Read Ebook: The Golden Shoemaker or 'Cobbler' Horn by Keyworth J W

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Ebook has 1898 lines and 83212 words, and 38 pages

"Mind," she then called after him, "she is not to come down."

"Cobbler" Horn did not so far set his sister at defiance as to act in flat contradiction to her decree. Perhaps he himself did not think it well that the child should be brought downstairs again, after once having been put to bed. But, if Marian might not come down, Marian's father might stay up. As soon as his step sounded on the stairs the child's wailing ceased.

"Zat zoo, daddy?" and the father felt, in the darkness, that two tiny arms were stretched out towards him in piteous welcome. Lighting the candle, which stood on the table by the window, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and, in a moment, Marian's little brown arms were tightly clasped about his neck. For a brief space he held the child to his breast; and then he gently laid her back upon the pillow, and having tucked the bed-clothes well about her, he kissed the little tear-stained face, and sat talking in the soothing tones which a loving parent can so well employ.

Leaving him there, let us make a somewhat closer inspection of Miss Jemima, as she sits in solitary state before the fire downstairs. You observe that she is tall, angular, and rigid. Her figure displays the uprightness of a telegraph pole, and her face presents a striking arrangement of straight lines and sharp points. Her eyes gleam like points of fire beneath her positively shaggy brows. Her complexion is dark, and her hair, though still abundant, is already turning grey. Her dress is plainness itself, and she wears no jewelry, all kinds of which she regards with scorn. Her old-fashioned silver watch is a family heirloom, and a broad black ribbon is her only watch-guard.

Yet there is nothing of malice or evil intent in Aunt Jemima's soul. She is no less strictly upright in character than in form. She cannot tolerate wickedness, folly, or weakness of any kind. So far well. The lack of her character is the tenderness which is woman's crowning grace. When she is kind it is in such a way that one would almost prefer for her to be unkind.

Such is Aunt Jemima, as we see her sitting in front of her brother's fire, and as we know her to be. Need we wonder that, "Cobbler" Horn's heart misgave him as to the probable fate of his little Marian in such rough, though righteous, hands?

When "Cobbler" Horn at length came downstairs, his sister was still sitting before the fire. On his appearance, she rose from her seat.

"Thomas, I am ashamed of you," she said, as she began, in a masterful way, to make preparations for supper. "Such weakness will utterly spoil the child. But you were always foolish."

"I am afraid, sister," was the quiet reply, "that we shall hardly agree with one another--you and I--on that point."

HOW MISS JEMIMA MANAGED HER BROTHER'S HOUSE.

On entering upon the management of her brother's house, Aunt Jemima laid down two laws, which were, that the house was to be kept spotlessly clean, and that everything was always to be in its right place; and her severe, and even fierce, insistence on the minute fulfilment of these unexceptionable ordinances soon threatened utterly to banish comfort from her brother's house.

The restrictions this masterful lady placed upon her patient brother constituted a state of absolute tyranny. Lest her immaculate door-step should be soiled, she would rarely allow him to enter the house by the front-door. She placed a thick mat inside his workshop, at the doorway leading into the front-room; and she exercised a lynx-eyed supervision to ensure that he always wiped his feet before coming in. She would never permit him to go upstairs without putting off his boots. She removed his hat from the wall of the front-room, and hung it on a nail in a beam, which was just over his head as he sat at work in his shop; and whenever she walked, with her policeman-like tread, in the room above, the hat would fall down, and strike him on the head. He bore this annoyance for a day or two, and then quietly removed hat and nail to one of the walls.

Strong-natured though he was, "Cobbler" Horn felt it no weakness to yield to his sister in trifles; and he bore with exhaustless patience such vexations as she inflicted on him alone. But he was firm as a rock where the comfort of any one else was concerned. It was beautiful to see his meek submission to every restriction which she laid upon him; it was sublime to behold his stern resistance to such harsh requirements as she proposed to lay upon others.

