May Fleming - The Actress' Daughter - A Novel

"Lor! Lor! what a night it is any way. Since I was first born, and that's thirty-five – no, forty-five years come next June, I never heern sich win' as that there, fit to tear the roof off! Well, this is Christmas Eve, and we ginerally do hev a spell o' weather 'bout this time. Here you Fly! Fly! you little black imp you! if you don't stop that falling asleep over the fire, and stir your lazy stumps, I'll tie you up and give you such a switchin' as you never had in all your born days. Ar-r-r-r! there I vow to Sam if that derned old tabby cat hain't got her nose stuck into the apple sass! Scat! you hussy! Fly-y-y! you ugly little black ace-o'-spades! will you wake up afore I twist your neck for you?"

And the speaker of this spirited address – a tall, thin, pasteboard female, as erect as a ramrod and as flat as a shingle, with a hard, uncompromising face, and a hawk-like gray eye, caught hold of the drowsy little darkey nodding in the chimney-corner, and shook her as if she had been a flourishing little fruit tree in harvest time.

"P-please, Miss Jerry, 'scuse me – I didn't go for to do it," stammered Fly, with a very wide-awake and startled face. "I wasn't asleep, old Mist – "

"Oh! you wasn't asleep, old Mist – wasn't you," sneered Miss Jerusha Glory Ann Skamp, the sonorous and high-sounding title claimed by the antiquated maiden lady as her rightful property; "you wasn't asleep wasn't you? Oh, no! in course you wasn't! You never sleep at all, do you? Betsey Periwinkle never runs off with the meat, and the cold vittals, or drinks the milk, or pokes her nose into the apple sass, or punkin slap-jack, while you're a snoozin' in the corner, does she? Ain't you 'shamed o' yourself, you nasty little black image, to stand up there and talk to one as has been a mother to you year in and year out, like that? Ar Lor'! there ain't nothin' but ungratytood in this 'ere world. Betsey Periwinkle, you ugly brute! I see you a lookin' at the apple sass, but just let me ketch you at it agin, that's all! Oh, my stars and thingumbobs! the way I'm afflicted with that lazy little nigger and that thievin' cat, and me a poor lone woman too! If it ain't enough to make a body go and do something to themselves I should admire to know what is. Here, you Fly! jump up and fry the pancakes for supper, and put the tea to draw, and set that johnny-cake in the oven, and then set the table, and don't be lazin' around like a singed cat all the time."

And having delivered herself of these commands all in a breath, with the air of a Napoleon in petticoats, Miss Jerusha marched, with the tramp of a grenadier, out of the kitchen into the "best room," drew several yards of stocking from an apparently bottomless pocket, deposited herself gingerly in the embraces of a cushioned rocking-chair, the only sort of embrace Miss Jerusha had any faith in, and began knitting away as if the fate of nations depended on it.

And while she sits there, straight, rigid, and erect as a church steeple, let me describe her and the house itself more minutely.

A New England "best room!" Who does not know what it looks like? The shining, yellow-painted floor, whereon no sacrilegious speck of dust ever rests; the six stiff-backed, cane-seated chairs, standing around like grim sentinels on duty, in the exact position to an inch wherein they have stood ever since they were chairs; the huge black chest of drawers that looms up dark and ominous between the two front windows, those windows themselves glittering, shining, flashing, perfect jewels of cleanliness, protected from flies and other "noxious insects" by stiff, rustling green paper blinds; the table opposite the fireplace, whereon lies, in solemn, solitary grandeur, a large family Bible, Fox's Book of Martyrs, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe.

Miss Jerusha, being frightfully sensible, as ladies of a certain age always are, looked upon all works of fiction with a steady contempt too intense for words; and therefore Robinson Crusoe had remained as unmolested on the table as he had in his sea-girt island from the day a deluded friend had presented it to her until the present hour. In fact, Miss Jerusha Skamp did not affect literature of any kind much, and looked upon reading as a downright waste of time and patience. On Sundays, it is true, she considered it a religious duty to spell through a chapter in the Bible, beginning at the first of Genesis, and marching right through, in spite of all obstacles, to the end of Revelations – a feat she had once performed in her life, and was now half way through again. The hard words and proper names in the Old Testament were a serious trial to Miss Jerusha, and, combined with the laziness of her little negro maid Fly, and the dishonest propensities of her cat Periwinkle, were the chief troubles and tribulations of her life. Miss Jerusha's opinion was that it would have been just as easy for the children of Israel to have been born John Smith or Peter Jones as Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego, and a great deal easier for posterity. Next to the Bible, Fox's "Book of Martyrs" was a work wherein Miss Jerusha's soul delighted, and wonderful was her appreciation and approval of the ghastly pictures which embellished that saintly volume. "The Pilgrim's Progress" she passed over with silent contempt as a book "nobody could see the pint of."

Besides the best room, Miss Jerusha's cottage contained a kitchen about the size of a well grown bandbox, and overhead there were two sleeping apartments, one occupied by that ancient vestal herself, and the other used as a store-room and lumber-room generally.

Fly and Betsey Periwinkle sought their repose and shakedown before the kitchen fire, being enjoined each night before she left them by Miss Jerusha to "keep an eye on the house and things;" but as Fly generally snored from the moment the last flutter of Miss Jerusha's dress disappeared until a sound shaking from that lady awoke her next morning, and Betsey Periwinkle, after indulging in a series of short naps, amused herself with reconnoitering the premises and feloniously purloining everything she could lay her paws on that seemed to be good and eatable, it is to be supposed the admonitions were not very rigidly attended to. There was not much danger of robbers, however, for the cottage was situated nearly two miles from any other habitation, on the very outskirts of the flourishing township of Burnfield, a spot lonely and isolated enough to suit even the hermit-like taste of Miss Jerusha.

The back windows of the cottage commanded a view of the sea, spreading away and away until lost in the horizon beyond. From the front was seen the forest path lonely and silent, with the dark pine woods bounding the vision and extending away for miles. In the rear of the house was a small garden, filled in summer with vegetables of all sorts, and the product of this garden formed the principal source of Miss Jerusha's income. The old maid was not rich by any means, but with the vegetables and poultry she raised herself, the stockings she knit, the cloth she wove, the wool she dyed, the candy she made and sold to the Burnfield grocers, and the sewing she "took in" she managed to live comfortably enough and "lay up something," as she said herself, "for a rainy day" – a figure of speech which was popularly supposed to refer to times of adversity and old age.

A strong-minded, clear-headed, sharp-tongued, wide-awake, uncompromising specimen of femaledom "away down east" was Miss Jerusha. Never since the time she had first donned pantalettes, and had "swopped" her rag doll for Mary Ann Brown's china mug, could that respectable individual, the oldest inhabitant, recollect any occasion wherein Miss Jerusha had not got the best of the bargain, whatever that bargain might be. Though never remarkable at any time for her personal beauty, yet tradition averred that her thriftiness and smartness had on one or two occasions so far captivated certain Jonathans of her district, that they had gallantly tendered their heart, hand and brand new swallow-tails. But looking upon mankind as an inferior race of animals, made more for ornament than use, Miss Jerusha had contemptuously refused them, and had marched on with grim determination through the vale of years in her single blessedness up to her present mature age of five-and-forty.