Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

  CHAPTER XVI

  FIRM AND INFIRM

  Strange as it may appear, our quiet little home was not yet disturbed bythat great discovery of gold. The Sawyer went up to the summit of esteemin public opinion; but to himself and to us he was the same as ever. Heworked with his own hard hands and busy head just as he used to do; foralthough the mill was still in ruins, there was plenty of the finer workto do, which always required hand-labor. And at night he would sit atthe end of the table furthest from the fire-place, with his spectacleson, and his red cheeks glowing, while he designed the future mill, whichwas to be built in the spring, and transcend every mill ever heard,thought, or dreamed of.

  We all looked forward to a quiet winter, snug with warmth and cheerin-doors, and bright outside with sparkling trees, brisk air, and frostyappetite, when a foolish idea arose which spoiled the comfort at leastof two of us. Ephraim Gundry found out, or fancied, that he was entirelyfilled with love of a very young maid, who never dreamed of such things,and hated even to hear of them; and the maid, unluckily, was myself.

  During the time of his ailment I had been with him continually, beingonly too glad to assuage his pain, or turn his thoughts away from it.I partly suspected that he had incurred his bitter wound for my sake;though I never imputed his zeal to more than a young man's natural wrathat an outrage. But now he left me no longer in doubt, and made memost uncomfortable. Perhaps I was hard upon him, and afterward I oftenthought so, for he was very kind and gentle; but I was an orphan child,and had no one to advise me in such matters. I believe that he shouldhave considered this, and allowed me to grow a little older; but perhapshe himself was too young as yet and too bashful to know how to managethings. It was the very evening after his return from Sacramento, andthe beauty of the weather still abode in the soft warm depth aroundus. In every tint of rock and tree and playful glass of river a quietclearness seemed to lie, and a rich content of color. The grandeur ofthe world was such that one could only rest among it, seeking neithervoice nor thought.

  Therefore I was more surprised than pleased to hear my name ring loudlythrough the echoing hollows, and then to see the bushes shaken, and aneager form leap out. I did not answer a word, but sat with a wreath ofwhite bouvardia and small adiantum round my head, which I had plaitedanyhow.

  "What a lovely dear you are!" cried Firm, and then he seemed frightenedat his own words.

  "I had no idea that you would have finished your dinner so soon as this,Mr. Firm."

  "And you did not want me. You are vexed to see me. Tell the truth, MissRema."

  "I always tell the truth," I answered; "and I did not want to bedisturbed just now. I have so many things to think of."

  "And not me among them. Oh no, of course you never think of me, Erema."

  "It is very unkind of you to say that," I answered, looking clearly athim, as a child looks at a man. "And it is not true, I assure you, Firm.Whenever I have thought of dear Uncle Sam, I very often go on to thinkof you, because he is so fond of you."

  "But not for my own sake, Erema; you never think of me for my own sake."

  "But yes, I do, I assure you, Mr. Firm; I do greatly. There is scarcelya day that I do not remember how hungry you are, and I think of you."

  "Tush!" replied Firm, with a lofty gaze. "Even for a moment that doesnot in any way express my meaning. My mind is very much above all eatingwhen it dwells upon you, Erema. I have always been fond of you, Erema."

  "You have always been good to me, Firm," I said, as I managed to geta great branch between us. "After your grandfather, and Suan Isco, andJowler, I think that I like you best of almost any body left to me. Andyou know that I never forget your slippers."

  "Erema, you drive me almost wild by never understanding me. Now will youjust listen to a little common-sense? You know that I am not romantic."

  "Yes, Firm; yes, I know that you never did any thing wrong in any way."

  "You would like me better if I did. What an extraordinary thing it is!Oh, Erema, I beg your pardon."

  He had seen in a moment, as men seem to do, when they study the muchquicker face of a girl, that his words had keenly wounded me--that Ihad applied them to my father, of whom I was always thinking, though Iscarcely ever spoke of him. But I knew that Firm had meant no harm, andI gave him my hand, though I could not speak.

