Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (244 page)

Read Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels Online

Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Tags: #test

BOOK: Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels
4.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

 

Page 1354
His "fair little enemy" was at this moment attentively studying him through a crack in the window-curtain. Shall I say, too, that the first thing she did, on rushing up to her room, was to look at her hair, and study herself in the glass, wondering how she would look to him now. Well, she had not seen herself for some hours, and self-knowledge is a virtue, we all know. And then our scamper over the wood-pile, in the fresh, evening air, must have deranged something, for Tina had one of those rebellious heads of curls that every breeze takes liberties with, and that have to be looked after and watched and restrained. Esther's satin bands of hair could pass through a whirlwind, and not lose their gloss. It is curious how character runs even to the minutest thing,the very hairs of our heads are numbered by it,Esther, always in everything self-poised, thoughtful, reflective; Tina, the child of every wandering influence, tremulously alive to every new excitement, a wind-harp for every air of heaven to breathe upon.
It would be hard to say what mysterious impulse for good or ill made her turn and run when she saw Ellery Davenport. That turning and running in girls means something; it means that the electric chain has been struck in some way; but how?
Mr. Davenport came into the house, and was received with frank cordiality by Mr. Avery. He was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and the good man regarded him as, in some sort, a son of the Church, and had, no doubt, instantaneous promptings for his conversion. Mr. Avery, though he believed stringently in the doctrine of total depravity, was very innocent in his application of it to individuals. That Ellery Davenport was a sceptic was well known in New England, wherever the reputation of his brilliant talents and person had circulated, and Mr. Avery had often longed for an opportunity to convert him. The dear, good man had no possible idea that anybody could go wrong from anything but mistaken views, and he was sure, in the case of Ellery Davenport, that his mind must have been perplexed about free agency and decrees, and thus he hailed with delight the Providence which had sent him to his abode. He plunged into an immediate conversation with him about the state of France, whence he had just returned.

 

Page 1355
Esther, meanwhile, went up stairs to notify Tina of his arrival.
"Mr. Ellery Davenport is below, and has inquired for you."
Nobody could be more profoundly indifferent to any piece of news.
"Was that Mr. Ellery Davenport? How stupid of him to come here when we are all so tired! I don't think I can go down; I am too tired."
Esther, straightforward Esther, took the thing as stated. Tina, to be sure, had exhibited no symptoms of fatigue up to that moment; but Esther now saw that she had been allowing her to over-exert herself.
"My darling," she said, "I have been letting you do too much altogether. You are quite right; you should lie down here quietly, and I 'll bring you up your tea. Perhaps by and by, in the evening, you might come down and see Mr. Davenport, when you are rested."
"O nonsense about Mr. Davenport! he does n't come to see me. He wants to talk with your father, I suppose."
"But he has inquired for you two or three times," said Esther, "and he really seems to be a very entertaining, well-in-formed man; so by and by, if you feel rested, I should think you had better come down."
Now I, for my part, wondered then and wonder now, and always shall, what all this was for. Tina certainly was not a coquette; she had not learned the art of trading in herself, and using her powers and fascinations as women do who have been in the world, and learnt the precise value of everything that they say and do. She was, at least now, a simple child of nature, yet she acted exactly as an artful coquette might have done.
Ellery Davenport constantly glanced at the door as he talked with Mr. Avery, and shifted uneasily on his chair; evidently he expected her to enter, and when Esther returned without her he was secretly vexed and annoyed. I was glad of it, too, like a fool as I was. It would have been a thousand times better for my hopes had she walked straight out to meet him, cool and friendly, like Esther. There was one comfort; he was a married man; but then that crazy wife of his might die, or might be dead now. Who knew? To be sure, Ellery

 

Page 1356
Davenport never had the air of a married man,that steady, collected, sensible, restrained air which belongs to the male individual, conscious, wherever he moves, of a home tribunal, to which he is responsible. He had gone loose in society, pitied and petted and caressed by ladies, and everybody said, if his wife should die, Ellery Davenport might marry whom he pleased. Esther knew nothing about him, except a faint general outline of his history. She had no prepossessions for or against, and he laid himself out to please her in conversation, with that easy grace and quick perception of character which were habitual with him. Ellery Davenport had been a thriving young Jacobin, and Mr. Avery and Mr. Rossiter were fierce Federalists.
Mr. Rossiter came in to tea, and both of them bore down exultingly on Ellery Davenport in regard to the disturbances in France.
"Just what I always said!" said Mr. Rossiter. "French democracy is straight from the Devil. It 's the child of misrule, and leads to anarchy. See what their revolution is coming to. Well, I may not be orthodox entirely on the question of total depravity, but I always admitted the total depravity of the whole French nation."
"O, the French are men of like passions with us!" said Ellery Davenport. "They have been ground down and debased and imbruted till human nature can bear no longer, and now there is a sudden outbreak of the lower classes,the turning of the worm."
"Not a worm," said Mr. Rossiter, "a serpent, and a strong one."
"Davenport," said Mr. Avery, "don't you see that all this is because this revolution is in the hands of atheists?"
"Certainly I do, sir. These fellows have destroyed the faith of the common people, and given them nothing in its place."
"I am glad to see you recognize that," said Mr. Avery.
"Recognize, my dear sir! Nobody knows the worth of religion as a political force better than I do. Those French people are just like children,full of sentiment, full of feeling, full of fire, but without the cold, judging, logical power that is frozen into men here by your New England theology. If I have got to manage a republic, give me Calvinists."