More than one battle was fought between the brother and sister on this latter point. But it was on Marian's account that the contention was most frequent and severe. Sad to say, the coming of Aunt Jemima seemed likely to drive all happiness from the lot of the hapless child. Rigid and cruel rules were laid upon the tiny mite. Requirements were made, and enforced, which bewildered and terrified the little thing beyond degree. She was made to go to bed and get up at preternaturally early hours; and her employment during the day was mapped out in obedience to similarly senseless rules. Her playthings, which had all been swept into a drawer and placed under lock and key, were handed out by Aunt Jemima, one at a time, at the infrequent intervals, during which, for brief periods, and under strict supervision, the child was permitted to play. Much of the day was occupied with the doing of a variety of tasks few of which were really within the compass of her childish powers. Aunt Jemima herself undertook to impart to Marian elementary instruction in reading, writing, and kindred acts. Occasionally also the child was taken out by her grim relative for a stately walk, during which, however, she was not permitted, on any account, to linger in front of a shop window, or stray from Aunt Jemima's side. And then, in the evening, after their early tea, while Aunt Jemima sat at her work at the table, the poor little infant was perched on a chair before the fire, and there required to sit till her bed-time, with her legs dangling till they ached again, while the tiny head became so heavy that it nodded this way and that in unconquerable drowsiness, and, on more occasions than one, the child rolled over and fell to the floor, like a ball.

One lesson which Aunt Jemima took infinite pains to lodge in Marian's dusky little head was that she must never speak unless she was first spoken to; and if, in the exuberance of child-nature, she transgressed this rule, especially at meal-times, Aunt Jemima's mouth would open like a pair of nut-crackers, and she would give utterance to a succession of such snappish chidings, that Marian would almost be afraid she was going to be swallowed up. A hundred times a day the child incurred the righteous ire of this cast-iron aunt. From morning to night the little thing was worried almost out of her life by the grim governess of her father's house; and Aunt Jemima even haunted her dreams.

Marian had one propensity which Aunt Jemima early set herself to repress. The child was gifted with an innate love of rambling. More than once, when very young indeed, she had wandered far away from home, and her father and mother had thought her lost. But she had always, as by an unerring instinct, found her way back. This propensity it was, indeed, necessary to restrain; but Aunt Jemima adopted measures for the purpose which were the sternest of the stern. She issued a decree that Marian was never to leave the house, except when accompanied by either her father or Miss Jemima herself. In order that the object of this restriction might be effectually secured, it became necessary that Miss Jemima should take the child with her on almost every occasion when she herself went out. These events were intensely dreaded by Marian; and she would shrink into a corner of the room when she observed Aunt Jemima making preparations for leaving the house. But she made no actual show of reluctance; and it would be difficult to tell whether she was the more afraid of going out with Aunt Jemima, or of letting Aunt Jemima see that she was afraid.

It was a terrible time for the poor child. On every side she was checked, frowned upon, and kept down. If she was betrayed into the utterance of a merry word she was snapped at as though she had said something bad; and ebullitions of childish spirits were checked again and again, until their occurrence became rare. And yet this woman thought herself a Christian, and believed that, in subjecting to a system of such complicated tyranny the bright little child who had been committed to her charge, she was beginning to train the hapless mite in the way she should go.

It was a very simple circumstance which first indicated to "Cobbler" Horn the kind of training his child was beginning to receive. Happening to go, one morning, into the living-room, he found that his sister had gone out, and, for once, left Marian a prisoner in the house. The child was seated on a chair, with her chubby legs hanging wearily down, and a woe-begone expression on her face. Taking courage from the absence of her dreadful aunt, Marian asked her father to give her some of her toys, and to let her play. Finding, to his surprise, on questioning the child, that she had been forbidden to touch her playthings without express permission, and that they were put away in the drawer, he readily gave her such of them as she desired, and crowned her happiness by remaining to play with her till Aunt Jemima returned.

This incident created a feeling of uneasiness in the father's mind; but it was a circumstance of another kind which fully revealed to him the actual state of things. Passing through the room one evening when Marian was on the point of going to bed, he paused to listen to the evening prayer of his child. She knelt, in her little night-clothes, at Aunt Jemima's knee. The father sighed, as he waited for the sound of the simple words which had been learnt at the dictation of the tender mother-voice which was now for ever still. What, then, were his astonishment and pain when Marian, instead of repeating her mother's prayer, entered upon the recital of a string of theological declarations which Aunt Jemima dictated to her one by one!