  "My darling," he said, "you are very dear to me--dearer than all theworld besides. I will not worry you any more. Only say that you do nothate me."

  "How could I? How could any body? Now let us go in and attend to UncleSam. He thinks of every body before himself."

  "And I think of every body after myself. Is that what you mean, Erema?"

  "To be sure! if you like. You may put any meaning on my words thatyou think proper. I am accustomed to things of that sort, and I pay noattention whatever, when I am perfectly certain that I am right."

  "I see," replied Firm, applying one finger to the side of his nose indeep contemplation, which, of all his manners, annoyed me most. "I seehow it is; Miss Rema is always perfectly certain that she is right, andthe whole of the rest of the world quite wrong. Well, after all, thereis nothing like holding a first-rate opinion of one's self."

  "You are not what I thought of you," I cried, being vexed beyondbearance by such words, and feeling their gross injustice. "If you wishto say any thing more, please to leave it until you recover your temper.I am not quite accustomed to rudeness."

  With these words, I drew away and walked off, partly in earnest andpartly in joke, not wishing to hear another word; and when I lookedback, being well out of sight, there he sat still, with his head on hishands, and my heart had a little ache for him.

  However, I determined to say no more, and to be extremely careful. Icould not in justice blame Ephraim Gundry for looking at me very often.But I took good care not to look at him again unless he said somethingthat made me laugh, and then I could scarcely help it. He was sharpenough very soon to find out this; and then he did a thing which wasmost unfair, as I found out long afterward. He bought an Americanjest-book, full of ideas wholly new to me, and these he committed toheart, and brought them out as his own productions. If I had only knownit, I must have been exceedingly sorry for him. But Uncle Sam used tolaugh and rub his hands, perhaps for old acquaintance' sake; and whenUncle Sam laughed, there was nobody near who could help laughing withhim. And so I began to think Firm the most witty and pleasant of men,though I tried to look away.

  But perhaps the most careful and delicate of things was to see how UncleSam went on. I could not understand him at all just then, and thoughthim quite changed from my old Uncle Sam; but afterward, when I cameto know, his behavior was as clear and shallow as the water of his ownriver. He had very strange ideas about what he generally called "thefemale kind." According to his ideas (and perhaps they were not sounusual among mankind, especially settlers), all "females" were of agood but weak and consistently inconsistent sort. The surest way to makethem do whatever their betters wanted, was to make them think that itwas not wanted, but was hedged with obstacles beyond their power toovercome, and so to provoke and tantalize them to set their hearts upondoing it. In accordance with this idea (than which there can be nonemore mistaken), he took the greatest pains to keep me from having a wordto say to Firm; and even went so far as to hint, with winks and nodsof pleasantry, that his grandson's heart was set upon the pretty MissSylvester, the daughter of a man who owned a herd of pigs, much too nearour saw-mills, and herself a young woman of outrageous dress, and ina larger light contemptible. But when Mr. Gundry, without any words,conveyed this piece of news to me, I immediately felt quite a liking forgaudy but harmless Pennsylvania--for so her parents had named her whenshe was too young to help it; and I heartily hoped that she might suitFirm, which she seemed all the more likely to do as his conduct couldnot be called noble. Upon that point, however, I said not a word,leaving him purely to judge for himself, and feeling it a great reliefthat now he could not say any thing more to me. I was glad that histaste was so easily p
leased, and I told Suan Isco how glad I was.

  This I had better have left unsaid, for it led to a great explosion,and drove me away from the place altogether before the new mill wasfinished, and before I should otherwise have gone from friends who wereso good to me; not that I could have staid there much longer, even ifthis had never come to pass; for week by week and month by month I wasgrowing more uneasy: uneasy not at my obligations or dependence uponmere friends (for they managed that so kindly that I seemed to conferthe favor), but from my own sense of lagging far behind my duty.

