Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (255 page)

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Page 1417
agreeable than something? that 's the true secret of witch-craft."
"But I sha' n't like it," said Tina, half pouting, "if you call my letters nothing."
"Your letters, I doubt not, will be an exception to those of all the sex," said Ellery. "I really tremble, when I think how profound they will be!"
"You are making fun of me!" said she, coloring.
"I making fun of you? And what have you been doing with all your hapless lovers up to this time? Behold Nemesis arrayed in my form."
"But seriously, Ellery, I want to know whom this letter was from?"
"Why don't you look at the signature?" said he.
"Well, of course you know there is no signature, but I mean what came in this paper?"
"What came in the paper," said Ellery, carelessly, "was a neat little collection of Alpine flowers, that, if you are interested in botany, I shall have the honor of showing you one of these days."
"But you have n't told me who sent them," said Tina.
"Ah, ha! we are jealous!" said he, shaking the letter at her. "What would you give to know, now? Will you be
very
good if I will tell you? Will you promise me for the future not to order me to do more than forty things at one time, for example?"
"I sha' n't make any promises," said Tina; "you ought to tell me!"
"What an oppressive mistress you are!" said Ellery Davenport. "I begin to sympathize with Sam Lawson,lordy massy, you dunno nothin' what I undergo!"
"You don't get off that way," said Tina.
"Well," said Ellery Davenport, "if you must know, it 's Mrs. Breck."
"And who is she?" said Tina.
"Well, my dear, she was my boarding-house keeper at Geneva, and a very pretty, nice Englishwoman,one that I should recommend as an example to her sex."
"Oh!" said Tina, "I don't care anything about it now."
"Of course," said Ellery. "Modest, unpretending virtue

 

Page 1418
never excites any interest. I have labored under that disadvantage all my days.''
The by-play between the two had brought the whole circle around the fire into a careless, laughing state. I looked across to Miss Mehitable; she was laughing with the rest. As we started to go out, Miss Mehitable followed me into the passage-way. "My dear Horace," she said, "I was very absurd; it comes of being nervous and thinking of one thing too much."

 

Page 1419
XLV.
Wedding Bells
The fourteenth of June was as bright a morning as if it had been made on purpose for a wedding-day, and of all the five thousand inauspicious possibilities which usually encumber weddings, not one fell to our share.
Tina's dress, for example, was all done two days before-hand, and fitted to a hair; and all the invited guests had come, and were lodged in the spacious Kittery mansion.
Esther Avery was to stand as bridesmaid, with me as groomsman, and Harry, as nearest relative, was to give the bride away. The day before, I had been in and seen both ladies dressed up in the marriage finery, and we had rehearsed the situation before Harry, as clergyman, Miss Debby being present, in one of her most commanding frames of mind, to see that everything was done according to the Rubric. She surveyed Esther, while she took an approving pinch of snuff, and remarked to me, aside, "That young person, for a Congregational parson's daughter, has a surprisingly distinguished air."
Lady Widgery and Lady Lothrop, who were also in at the inspection, honored Esther with their decided approbation.
"She will be quite presentable at court," Lady Widgery remarked. "Of course Sir Harry will wish her presented."
All this
empressement
in regard to Harry's rank and title, among these venerable sisters, afforded great amusement to our quartette, and we held it a capital joke among ourselves to make Esther blush by calling her Lady Percival, and to inquire of Harry about his future parliamentary prospects, his rent-rolls and tenants. In fact, when together, we were four children, and played with life much as we used to in the dear old days.
Esther, under the influence of hope and love, had bloomed out into a beautiful woman. Instead of looking like a pale image of abstract thought, she seemed like warm flesh and

 

Page 1420
blood, and Ellery Davenport remarked, "What a splendid contrast her black hair and eyes will make to the golden beauty of Tina!"
All Oldtown respectability had exerted itself to be at the wedding. All, however humble, who had befriended Tina and Harry during the days of their poverty, were bidden. Polly had been long sojourning in the house, in the capacity of Miss Mehitable's maid, and assisting assiduously in the endless sewing and fine laundry work which precedes a wedding.
On this auspicious morning she came gloriously forth, rustling in a stiff changeable lutestring, her very Sunday best, and with her mind made up to enter an Episcopal church for the first time in her life. There had, in fact, occurred some slight theological skirmishes between Polly and the High Church domestics of Miss Debby's establishment, and Miss Mehitable was obliged to make stringent representations to Polly concerning the duty of sometimes repressing her testimony for truth under particular circumstances.
Polly had attended one catechising, but the shock produced upon her mind by hearing doctrines which seemed to her to have such papistical tendencies was so great that Miss Mehitable begged Miss Debby to allow her to be excused in future. Miss Debby felt that the obligations of politeness owed by a woman of quality to an invited guest in her own house might take precedence even of theological considerations. In this point of view, she regarded Congregationalists with a well-bred, compassionate tolerance, and very willingly acceded to whatever Miss Mehitable suggested.
Harry and I had passed the night before the wedding-day at the Kittery mansion, that we might be there at the very earliest hour in the morning, to attend to all those thousand and one things that always turn up for attention at such a time.
Madame Kittery's garden commanded a distant view of the sea, and I walked among the stately alleys looking at that splendid distant view of Boston harbor, which seemed so bright and sunny, and which swooned away into the horizon with such an ineffable softness, as an image of eternal peace.
As I stood there looking, I heard a light footstep behind

 