"Cobbler" Horn strode forward, and laid a strong repressive hand upon the child; and Aunt Jemima will never forget the flash of his eye and the stern tones of his voice, as he demanded that Marian should be permitted to pray her mother's prayer.

After this he noticed frequent signs of the tyranny of which Marian was the victim, and interposed at many points. But it was only in part that he was able to counteract the cruel discipline to which Aunt Jemima was subjecting his child.

"ME LUN AWAY."

Winter passed drearily away--a wet one, as it happened, with never once the white gleam of snow, and scarcely a touch of the healthy sting of frost. "Cobbler" Horn had not ceased to sorrow for his dead wife; and, when the spring was well advanced, there befell him another, and scarcely less severe bereavement, though of a different kind.

There had been no improvement in the relations between Aunt Jemima and the child. Aunt Jemima still maintained the harsh system of discipline which she had adopted at first; and the result was that the child had been led to regard her father's sister with as near an approach to hatred as was possible to her loving little heart. Marian's heart was big, almost to bursting, with concealed sorrow. Like her father, young as she was, she found it easier to bear grief than to tell it out. She did not want her father to know how miserable she was. Her childish soul was filled with bitterness, and her young life was being spoiled. Such of her pleasures as had not been taken from her were divested of all their charm. Almost her sole remaining joy was to snatch, now and then, a bit of clandestine love with her father, when, on some rare occasion, Aunt Jemima happened to be out of the way.

Recognising the uselessness of resisting a hand so hard and strong as that of Aunt Jemima, Marian had lately meditated another way of escape from the wretchedness of her lot. She contemplated an expedient which occurs more readily than any other to the youthful victim of oppression, but which had probably never before presented itself to the mind of a child so young. The expedient is one, indeed, which seldom effects its purpose, and is usually productive of a plentiful crop of troubles. But Marian had no fear. She was full of one thought. She could not any longer endure Aunt Jemima; and she must make it impossible for Aunt Jemima to scold, or smack, or restrain her any more. She must escape, without delay, from the sound of Aunt Jemima's harsh voice, and place herself beyond the reach of Aunt Jemima's rough hand. True, there was her father. How could she leave him? This would have been impossible to her if she had realised what she was about to do. But it seemed so easy and pleasant to slip out into the bright spring morning, and trot away into the mysterious and delightful country, which lay outside the town. Nor did she dream of the hardships and danger which might be awaiting her out in the strange, unloving world, into which she had so lightly resolved to launch her little life. So it came to pass that, on a certain bright May morning, Marian took her opportunity, and went out into the world.

Marian's opportunity was furnished by the fact that Aunt Jemima had gone out, leaving Marian at home, and, for once, had forgotten to lock the door. As soon as Aunt Jemima's back was turned, the child huddled her little pink print sun-bonnet upon her small black head, and, with one furtive glance over her shoulder towards her father's workshop, whence she could distinctly hear the quick "tap-tap" of his hammer, she opened the front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a keen glance, from her sharp little eyes, to right and left. There was no one to be seen but one of the funny little twin men who kept a huckster's shop across the way. This little man was a great friend of Marian's, and he called to her now in joyous tones, as he stood in the doorway of his shop, to come over and see what he had in his pocket. Marian gave a decided shake of her head.

"No; Ma-an going away. Tum another time."

Then, murmuring to herself, "Me lun away," she set off down the street, with a defiant swagger of her small person, and her bonnet-strings streaming out upon the wind; and the little huckster watched her with an admiring gaze, little thinking into what wilds of sorrow those tiny twinkling feet had set off to run.

"THE LITTLE TWIN BRETHREN."

The name of the little hucksters across the way was Dudgeon. As to age, they were on the verge of thirty--Tommy having entered the world a few minutes previous to John. They were so much alike that it was difficult to distinguish them when apart. John was just a shade lighter in complexion than Tommy, and Tommy overtopped his brother by something like an inch. The twins were so small as to seem insignificant; but their meek amiability was an efficient set off against their physical deficiencies. If there was any measure of self-assertiveness between them, it belonged chiefly to Tommy. Though both the little men were kind to Marian, Tommy was her especial friend; and it was he who had watched her as she ran away. The twins were both bachelors; though John had kept company for several years with a young woman of exemplary patience. Tommy, who was a sincere Christian, was a member of the church to which "Cobbler" Horn belonged. John occasionally attended the services at the same place, but could not be persuaded to join the church.