 

Page 1357
"You admit, then," said Mr. Avery, delightedly, "the worth of Calvinism."
"As a political agent, certainly I do," said Ellery Davenport. "Men must have strong, positive religious beliefs to give them vigorous self-government; and republics are founded on the self-governing power of the individual."
"Davenport," said Mr. Avery, affectionately laying his hand on his shoulder, "I should like to have said that thing myself, I could n't have put it better."
"But do you suppose," said Esther, trembling with eagerness, "that they will behead the Queen?"
"Certainly I do," said Ellery Davenport, with that air of cheerful composure with which the retailer of the last horror delights to shock a listener. "O certainly! I would n't give a pin for her chance. You read the account of the trial, I suppose; you saw that it was a foregone conclusion?"
"I did, indeed," said Esther. "But, O Mr. Davenport! can nothing be done? There is Lafayette; can he do nothing?"
"Lafayette may think himself happy if he keeps his own head on his shoulders," said Davenport. "The fact is, that there is a wild beast in every human being. In our race it is the lion. In the French race it is the tiger,hotter, more tropical, more blindly intense in rage and wrath. Religion, government, education, are principally useful in keeping the human dominant over the beast; but when the beast gets above the human in the community, woe be to it."
"Davenport, you talk like an apostle," said Mr. Avery.
"You know the devils believe and tremble," said Ellery.
"Well, I take it," said Mr. Rossiter, "you 've come home from France disposed to be a good Federalist."
"Yes, I have," said Ellery Davenport. "We must all live and learn, you know."
And so in one evening Ellery witched himself into the good graces of every one in the simple parsonage; and when Tina at last appeared she found him reigning king of the circle. Mr. Rossiter, having drawn from him the avowal that he was a Federalist, now looked complacently upon him as a hopeful young neophyte. Mr. Avery saw evident marks of grace in his declarations in favor of Calvinism, while yet there was a spicy flavor of the prodigal son about him,enough to engage him

 

Page 1358
for his conversion. Your wild, wicked, witty prodigal son is to a spiritual huntsman an attractive mark, like some rare kind of eagle, whose ways must be studied, and whose nest must be marked, and in whose free, savage gambols in the blue air and on the mountain-tops he has a kind of hidden sympathy.
When Tina entered, it was with an air unusually shy and quiet. She took all his compliments on her growth and change of appearance with a negligent, matter-of-course air, seated herself in the most distant part of the room, and remained obstinately still and silent. Nevertheless, it was to be observed that she lost not a word that he said, or a motion that he made. Was she in that stage of attraction which begins with repulsion? or did she feel stirring within her that intense antagonism which woman sometimes feels toward man, when she instinctively divines that he may be the one who shall one day send a herald and call on her to surrender. Women are so intense, they have such prophetic, fore-reaching, nervous systems, that sometimes they appear to be endowed with a gift of prophecy. Tina certainly was an innocent child at this time, uncalculating, and acting by instinct alone, and she looked upon Ellery Davenport as a married man, who was and ought to be and would be nothing to her; and yet, for the life of her, she could not treat him as she treated other men.
If there was in him something which powerfully attracted, there was also something of the reverse pole of the magnet, that repelled, and inspired a feeling not amounting to fear, but having an undefined savor of dread, as if some invisible spirit about him gave mysterious warning. There was a sense of such hidden, subtile power under his suavities, the grasp of the iron hand was so plain through the velvet glove, that delicate and impressible natures felt it. Ellery Davenport was prompt and energetic and heroic; he had a great deal of impulsive good-nature, as his history in all our affairs shows. He was always willing to reach out the helping hand, and helped to some purpose when he did so; and yet I felt, rather than could prove, in his presence, that he could be very remorseless and persistently cruel.
Ellery Davenport inherited the whole Edwards nature, without its religious discipline,a nature strong both in intellect and passion. He was an unbelieving Jonathan Edwards.

 

Page 1359
It was this whole nature that I felt in him, and I looked upon the gradual interest which I saw growing in Tina toward him, in the turning of her thoughts on him, in her flights from him and attractions to him, as one looks on the struggles of a fascinated bird, who flees and returns, and flees and returns, each time drawn nearer and nearer to the diamond eyes.
These impressions which come to certain kinds of natures are so dim and cloudy, it is so much the habit of the countercurrent of life to disregard them, and to feel that an impression of which you have no physical, external proof is of necessity an absurdity and a weakness, that they are seldom acted on,seldom, at least, in New England, where the habit of logic is so formed from childhood in the mind, and the believing of nothing which you cannot prove is so constant a portion of the life education. Yet with regard to myself, as I have stated before, there was always a sphere of impression surrounding individuals, for which often I could give no reasonable account. It was as if there had been an emanation from the mind, like that from the body. From some it was an emanation of moral health and purity and soundness; from others, the sickly effluvium of moral decay, sometimes penetrating through all sorts of outward graces and accomplishments, like the smell of death through the tube-roses and lilies on the coffin.
I could not prove that Ellery Davenport was a wicked man; but I had an instinctive abhorrence of him, for which I reproached myself constantly, deeming it only the madness of an unreasonable jealousy.
His stay with us at this time was only for a few hours. The next morning he took Harry alone and communicated to him some intelligence quite important to his future.
''I have been to visit your father," he said, "and have made him aware what treasures he possesses in his children."
"His children have no desire that he should be made aware of it," said Harry, coldly. "He has broken all ties between them and him."
"Well, well!" said Ellery Davenport, "the fact is Sir Harry has gone into the virtuous stage of an Englishman's life, where a man is busy taking care of his gouty feet, looking after his tenants, and repenting at his leisure of the sins of his

Other books

Seeds of Discovery by Breeana Puttroff
Ghost of Mind Episode One by Odette C. Bell
The Conspiracy by Paul Nizan
Descendant by Lesley Livingston
Rise of the Blood by Lucienne Diver