The Village Gossip CHAPTER 1.
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A pleasanter village than Cedardale could hardly be found. Nearly environed by wooded hills, a lively imagination would have called it a bird's nest; and its snow-white cottages, the beautiful eggs.
Nature had done everything for Cedardale; and if the hearts of its few inhabitants had been as much in harmony with what was good and lovely as the scenery around them — the place would have been a little Paradise.
But such harmony was not in Cedardale. Do we find it anywhere? What is the sighing answer? "No!" Not as the clear stream that went gliding, rippling, and singing happily on its way through the village — working cheerfully for the gray old miller, after taking a little rest in the broad mill-dam, and then pressing onward to give life and freshness to green meadows, or to gather again its strength for toiling man — not, we say, as this clear stream did the current of life in Cedardale receive, and give back the sunlight. No, no. Thislife-current went ever fretting on, turbid, restless, and impatient — marring its banks, and seeking rather to do evil than good.
There was no harmony nor mutual interests, no unselfish regard the one for the other. If each did not seek to do his neighbor wrong, there was in the mind of each a fear of his neighbor. Suspicion, jealousy, ill-will, and mutual dislike — were kept alive from month to month, and from year to year. Not that the inhabitants of Cedardale were more suspicious, jealous, and ill-natured than other people. No, this was not the reason. What was it, then? We shall see.
There was in Cedardale a mill, and, as a matter of course, a miller. The miller was somewhat advanced in years — say, past sixty. His name was Stephen White. Now the miller was rather a quick-tempered man, and hasty of speech; and what was worse, this infirmity increased with his years. So it is with every disease of the body and mind; if it is not removed in early manhood or middle age — it will increase as we grow old! In consequence of this infirmity, the miller was all the time in hot water, as they say, with somebody.
Still, our friend the miller would have passed along far more comfortably to himself and his neighbors, if it hadn't been for Wimble the shoemaker, and his wife Nancy — the shoemaker's wife, we mean. Nancy Wimble was the busybody, tattler, and mischief-maker of the village; and her husband, a good, easy sort of man at first — had insensibly fallen into her bad habit of minding other people's business, more than his own. "As the old rooster crows — the young one learns." So says the proverb; and it was true in the case of Wimble's children. They were the most inveterate meddlers in what did not concern them, to be found; even not, at times, excepting their mother. It was this family, in fact, that set all the rest of the village on fire, and made of lovely little Cedardale as uncomfortable a place, as a quiet peace-loving man could wish to live in.
Martin, the village schoolmaster, a weak, but well-meaning man, had his own time of it. This may readily be inferred, when it is known that he had been bold enough to turn Dick Wimble out of school for bad conduct. Dick was certainly the worst boy in Cedardale, and the most troublesome fellow that Martin had to deal with. He had deserved expulsion twenty times, before the schoolmaster's indignation made him regardless of all the consequences to be feared from the anger of Nancy Wimble. The last outrage upon his dignity as schoolmaster, which brought upon Dick the penalty of expulsion, was in this way. Martin had found it necessary to forbid, positively, the bringing of fruit into the school. At first the prohibition extended only to the eating of fruit during school-hours. But this not meeting the evil he sought to remedy — as the boys, with fruit in their desks or pockets, would be tempted to eat it stealthily, under the hope of escaping detection by the master — he made the more sweeping edict which forbade its being brought into the school-room at all.
Regardless of this, Dick, on the very next day after the law was announced, brought a large red apple in his pocket. While he was in the act of passing it into his desk, Martin's eye caught the glow of one of its ruddy cheeks.
"Dick!" he called out in a voice so sharp and stern, that young Wimble gave a startle and let the apple fall upon the floor.
"Come here, sir!" said the schoolmaster.
Dick obeyed the summons with pouting lips and a frowning brow.
"Go back and get me the apple," said Martin.
The apple was brought. It was large, ripe, and mellow; and, as Dick resigned it to the schoolmaster, he felt more grief at the loss of the fruit, than fear of personal consequences.
"Now, hold out your hand." The schoolmaster raised his ruler.
Dick at first hesitated, but the loud, angry, "Do you hear me, sir!" brought his arm into a horizontal position, and his palm exposed to the master's view.
Two or three quick strokes followed, and then the lad was sent to his seat.
Martin placed the apple on his desk, in view of the school, where it remained until about half-past eleven o'clock. Then the spicy fragrance, which had come ever to his nostrils, tempted him to take it in his hand, pare it with his knife, and deliberately eat it in presence of the scholars, unwisely using, as he did so, language that Dick Wimble felt as tantalizing.
"I'll get him for it!" said the boy to himself. "See if I don't. He took my apple just to eat it himself, so he did. But he'll be sorry for it, or I'm mistaken!"
Martin certainly committed an error, in thus eating the apple.
"If it is wrong for us to eat apples in school, it is wrong for him," said the boys, as they clustered together on the play-ground, after dismissal.
Dick told his story at home, and in his own way. The most important fact, the order not to bring fruit to school, he was very careful to hide. So, all that his father and mother understood was, that Martin had taken away their son's apple, and greedily eaten it himself in the presence of the whole school.
"I'd get even with him for it," said Mrs. Wimble, thoughtlessly.
"And I will, too," was Dick's prompt answer. "He shall not have my apples for nothing!"
"I'll tell you a good trick to play off on him," remarked Dick's father, chuckling to himself as he spoke.
