第2章 My Cousin Fanny(2)

She was once spoken of in my presence as "a sore-eyed old maid" --I have forgotten who said it.Yet I can now recall occasions when her eyes, being "better", appeared unusually soft, and, had she not been an old maid, would sometimes have been beautiful -- as, for instance, occasionally, when she was playing at the piano in the evenings before the candles were lighted.I recollect particularly once when she was singing an old French love-song.Another time was when on a certain occasion some one was talking about marriages and the reasons which led to or prevented them.She sat quite still and silent, looking out of the window, with her thin hands resting in her lap.Her head was turned away from most of the people, but I was sitting where I could see her, and the light of the evening sky was on her face.It made her look very soft.

She lifted up her eyes, and looked far off toward the horizon.

I remember it recalled to me, young as I was, the speech I had heard some one once make when I was a little boy, and which I had thought so ridiculous, that "when she was young, before she caught that cold, she was almost beautiful." There was an expression on her face that made me think she ought always to sit looking out of the window at the evening sky.

I believe she had brought me some apples that day when she came, and that made me feel kindly toward her.The light on her hair gave it a reddish look, quite auburn.Presently, she withdrew her eyes from the sky, and let them fall into her lap with a sort of long, sighing breath, and slowly interlaced her fingers.The next second some one jocularly fired this question at her: "Well, Cousin Fanny, give us your views," and her expression changed back to that which she ordinarily wore.

"Oh, my views, like other people's, vary from my practice," she said.

"It is not views, but experiences, which are valuable in life.

When I shall have been married twice I will tell you.""While there's life there's hope, eh?" hazarded some one;for teasing an old maid, in any way, was held perfectly legitimate.

"Yes, indeed," and she left the room, smiling, and went up-stairs.

This was one of the occasions when her eyes looked well.There were others that I remember, as sometimes when she was in church; sometimes when she was playing with little children; and now and then when, as on that evening, she was sitting still, gazing out of the window.

But usually her eyes were weak, and she wore the green shade, which gave her face a peculiar pallor, making her look old, and giving her a pained, invalid expression.

Her dress was one of her peculiarities.Perhaps it was because she made her clothes herself, without being able to see very well.

I suppose she did not have much to dress on.I know she used to turn her dresses, and change them around several times.When she had any money she used to squander it, buying dresses for Scroggs's girls or for some one else.She was always scrupulously neat, being quite old-maidish.She said that cleanliness was next to godliness in a man, and in a woman it was on a par with it.I remember once seeing a picture of her as a young girl, as young as Kitty, dressed in a soft white dress, with her hair down over her ears, and some flowers in her dress -- that is, it was said to be she;but I did not believe it.To be sure, the flowers looked like it.

She always would stick flowers or leaves in her dress, which was thought quite ridiculous.The idea of associating flowers with an old maid!

It was as hard as believing she ever was the young girl.It was not, however, her dress, old and often queer and ill-made as it used to be, that was the chief grievance against her.There was a much stronger ground of complaint; she had NERVES! The word used to be strung out in pronouncing it, with a curve of the lips, as "ner-erves".

I don't remember that she herself ever mentioned them;that was the exasperating part of it.She would never say a word;she would just close her thin lips tight, and wear a sort of ill look, as if she were in actual pain.She used to go up-stairs, and shut the door and windows tight, and go to bed, and have mustard-plasters on her temples and the back of her neck; and when she came down, after a day or two, she would have bright red spots burnt on her temples and neck, and would look ill.Of course it was very hard not to be exasperated at this.

Then she would creep about as if merely stepping jarred her;would put on a heavy blue veil, and wrap her head up in a shawl, and feel along by the chairs till she got to a seat, and drop back in it, gasping.Why, I have even seen her sit in the room, all swathed up, and with an old parasol over her head to keep out the light, or some such nonsense, as we used to think.It was too ridiculous to us, and we boys used to walk heavily and stumble over chairs -- "accidentally", of course -- just to make her jump.Sometimes she would even start up and cry out.We had the incontestable proof that it was all "put on";for if you began to talk to her, and got her interested, she would forget all about her ailments, and would run on and talk and laugh for an hour, until she suddenly remembered, and sank back again in her shawls and pains.

She knew a great deal.In fact, I recall now that she seemed to know more than any woman I have ever been thrown with, and if she had not been an old maid, I am bound to admit that her conversation would have been the most entertaining I ever knew.She lived in a sort of atmosphere of romance and literature; the old writers and their characters were as real to her as we were, and she used to talk about them to us whenever we would let her.Of course, when it came from an old maid, it made a difference.She was not only easily the best French scholar in our region, where the ladies all knew more or less of French, but she was an excellent Latin scholar, which was much less common.

I have often lain down before the fire when I was learning my Latin lesson, and read to her, line by line, Caesar or Ovid or Cicero, as the book might be, and had her render it into English almost as fast as I read.