Page 1421
me, and Tina came up suddenly and spattered my cheek with a dewy rose that she had just been gathering.
"You look as mournful as if it were you that is going to be married!" she said.
"Tina!" I said, "you out so early too?"
"Yes, for a wonder. The fact was, I had a bad dream, and could not sleep. I got up and looked out of my window, and saw you here, Horace, so I dressed me quickly and ran down. I feel a little bit uncanny,and eerie, as the Scotch say,and a little bit sad, too, about the dear old days, Horace. We have had such good times together,first we three, and then we took Esther in, and that made four; and now, Horace, you must open the ranks a little wider and take in Ellery."
"But five is an uneven number," said I; "it leaves one out in the cold."
"O Horace! I hope you will find one worthy of you," she said. "I shall have a place in my heart all ready for her. She shall be my sister. You will write to me, won't you? Do write. I shall so want to hear of the dear old things. Every stick and stone, every sweetbrier-bush and huckleberry patch in Oldtown, will always be dear to me. And dear old precious Aunty, what ever set it into her good heart to think of taking poor little me to be her child? and it 's too bad that I should leave her so. You know, Horace, I have a small income all my own, and that I mean to give to Aunty."
Now there were many points in this little valedictory of Tina to which I had no mind to respond, and she looked, as she was speaking, with tears coming in her great soft eyes, altogether too loving and lovely to be a safe companion to one forbidden to hold her in his arms and kiss her, and I felt such a desperate temptation in that direction that I turned suddenly from her. "Does Mr. Davenport approve such a disposition of your income?" said I, in a constrained voice.
"Mr. Davenport! Mr. High and Mighty," she said, mimicking my constrained tone, "what makes you so sulky to me this morning?"
"I am not sulky, Tina, only sad," I said.
"Come, come, Horace, don't be sad," she said, coaxingly, and putting her hand through my arm. "Now just be a good

 

Page 1422
boy, and walk up and down with me here a few moments, and let me tell you about things."
I submitted and let her lead me off passively. "You see, Horace," she said, "I feel for poor old Aunty. Hers seems to me such a dry, desolate life; and I can't help feeling a sort of self-reproach when I think of it. Why should I have health and youth and strength and Ellery, and be going to see all the beauty and glory of Europe, while she sits alone at home, old and poor, and hears the rain drip off from those old lilacbushes? Oldtown is a nice place, to be sure, but it does rain a great deal there, and she and Polly will be so lonesome without me to make fun for them. Now, Horace, you must promise me to go there as much as you can. You must cultivate Aunty for my sake; and her friendship is worth cultivating for its own sake."
"I know it," said I; "I am fully aware of the value of her mind and character."
"You and Harry ought both to visit her," said Tina, "and write to her, and take her advice. Nothing improves a young man faster than such female friendship; it 's worth that of dozens of us girls."
Tina always had a slight proclivity for sermonizing, but a chapter in Ecclesiastes, coming from little preachers with lips and eyes like hers, is generally acceptable.
"You know," said Tina, "that Aunty has some sort of a trouble on her mind."
"I know all about it," said I.
"Did she tell you?"
"Yes," said I, "after I had divined it."
"I made her tell me," said Tina. "When I came home from school, I determined I would not be treated like a child by her any longer,that she should tell me her troubles, and let me bear them with her. I am young and full of hope, and ought to have troubles to bear. And she is worn out and weary with thinking over and over the same sad story. What a strange thing it is that that sister treats her so! I have been thinking so much about her lately, Horace; and, do you know? I had the strangest dream about her last night. I dreamed that Ellery and I were standing at the altar being married, and, all of a sudden, that lady that we

 

Page 1423
saw in the closet and in the garret rose up like a ghost between us."
"Come, come," said I, "Tina, you are getting nervous. One shouldn't tell of one's bad dreams, and then one forgets them easier."
"Well," said Tina, "it made me sad to think that she was a young girl like me, full of hope and joy. They did n't treat her rightly over in that Farnsworth family,Miss Mehitable told me all about it. O, it was a dreadful story! they perfectly froze her heart with their dreary talk about religion. Horace, I think the most irreligious thing in the world is that way of talking, which takes away our Heavenly Father, and gives only a dreadful Judge. I should not be so happy and so safe as I am now, if I did not believe in a loving God."
"Tina," said I, "are you satisfied with the religious principles of Mr. Davenport?"
"I 'm glad you asked me that, Horace, because Mr. Davenport is a man that is very apt to be misunderstood. Nobody really does understand him but me. He has seen so much of cant, and hypocrisy, and pretence of religion, and is so afraid of pretensions that do not mean anything, that I think he goes to the other extreme. Indeed, I have told him so. But he says he is always delighted to hear me talk on religion, and he likes to have me repeat hymns to him; and he told me the other day that he thought the Bible contained finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be got from all other books put together. Then he has such a wonderful mind, you know. Mr. Avery said that he never saw a person that appreciated all the distinctions of the doctrines more completely than he did. He does n't quite agree with Mr. Avery, nor with anybody; but I think he is very far from being an irreligious man. I believe he thinks very seriously on all these subjects, indeed."
"I am glad of it," said I, half convinced by her fervor, more than half by the magic of her presence, and the touch of the golden curls that the wind blew against my cheek,true Venetian curls, brown in the shade and gold in the sun. Certainly, such things as these, if not argument, incline man to be convinced of whatever a fair preacher says; and I thought it not unlikely that Ellery Davenport liked to hear her talk about religion. The conversation was interrupted by the

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