Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (253 page)

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Page 1405
smithin', you might have earned enough money to buy all these things yourself, and Hepsy 'd like it a great deal better."
"I suppose it 's about the two hundred and forty-ninth time mother has told him that," said Aunt Lois, with an air of weary endurance.
"Wal, Mis' Badger," said Sam, "'all work an' no play makes Jack a dull boy,' ye know. I
hes
to recreate, else I gits quite wore out. Why, lordy massy, even a saw-mill hes ter stop sometimes ter be greased. 'T ain't everybody thet 's like Sphyxy Smith, but she grits and screeches all the time, jest 'cause she keeps to work without bein' 'iled. Why, she could work on, day 'n' night, these twenty years, 'n' never feel it. But, lordy massy, I gits so 'xhausted, an' hes sech a sinking 't my stomach, 'n' then I goes out 'n' kind o'
Injunin'
round, an' git flag-root 'n' wintergreen 'n' spruce boughs 'n' gensing root 'n' sarsafrass 'n' sich fur Hepsy to brew up a beer. I ain't a wastin' my time ef I be enjoyin' myself. I say it 's a part o' what we 's made for."
"You are a true philosopher, Sam," said Ellery Davenport.
"Wal," said Sam, "I look at it this 'ere way,ef I keep on a grindin' and a grindin' day 'n' night, I never shell hev nothin', but ef I takes now 'n' then an arternoon to lie roun' in the sun,
I gits suthin' 's I go 'long.
Lordy massy, it 's jest all the comfort I hes, kind o' watchin' the clouds 'n' the birds, 'n' kind o' forgettin' all 'bout Hepsy 'n' the children 'n' the black-smithin'."
"Well," said Aunt Lois, smartly, "I think you are forgetting all about Hepsy and the children now, and I advise you to get that milk punch home as quick as you can, if it 's going to do her any good. Come, here 's a tin pail to put it into. Cover it up, and do let the poor woman have some comfort as well as you!"
Sam received his portion in silence, and, with reluctant glances at the warm circle, went out into the night.
"I don't see how you all can bear to listen to that man's maundering!" said Aunt Lois. "He puts me out of all sort of patience. 'Head of the woman' to be sure! when Hepsy earns the most of what that family uses, except what we give 'em. And I know exactly how she feels; the poor woman is mad

 

Page 1406
with shame and humiliation half the time at the charities he will accept from us."
"O come, Miss Lois," said Ellery Davenport, "you must take an æsthetic view of him. Sam 's a genuine poet in his nature, and poets are always practically useless. And now Sam 's about the only person in Oldtown, that I have seen, that has the least idea that life is meant, in any way, for enjoyment. Everybody else seems to be sword in hand, fighting against the possibility of future suffering, toiling and depriving themselves of all present pleasure, so that they may not come to want by and by. Now I 've been in countries where the whole peasantry are like Sam Lawson."
"Good gracious!" said Aunt Lois, "what a time they must have of it!"
"Well, to say the truth, there 's not much progress in such communities, but there is a great deal of clear, sheer animal enjoyment. And when trouble comes, it comes on them as it does on animals, unfeared and unforeseen, and therefore unprovided for."
"Well," said my grandmother, "you don't think that is the way for rational and immortal creatures to live?"
"Well," said Ellery Davenport, "taking into account the rational and immortal, perhaps not; but I think if we could mix the two races together it would be better. The Yankee lives almost entirely for the future, the Italian enjoys the present."
"Well, but do you think it is
right
to live merely to enjoy the present?" persisted Aunt Lois.
"The eternal question!" said Ellery. "After all, who knows anything about it? What
is
right, and what
is
wrong? Mere geographical accidents! What is right for the Greenlander is wrong for me; what is right for me is wrong for the Hindoo. Take the greatest saint on earth to Greenland, and feed him on train oil and candles, and you make one thing of him; put him under the equator, with the thermometer at one hundred in the shade, and you make another."
"But right is right and wrong is wrong," said Aunt Lois, persistently, "after all."
"I sometimes think," said Ellery Davenport, "that right and wrong are just like color, mere accidental properties. There is no color where there 's no light, and a thing is all sorts of

 

Page 1407
colors according to the position you stand in and the hour of the day. There 's your rocking-chair in the setting sun becomes a fine crimson, and in the morning comes out dingy gray. So it is with human actions. There's nothing so bad that you cannot see a good side to it, nothing so good that you cannot see a bad side to it, nothing so good that you cannot see a bad side to it. Now we think it's shocking for our Indian tribes, some of them, to slay their old people; but I'm not sure, if the Indian could set forth his side of the case, with all the advantages of our rhetoric, but that he would have the best of it. He does it as an act of filial devotion, you see. He loves and honors his father too much to let him go through all that horrid process of draining out life drop by drop that we think the thing to protract in our high civilization. For my part, if I were an Indian chief, I should prefer, when I came to be seventy, to be respectfully knocked on the head by my oldest son, rather than to shiver and drivel and muddle and cough my life out a dozen years more."
"But God has given his commandments to teach us what is right," said Aunt Lois. "'Honor thy father and mother.'"
"Precisely," said Ellery; "and my friends the Sioux would tell you that they
do
honor their fathers and mothers by respectfully putting them out of the way when there is no more pleasure in living. They send them to enjoy eternal youth in the hunting-grounds of the fathers, you know."
"Positively, Ellery," said Tina, "I sha' n't have this sort of heathen stuff talked any longer. Why, you put one's head all in a whirl! and you know you don't believe a word of it yourself. What 's the use of making everybody think you 're worse than you are?"
"My dear," said Ellery, "there 's nothing like hearing all that can be said on both sides of subjects. Now there 's my good grandfather made an argument on the will, that is, and forever will remain, unanswerable, because he proves both sides of a flat contradiction perfectly; that method makes a logic-trap out of which no mortal can get his foot."
"Well," said my grandmother, "Mr. Davenport, if you 'll take an old woman's advice, you 'll take up with your grandfather's
good resolutions,
and not be wasting your strength in such talk."