  For now the bright air, and the wholesome food, and the pleasure ofgoodness around me, were making me grow, without knowledge or notice,into a tall and not altogether to be overlooked young woman. I wasexceedingly shy about this, and blushed if any one spoke of it; but yetin my heart I felt it was so; and how could I help it? And when peoplesaid, as rough people will, and even Uncle Sam sometimes, "Handsome isas handsome does," or "Beauty is only skin-deep," and so on, I made itmy duty not to be put out, but to bear it in mind and be thankful. Andthough I had no idea of any such influence at the moment, I hope thatthe grandeur of nature around and the lofty style of every thingmay have saved me from dwelling too much on myself, as PennsylvaniaSylvester did.

  Now the more I felt my grown-up age and health and buoyant vigor, thesurer I knew that the time was come for me to do some good with them;not to benefit the world in general, in a large and scattery way (asmany young people set out to do, and never get any further), but toright the wrong of my own house, and bring home justice to my own heart.This may be thought a partial and paltry object to set out with; andit is not for me to say otherwise. At the time, it occurred to me in noother light except as my due business, and I never took any large viewat all. But even now I do believe (though not yet in pickle of wisdom)that if every body, in its own little space and among its own littlemovements, will only do and take nothing without pure taste of the saltof justice, no reeking atrocity of national crimes could ever taint theheaven.

  Such questions, however, become me not. I have only to deal with verylittle things, sometimes too slim to handle well, and too hazy to bewoven; and if they seem below my sense and dignity to treat of, I canonly say that they seemed very big at the time when I had to encounterthem.

  For instance, what could be more important, in a little world of life,than for Uncle Sam to be put out, and dare even to think ill of me?Yet this he did; and it shows how shallow are all those theories of theother sex which men are so pleased to indulge in. Scarcely any thingcould be more ridiculous from first to last, when calmly and trulyconsidered, than the firm belief which no power of reason could for thetime root out of him.

  Uncle Sam, the dearest of all mankind to me, and the very kindest, waspositively low-enough to believe, in his sad opinion of the female race,that my young head was turned because of the wealth to which I had noclaim, except through his own justice. He had insisted at first that thewhole of that great nugget belonged to me by right of sole discovery.I asked him whether, if any stranger had found it, it would have beenconsidered his, and whether he would have allowed a "greaser," uponfinding, to make off with it. At the thought of this, Mr. Gundry gavea little grunt, and could not go so far as to maintain that view of it.But he said that my reasoning did not fit; that I was not a greaser,but a settled inhabitant of the place, and entitled to all a settler'srights; that the bed of the river would have been his grave but for therisk of my life, and therefore whatever I found in the bed of the riverbelonged to me, and me only.

  In argument he was so much stronger than I could ever attempt to bethat I gave it up, and could only say that if he argued forever itcould never make any difference. He did not argue forever, but onlygrew obstinate and unpleasant, so that I yielded at last to own the halfshare of the bullion.

  Very well. Every body would have thought, who has not studied the natureof men or been dragged through it heavily, that now there could be nomore trouble between two people entirely trusting each other, and onlyanxious that the other should have the best of it. Yet, instead of thatbeing the case, the mischief, the myriad mischief, of money set in,until I heartily wished sometimes that my miserable self was down in thehole which the pelf had left behind it.

  For what did Uncle Sam take into his head (which was full of generosityand large ideas, so loosely packed that little ones grew between them,especially about womankind)--what else did he really seem to think, withthe downright stubbornness of all his thoughts, but that I, his poordebtor and pensioner and penniless dependent, was so set up and elatedby this sudden access of fortune that henceforth none of the sawing racewas high enough for me to think of? It took me a long time to believethat so fair and just a man ever could set such interpretation upon me.And when it became too plain that he did so, truly I know not whethergrief or anger was uppermost in my troubled heart.