The close resemblance between the brothers was the cause of many ludicrous mistakes. In their boyhood, they had frequently been blamed for each other's faults and misdeeds; and it was characteristic of Tommy that he had quietly suffered more than one caning which his brother ought to have received. But, when it had been proposed to administer to him a dose of medicine which had been prescribed for John, he had quietly protested and explained the mistake.

When the twins grew up, similar blunders continued to occur; and the little men had frequent opportunities of unlawfully profiting by the errors in which their close resemblance to each other often involved their friends. But, to the credit of these worthy little men be it said, they conscientiously declined to avail themselves of the opportunities of illegitimate benefit thus thrown in their way.

It was a curious sight to see these two queer little men standing, sitting, or walking, side by side. The minister of their chapel would often speak of the first occasion on which he had seen John Dudgeon. It was one Sunday evening, shortly after he had assumed the pastorate of the church. The service had just commenced, and the eye of the minister happened to rest, for a moment, on the humble figure of Tommy Dudgeon, who was, as usual, in his place. The minister had already made the acquaintance of Tommy, but of the existence of John he was not yet aware. What, then, was his astonishment, the next moment, to see another Tommy Dudgeon, as it seemed, come in and take his place beside the one already in the pew! For a breathing space the new pastor imagined himself the victim of an optical illusion; and then he rubbed his eyes, and concluded that Tommy Dudgeon had a twin brother, and that this was he.

It was not surprising that these two peculiar little men should have excited the amusement of those to whom they were known. Their amazing and almost indistinguishable resemblance to each other, and the consequent unconscious mutual mimicry of tone and gesture which prevailed between them, while they were a source of frequent perplexity, were also irresistibly provocative of mirth. What wonder that those who saw the little hucksters for the first time should have felt strongly inclined to regard them in a comic light; or that the mere mention of their names should have unfailingly brought a smile to the faces of those to whom their peculiarities were known!

THE FATHER'S QUEST.

When Aunt Jemima came home, she was surprised, in no small degree, at the absence of Marian. With gathering indignation she called up the stairs, then searched the house, and finally presented herself before her brother, who was quite alone in his workshop, and sat calmly working on his stool.

"Then she is not here?"

"Who? Marian?" responded "Cobbler" Horn in no accent of concern, looking up for a moment from his work. "No, I thought she was with you."

"No; I left her in the room for a moment, and now she is nowhere to be found."

There seemed to "Cobbler" Horn no reason for alarm, and, as his sister returned to the kitchen, he quietly went on with his work. But Aunt Jemima's mind was ill at ease. Once more she searched the house, and called and called again. There was no response, and the silence which followed was profound and ominous. Swiftly she passed, with growing alarm, through her brother's workshop, and out into the yard. A glance around, and then a closer search; but still no sign of the missing child. The perturbed woman re-entered her brother's presence, and stood before him, erect and rigid, and with outstretched hands.

"The child's gone!" was her gloomy exclamation.

"Gone!" echoed "Cobbler" Horn blankly, looking up. "Where?"

"I don't know; but she's gone quite away, and may never come back."

Then "Cobbler" Horn perceived that his sister was alarmed; and, notwithstanding the occasion, he was comforted by the unwonted tenderness she had expressed. As for Marian, he knew her for a born rambler; and it was not the first time she had strayed from home.

"Perhaps," he said placidly, "she has gone to the little shop over the way."

Then he resumed his work, as though he had simply told his sister where she would be likely to find her spectacles.

Aunt Jemima took the hint, as a drowning person catches at a straw. She made her way to the front-door, and having opened it, was on the point of crossing the street, when Tommy Dudgeon emerged from the shop, and came over towards where she stood.

"Good morning, ma-am," he said, halting at a respectful distance. "You are looking for little miss?"

"Well," snapped Aunt Jemima, "and if I am, what then? Do you know where she is?"

"No, ma-am; but I saw her go away."

Miss Jemima seized the arm of the little man with an iron grip.

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