 

Page 1408
''I believe there were about seventy-fiveor eighty, was it?of those resolutions," said Ellery.
"And you would n't be the worse for this world or the next if you 'd make them yourself," said my grandmother.
"Thank you, madam," said Ellery, bowing, "I 'll think of it."
"Well, come," said Tina, rising, "it's time for us to go; and," she said, shaking her finger warningly at Ellery Davenport, "I have a private lecture for you."
"I don't doubt it," he said, with a shrug of mock apprehension; "the preaching capacities of the fair sex are something terrific. I see all that is before me."
They bade adieu, the fire was raked up in the great fireplace, all the members of the family went their several ways to bed, but Harry and I sat up in the glimmer and gloom of the old kitchen, lighted, now and then, by a sputtering jet of flame, which burst from the sticks. All round the large dark hearth the crickets were chirping as if life were the very merriest thing possible.
"Well, Harry," I said, "you see the fates have ordered it just as I feared."
"It is almost as much of a disappointment to me as it can be to you," said Harry. "And it is the more so because I cannot quite trust this man."
"I never trusted him," said I. "I always had an instinctive doubt of him."
"My doubts are not instinct," said Harry, "they are founded on things I have heard him say myself. It seems to me that he has formed the habit of trifling with all truth, and that nothing is sacred in his eyes."
"And yet Tina loves him," said I. "I can see that she has gone to him heart and soul, and she believes in him with all her heart, and so we can only pray that he may be true to her. As for me, I can never love another. It only remains to live worthily of my love."

 

Page 1409
XLIV.
Marriage Preparations
And now for a time there was nothing thought of or talked of but marriage preparations and arrangements. Letters of congratulation came pouring in to Miss Mehitable from her Boston friends and acquaintances.
When Harry and I returned to college, we spent one day with our friends the Kitterys, and found it the one engrossing subject there, as everywhere.
Dear old Madam Kittery was dissolved in tenderness, and whenever the subject was mentioned reiterated all her good opinions of Ellery, and her delight in the engagement, and her sanguine hopes of its good influence on his spiritual prospects.
Miss Debby took the subject up energetically. Ellery Davenport was a near family connection, and it became the Kitterys to make all suitable and proper advances. She insisted upon addressing Harry by his title, notwithstanding his blushes and disclaimers.
"My dear sir," she said to him, "it appears that you are an Englishman and a subject of his Majesty; and I should not be surprised, at some future day, to hear of you in the House of Commons; and it becomes you to reflect upon your position, and what is proper in relation to yourself; and, at least under this roof, you must allow me to observe these proprieties, however much they may be disregarded elsewhere. I have already informed the servants that they are always to address you as Sir Harry, and I hope that you will not interfere with my instructions."
"O certainly not," said Harry, "It will make very little difference with me."
"Now, in regard to this marriage," said Miss Debby, "as there is no
church
in Oldtown, and no clergyman, I have felt that it would be proper in me, as a near kinswoman to Mr. Davenport, to place the Kittery mansion at Miss Mehitable Rossiter's disposal, for the wedding."

 

Page 1410
"Well, I confess," said Harry, blushing, "I never thought but that the ceremony would be performed at home, by Parson Lothrop."
"My dear Sir Harry!" said Miss Debby, laying her hand on his arm with solemnity, "consider that your excellent parents, Sir Harry and Lady Percival, were both members of the Established Church of England, the only true Apostolic Protestant Church,and can you imagine that their spirits, looking down from heaven, would be pleased and satisfied that their daughter should Church? and in fact at the hands of a man who has never received ordination?"
It was with great difficulty that Harry kept his countenance during this solemn address. His blue eyes actually laughed, though he exercised a rigid control over the muscles of his face.
"I really had not thought about it at all, Miss Debby," he said. "I think you are exceedingly kind."
"And I 'm sure," said she, "that you must see the propriety of it now that it is suggested to you. Of course, a marriage performed by Mr. Lothrop would be a legal one, so far as the civil law is concerned; but I confess I always have regarded marriage as a religious ordinance, and it would be a disagreeable thing to me to have any connections of mine united merely by a
civil
tie. These Congregational marriages," said Miss Debby, in a contemptuous voice, "I should think would lead to immorality. How can people feel as if they were married that don't utter any vows themselves, and don't have any wedding-ring put on their finger? In my view, it 's not respectable; and, as Mrs. Ellery Davenport will probably be presented in the first circles of England, I desire that she should appear there with her wedding-ring on, like an honest woman. I have therefore despatched an invitation to Miss Mehitable to bring your sister and spend the month preceding the wedding with us in Boston. It will be desirable for other reasons, as all the shopping and dressmaking and millinery work must be done in Boston. Oldtown is a highly respectable little village, but, of course, affords no advantages for the outfit of a person of quality, such as your sister is and is to be. I have had a letter from Lady Widgery this morning.

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