful medley in which she arrayed her person. There were some who noticed in her a quickness of feeling that indicated original sensibility, which, perhaps, had been the cause of her sufferings. The dogs of a surly master would sometimes bark at her, because her dress resembled the obnoxious livery of the beggar—a class they had been taught to chase with pharisaical antipathy. But except when her timid nature was alarmed by the sortie of dogs, which she always called the devil's servants, crazy Bet found a welcome wherever she went.
It is common for persons in her unfortunate circumstances to seek every scene of excitement. The sober, sedate manners of the New-England people, and the unvaried tenor of their lives, afford but few of these. Wherever there was an awakening, or a camp-meeting, crazy Bet was sure to be found; she was often seen by moonlight wandering in the church-yard, plucking the nettles from the graves, and wreathing the monuments with ground-pine. She would watch for whole nights by the side of a grave in her native village, where twenty years before were deposited the remains of her lover, who was drowned on the day before they were to have been married. She would range the woods, and climb to the very mountain's-top, to get sweet flowers, to scatter over the mound of earth that marked his grave. She would plant rode bushes and lilies there, and when they, bloomed, pluck them up, because she said their purity and brightness mocked the decay below.
She has been seen, when the sun came rejoicing over the eastern mountain's brow, and shot its first clear brilliant ray on the grave, to clap her hands, and heard to shout, "I see an angel in the sun, and he saith 'Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such, the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.'"
Poor Bet was sure to follow in every funeral procession, and sometimes she would thrust herself amidst the mourners, and say, "the dead could not rest in their graves, if they were not followed there by one true mourner." She has been seen to spring forward when the men were carelessly placing the coffin in the grave with the head to the east, and exclaim, "are ye heathens, that ye serve the dead thus? Know ye not the 'Lord Cometh in the east.'" She always lingered behind after the crowd had dispersed, and busily moved and removed the sods; and many a time has she fallen asleep, with her head resting on the new-made grave, for, she said, there was no sleep so quiet as 'where the wicked did not trouble.'
The quick eye of crazy Bet detected, through their thin guise, the pride and hypocrisy and selfishness of the sisters. She interrupted Mrs. Wilson as she was concluding her most inappropriate quotation, 'Throw it to the dogs;' said she, 'It is more like taking the prey from the wolf.' She then rose, singing in an under voice,
| "Oh! be the law of love fulfilled In every act and thought, Each angry passion for removed. Each selfish view forgot." |
She approached the bed, and withdrawing the curtain, exposed the little sufferer to view. She had lain the open Bible on the pillow, where she had often rested beside her mother, and laying her cheek on it had fallen asleep. It was open at the 5th chapter of John, which she had so often read to her mother, that she had turned instinctively to it. The page was blistered with her tears.
Careless of the future, which to her seemed to admit no light, her exhausted nature had found relief in sleep, at the very moment her aunts were so unfeelingly deciding her fate. Her pale check still wet with her tears, and the deep sadness of a face of uncommon sweetness, would have warmed with compassion any breast that had not been steeled by selfishness.
"Shame, shame, upon you!" said the maniac; "has pride turned your hearts to stone, that ye cannot shelter this poor little ewe-lamb in your fold? Ah! ye may spread your branches, like the green bay tree, but the tempest will come, and those who look for you shall not find you; but this little frost-bitten bud shall bloom in the paradise of God for ever and ever."
Untying a piece of crape which she had wound around her throat, (for she was never without some badge of mourning,) she stooped and gently wiped the tears from. Jane's cheek, saying, in a low tone, "Bottles full of odours, which are the tears of saints;" then rising, she carefully closed the curtains, and busied herself for some minutes in pinning them together. She then softly, and on tiptoe, returned to her seat; and taking some ivy from her broken straw bonnet, began twisting it with the crape. "This," said she, "is a weed for Elder Carrol's hat; he lost his wife yesterday, and I have been to the very top of Tauconnick to get him a weed, that shall last fresh as long as his grief. See," added she, and she held it up, laughing, "it has begun to wilt already; it is a true token."
She then rose from her seat, and with a quick step, between running and walking, left the room; but returning as suddenly, she said slowly and emphatically, "Offend not this little one; for her angel does stand before my Father. It were better that a mill-stone were hanged about your neck." Then, courtseying to the ground, she left them.
Bet's solemn and slow manner of pronouncing this warning, was so different from her usually hurried utterance, that it struck a momentary chill to the hearts of the sisters. Mrs. Daggett was the first to break the silence.
"What does she mean?" said she. "Has Jane experienced religion?"
"Experienced religion!—no," replied Mrs. Wilson. "How should she? She has not been to a meeting since her mother was first taken sick; and no longer ago than the day after her mother's death, when I talked