Huberts Wife | Page 3

their pockets, each a tin snuff-box and a mop, which mop
consists of a small twig, chewed at the end into threads or fibers. This
mop, wet with saliva, is thrust into the box of Scotch snuff, thence
thrust into the mouth, and worked around upon the teeth much to the
delight and constant spitting of the performer. This operation, so
prevalent both among white and black women of the South, is called
"dipping snuff."
Having followed our sable friends from grief to indignation, and from
indignation to the charming amusement of snuff-dipping, we will enter
the house and make acquaintance with its master.
CHAPTER II.
THE MASTER'S CONFERENCE WITH HIMSELF.

It was late in September, and chilly for the season. A bright fire glowed
upon the hearth in the "lady's chamber" at Kennons. Red curtains
shaded the windows, and drooped in folds to the floor. Roses and green
leaves seemed springing up out of the carpet to meet the light and
warmth that radiated from the small semicircle behind the glittering
fender. A bed hung with white curtains, a dressing bureau, with its
fancy pincushion, and numerous cut-glass bottles of perfumery, a
lounge covered with bright patchwork, and furnished with log-cabin
cushions, easy-chairs and ottomans, together with the workstand and its
inseparable little basket filled with every indispensable for
needlework--all, all bore the trace of woman's hand.
For nine years this had been the loved family-room of Duncan and
Ellice Lisle.
Now, Ellice was forever gone. Her foot had passed the threshold, to
come in, to go out, no more. Her canary hung in the window; how
could he sing on the morrow, missing her accustomed voice? Her
picture hung over the mantle, looking down with the old-time
brightness upon the the solitary figures beforefire--Duncan and his
child.
Hubert, the son, in his eighth year, sitting clasped in his father's arms,
had pierced anew that tortured heart by asking questions about his
mother and the mystery of death, which no human mind can answer.
The child was in a vortex of wonder, grief and speculation. It was the
first great lesson of his life, and he would learn it well, the more that it
was so severe and incomprehensible. But sleep and fatigue overcame
Hubert at length. The light from the fire no more danced with his
shifting curls, but settled down in a steady golden glow over the mass
that mingled its yellow-brown with the black beard of the stricken man.
For the father would not lay away his sleeping child. He held him close,
as the something, the all that was left to him of his lost love. His head
drooped low and his lips rested in a long embrace of the child's soft
wealth of hair.
Mayhap some watching spirit took pity upon the man bereaved; for
while he gazed into the fire, the heavy pressure of the present yielded to

a half-conscious memory of the past, and a dream-like reverie
brightened and darkened, flickered and burned in and out with the red
of the flame, and the white of the ashes.
Duncan Lisle was a boy again. With two little brothers and a half-dozen
black child-retainers, he hunted in the woods of Kennons, sailed boats
on the red waters of the Roanoke, rode break-neck races over the old
fields, despising fences high, and ditches deep, and vigorously sought
specimens of uncouth, out-of-the-way beast, bird and insect. He studied
mathematics and classics, played pranks upon one tutor, and did loving
reverence to another. He planted flowers upon his own mother's grave,
and filled the vases of his stepmother with her own favorite lilacs and
roses. He made houses, carriages, swings, sets of furniture, and all sorts
of constructions for his half-sister Della, who was his junior by ten
years at least.
He edified, not to say terrified, the dusky crowd of juveniles with
jack-o'-lanterns, impromptu giants and brigands, false faces, fire
crackers, ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand performances.
With a decided propensity for fun and mischief, there was also in his
disposition as evident a proclivity to seriousness and earnestness. If it
gave him delight to play off upon a stranger the joke of "bagging the
game," he enjoyed with equal ardor the correct rendering of a difficult
translation, or the solution of an intricate problem.
If sometimes he annoyed with his untimely jest, he always won by his
manly openness and uniform kindliness of nature. He cherished love
for all that was around him, both animate and lifeless. Soul and Nature
therefore rendered back to him their meed of harmonious sympathy.
Duncan was scarcely seventeen when the Plague swept over Kennons.
That mysterious blight, rising in the orient, traveling darkly and surely
unto the remotest West, laid its blackened hand upon the fair House of
Kennons.
Cholera! fearful by