"What's that?" quickly asked the lad.
"I don't know that I ought to tell you," said Mr. Wimble.
"Oh yes, father, do," urged Dick. "Now, what is it?"
The shoemaker had thought twice — a thing not very common with him before speaking. Generally, he spoke first and thought afterwards. So he replied —
"You know enough mischief already, Dick, without my putting any more into your head."
"Ah, do tell me now, won't you? I want to know so bad. Is it to put a crooked pin in his chair?"
"Oh, no."
"To bore a hole in the bottom of his chair, and fix a pin under it with a string to my desk?"
"No — no. Nothing of that kind."
"What is it, then? Won't you tell me?"
And so the boy urged and urged his father, until the latter, to get rid of his importunities, finally imparted the secret he wished to know.
Dick now fairly danced with delight. Oh, it was such a good trick! he said over and over again; and he would play it off on the schoolmaster, even if he got killed for it.
The shoemaker rather discouraged his son; but the lad was resolved to "pay the schoolmaster back again."
On the next morning, when Dick started for school, he had in his pocket a beautiful large apple, ripe, mellow, and tempting to behold. This he managed to slip into his desk so dexterously that the schoolmaster's eye failed to note its presence. School had been in about an hour when Dick opened his desk, and taking his apple in his hand, exposed it so far that it was seen by Martin.
"Dick Wimble!" The schoolmaster's voice showed that he felt a sudden strong anger at the hardihood and persistent disobedience of the boy. "Bring me that apple. How dare you do so after what passed yesterday!"
Dick, willing to take some good whacks with the ruler in view of his anticipated retaliation, went up to the schoolmaster's desk with a light step, gave him the apple, and received in turn five hard strokes on the hand.
The apple, as on the day before, was placed by Martin on his desk, where it remained for about an hour. Then he took it up and said aloud, with something tantalizing in his voice —
"A very fine apple indeed. Where did this grow, Dick? On one of your father's trees?"
"Yes, sir," replied the boy, turning around from his desk and looking at the schoolmaster; a movement in which he was imitated by the whole school.
"I'm sorry you didn't eat it at home, my lad," resumed the schoolmaster, "then you would have had a double pleasure — the pleasure of taste, and the reflection that you had disobeyed no rule. As it is, I must eat this nice apple for you."
And as Martin said this he raised the apple, from which he had removed a small portion of the skin, and took a mouthful from it. At the moment of doing so, there was a puff of something into his face, eyes, and nostrils, which he at once perceived to be cayenne pepper. The truth was, Dick had dexterously filled a cavity which he had scooped out of the apple with about a thimbleful of very fine dry pepper, and it so happened that the schoolmaster sprung this mine at the first bite. The young rebel could not refrain from a hearty burst of laughter at the success of his trick; and in this he was joined by nearly the whole school.
In due time, Martin got his eyes clear of the pepper, and in due time Dick got a terrible flogging, after which he was formally expelled from the school.
This expulsion was rather more than the shoemaker and his wife, who knew what their son was about to do, anticipated; and as the act was regarded by them as a most uncalled-for exercise of power, they forthwith paid a visit to the schoolmaster, and demanded to have Dick taken back. Martin declared that the boy would never darken the school-room door again.
"In that case, very few boys will darken it in three months from now, let me tell you for your comfort," retorted Nancy Wimble.
Martin had cause to know and fear this woman's baneful influence; and her threat not only disturbed him, but made him waver in his purpose. Her remark soon after, that there would be another schoolmaster in Cedardale before six months, decided the debate which had arisen in his mind. Some further parley ensued, and then, with a very bad grace, he consented to let Dick come back again into the school. The lad, conscious of having triumphed over the master, was more troublesome and rebellious than ever.
We have said that Martin had his own time of it in Cedardale; and the reader can easily understand, from this little digression, why it was so. Nancy Wimble never forgave him for turning Dick out of school, and consequently never failed to speak ill of him when an opportunity for doing so offered.
Besides the miller, schoolmaster, and shoemaker — another prominent personage was Striker, the blacksmith, a good mechanic in his way, but a very hard drinker. He did not meddle himself much in other people's affairs, though some in the village took a great deal of interest in his; and, in their ill-directed efforts to reform him, riveted, rather than loosened, the terrible chains by which the monster intemperance had bound him.
These were the leading personages in Cedardale — the miller, the shoemaker, the schoolmaster, and the blacksmith; and in their jealousies and antagonisms, they managed to keep the little community of which they formed a part, nearly the whole time in hot water.
In an adjoining village, some two miles distant, resided one Mr. Sharp, a selfish, unscrupulous, cunning lawyer, who managed most adroitly to get up, every year, some two or three profitable disputes among his neighbors. One farmer, who owned two or three hundred acres of good land, he had induced to enter into a lawsuit about the right of wayclaimed by a neighboring farmer, across a narrow strip of his land. The result was, three years of trouble in the courts, the loss of his case, finally, and the sacrifice of nearly everything he was worth, to pay costs and fees. Some others had suffered nearly as much from a like cause — but Sharp put money in his pocket, and encouraged others to imitate the bad example.
Up to the time when our story begins, Sharp had failed to get a case in Cedardale, although he had tried hard to fan into a blaze several warm disputes among its inhabitants, of which he happened to become cognizant. At last, however, he was successful, as the progress of our story will show.
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