LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 337, 12 July 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE WIDOW CASE. A Dear Hunt. Continued. ' Does the Widow Case live here ?' 'l'm Widder Case,' she croaked. Here was number one ! but not my widow, evidently. I made some futile errand about the mill, and left her mumbling and croaking at the door, to follow the next direction, hunting up another widow in Parsonsville, a manufacturing village, that of right was South Pekin, but, like most villages of the kind, had been called after the manufacturer who had built it up. Here I wandered up street and down, investigated at least sixteen whitewashed tenement houses, each as precisely like the others as the oil jars of the Forty Thieves, and succeeded in finding two more Widow Cases—one a buxom female of fifty, the other a poor creature just dying of consumption. I invented some excuse on the spur of the moment for my appearance to each of them, but I began to understand the situation. If I could have explained it to one of them, doubtless my quest would have been over, but I knew better what was the strife of tongues in a country town like Pekin, and I took an odd pleasure uvjihe trouble of the search; for

I was not all this zeal and effort for her sake, whose lovely lips seemed to tremble into a smile whenever I gazed on their likeness ? Perhaps had the weather been January instead of June, or the roads been sandy and shadeless instead of the tree-set tracks they were, sometimes running through orchards fair and fragrant with pinkest bloom, sometimes in woods full of summer's delicate odours and the songs of all summer celebrating birds, while the track was fringed everywhere with violets blue as the sky above, crowded eyebrights, milky strawberry blooms, and the long budded garlands of the dew-berry tangled in and out among sunny frank-faced dandelions—perhaps but for this my enthusiasm might have failed; but to be a dreaming lover, driving along through country lanes and woods in early June, is to be consciously or unconsciously a blissful man. I know, for I have tried it very often. Sometimes, I must confess, I wondered to myself how many more times I should do it. I had sailed on the bright waves so often. I had no idea at all how it felt to be drowned. Next day I heard of another Widow Case in North Pekin. I was half a day in finding her, and then she asked me to stay to dinner. I did not refuse, for I was very hungry, and the fare at Hodger's Hotel was not enticing. This widow was young —perhaps twenty-five —small, alert, smooth of tongue, and a very Jesuit at questioning. I heard of her afterwards in no complimentary fashion, and found she had French blood in her veins, which accounted for her celerity of mind and body, her airs and gaces of sixteen, her suave insincere lips, her restless eyes, and well-acted shrinking modesty. It took all my legal acumen to avoid making a clean breast of it to the little wretch. I asked Smith when I got back where she lived, with a sublime air of ignorance and indifference.

' Oh, Widder Luman Case! Well, see here, square, you ain't overly acquainted in these' parts. If you hain't got any hefty business up that way, I'd kinder keep this side o' that little critture. She's curus. I don't want to say nothin' agin her; I hain't no call to say nothin' agin her; but I jest as good not go nigh her as to go nigh her; but I'll tell ye whereabouts her place is ef ye've got ter go there.' Next day it rained. A rainy day in Hodger's Hotel damped my zeal much.. I think two would have damped it off, as gardeners say, but luckily it was only a day. Sunshine and cheer returned with morning. But why should I drag out my story ? I scoured Pekin in vain. North Pekin, "West Pekin, Pekin street, Pekin Corners ; even to the edges of Lovely street and the outlying hamlets of Avon and Simsbury. I found out nine Widow Cases, of every age, manner, and complexion known to the female sex in America, I believe. Hair of grey, black, blonde, and red; waved, curly, straight as tow; eyes various as a box of artificial orbs ; but none—oh, not one ! with the deep brown hair full of golden threads and the dark sweet eyes I had fully made up my mind belonged to ' Lorainy.' But if I did not find a widow after my heart's desire, I found a friend ; for one fine day, driving fast as the son of Nimshi, absorbed in vexation and disappointment, I gave too much of the roadway to a passing team, hit my wheel against a log, and in less time than I can tell it found myself lying in the road with a broken leg. The horse took himself off, and by and-by I had to pay damages ; but that day of reckoning was not at hand, and I thought of no damages but my own when I was picked up and carried into Deacon Peters's house, that fortunately was at hand, and delivered over to the tender mercies of Mrs Peters and the Par sonsville doctor. I thought I appreciated women before, but I found I had only known girls...giggling, glorified, evanescent angels, who would have been as ixseful in this emergency as a castle of spun sugar or a swan'sdown tippet. Deacon Peters's wife was a real woman —sensible, kindly, tender, and generous ; full of devices to soothe pain and save trouble. She did' her work in the world with a serious ease and condescension that seemed to make it a matter of dignified amusement, and she enlivened it all with a fund of keen humour and quick apprehension that was delightful to study. I was as restless, as cross, as impatient as men are apt to be under the circumstances, but she never let her good nature nor abated her care; and, best of all, long before my six weeks of impatience and ache were over, I had found out from her all about my Widow Case, whose name was really Lorana, and who had gone to teach school near Canaan, and board with her aunt, Miss Fyler. It was exasperating to have found her now, when I could not follow her, but it was much gained to know of her being a fixture somewhere. At least I thought so, till, having borne my bedridden state to the end, and ' then gone back to H... to settle some business that needed personal overlooking, I found myself, the last week in August, settled as a ' city boarder' in Canaan, and having hunted up the little red school-house, some three miles away, where the Widow Case taught, I found it just closed for a vacation. I should have torn my hair, only it hurts so. I did a few proper and frantic things—perhaps a little profanity escaped me unawares. In excitement no man is fully responsible. I always felt a great respect for the recording angel who (on good Mr Sterne's authority) blotted out Uncle Toby's oath with a tear ; it showed sense. But what to do now ? I had engaged board for a month in a cheap farmhouse; I was a little romantic for a man of thirty ; I wanted the widow Case to love me and not my money, so I dressed in my oldest remaining clothes, lived frugally, and made inquiries about the schools in and around the little town, as if I wanted a place to teach. I soon found that Mrs Case was coming back to Canaan to teach in the academy, and that a classical teacher also was wanted there; so I offered myself to fill the piece, and was accepted. It may be said by literalists and people who live in Litchfield County that there is no academy in Caanan. I have said hereinbefore that I am not G-. Washington, and that I can tell a lie if it be necessary. When I say Canaan, I mean Canaan in a Pickwickian sense. I do not wish to bring down on my devoted head the wrath of all the true Canaanites if I should happen to say anything derogatory about their delightful village; much less do I wish to have any maiden lady of sixty, with a fierce auburn front, piercing grey eyes that had a keen and dreadful way of looking at one over a pair of silver-bowed spectacles, a sharp voice, and a generally pointed manner, who may live in Canaan proper, descend on me miserable, and say, I reviled, or, in the vernacular, ' sassed' her, under the name of Miss Fyler; so I repeat the fact that I only call

the town where I did engage to teach in the academy, and where the real Miss Fyler, with all the tokens and ear-marks conscientiously enumerated here, did live, — I only call it Canaan, I say, in a Pickwickian sense; wherefore may all the tribes—Hivites, Jebusitcs, Hittites, and all the rest—let me tell my tale to its end in peace and good- will. For very little of either did I get from the aforesaid Miss Fyler ! The first day she set eyes on me in church, where I was behaving like a lamb, and singing a very respectable tenor in the next square pew to her own, she glared at me like an unfascinating serpent. She transfixed me. I felt my flesh creep and my hair crinkle. She hated me from the beginning with the fatal prescience some women possess. I think she felt it in her bones that I had come there to see the Widow Case, and being a man-hater of the most vicious and aggravated type, she determined to keep that precious morsel from the clutch of any man, and dry it for her owu use. I heard her tell an old crony on the church steps that I was ' a city fool' —extremest term of reprobation from her lips —but I did not care. School began the 15th of September, and then I should see the Widow Case ! It was enough for me. So I wearied through the flat solitudes of a country village till the blessed day cause. I [was at the closed doors of the academy even before its principal, the Rev Philetus Lamb, came with the key. I was first to explore its atmosphere of dust, slate pencils, and old hats, for the glazier's art did not flourish in Canaan, and many specimens of head-gear as degraded as Imperial Caesar ' Stopped a hole to keep the wind away.' The day passed in marshalling a crowd of rough boys and giggling girls, but no widow dawned on my disgusted e3res. I ventured to ask the Reverend Philetus if he expected me to teach the sixty odd scholars all myself, and received for answer:

' No, sir; no, sir ; certainly not, sir. I expect the women-folks along to-morrow. Miss Case she will teach the English branches —er —grammer 'nd 'rithmetic 'nd singin'; Sewsan Jackson she'll sewperintend the priln'ry department; and you'll do classics an' g'ometry. I—well—l—er—do the generalities —gov'ment, manners, finances —er— c'llect odds and ends as it were. I don't do a great sight of teachin'.' ' Lucky for the scholars,' thought I; but I went home without saying so. And the next day, as I was hanging up my hat in the vestibule, I heard the principal clearing his throat violently just behind me. ' A-ahem ! he-em! Mr Goddard, le'me make ye acquainted with Miss Case. He's our classical teacher, Miss Case. Pleased to introduce ye!' Good gracious! there she was. I could only bow and choke and burn up to the roots of my hair; for hers was red, undeniably red; waving and glossy enough, but a dark rich red; and her eyes, that looked so deep and sad in the picture, were a bright red hazel, the very color of her hair, under pencilled brows aud curling lashes of dark brown. Pensive eyes, indeed. They had the bright undaunted look of a lioness, and her full scarlet lips quivered with secret fun as she looked at my gasping self. I don't blame her now. I almost hated her then. And when I went home at noon I evicted her picture from my breast pocket with fury. I should have thrown it in the fire, but there was none. Red hair! And I had always said and thought that the tortures of the Inquisition should not induce me to like a woman with red hair. And then I remembered I didn't; and then I recollected I did. Here I had tied myself down to a dusty, troublesome, stupid country school for the sake of a woman with red hair ! One thing I could and would do. After a week or two I would find teaching too much for me, and leave. But that was not all. I had spent a whole long summer running after this chimera, this fraud, this mistake. I was enraged. I had to smoke six cigars and take a three-mile walk before I could think of sleep that night. How I hated the thought of the Widow Case. Had I not seen nine of them, all homely ? How could I have hoped the tenth would look any better? The Case family were not judges of female beauty, evidently. I exhausted the English language, as far as ejaculations and expletives go, on the still air of the country, till, tired out and shivering,'! went home to bed, only to dream of the Widow Case, with a coronal of waving fire above her brow, and two locomotive head-lights for eyes, facing me whichever way I turned, with intent to burn and slay. But morning came, and to school I must go. I was late, of course, for I delayed till the last moment ; and as I entered, the Reverend Philetus was winding up a long prayer. I sat down just inside the door, and right before me sat the widow, her head bent on a chair back, aud a blaze of sunshine bathing it, and changing the deep redness into living, burning gold. Every stray thread that coiled about the white temples or massive braid glittered like a thread of fire; it was my dream. In the course of the day I saw her many times, and a subtle fascination, akin to terror, fixed my gaze on her always. I found out that her complexion was delicate as any rose-gleaming pearl shell, her eyes radiant, her voice—strangest of strange charms in New England—sweet, delicate, cultivated; it had as many tones as the bird-songs of summer; now it was deep and sad, now gay and mocking; pleading, rallying, incisive, acute, full of sarcasm, full of tenderness. I caught myself wondering what it would be inspired by fervent passion, informed with love. Yes, lam convinced it was her voice that subjugated me; it could not have been her beauty, for she had red hair. I have perhaps betrayed the fact that I was subjugated before this confession. I don't know how it was; I did not mean to be ; I meant not to be. It was my helplessness, and not my will, consented. To be continued.