The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Mrs. Katy Scudder’s garret was not an exception to the general rule. Those quaint little people who touch with so airy a grace all the lights and shadows of great beams, bare rafters, and unplastered walls, had not failed in their work there. Was there not there a grand easy-chair of stamped-leather, minus two of its hinder legs, which had genealogical associations through the Wilcoxes with the Vernons and through the Vernons quite across the water with Old England? and was there not a dusky picture, in an old tarnished frame, of a woman of whose tragic end strange stories were whispered,—one of the sufferers in the time when witches were unceremoniously helped out of the world, instead of being, as now-a-days, helped to make their fortune in it by table-turning?

  Yes, there were all these things, and many more which we will not stay to recount, but bring you to the boudoir which Mary has constructed for herself around the dormer-window which looks into the whispering old apple-tree.

  The inclosure was formed by blankets and bed-spreads, which, by reason of their antiquity, had been pensioned off to an undisturbed old age in the garret,—not common blankets or bed-spreads, either,—bought, as you buy yours, out of a shop,—spun or woven by machinery,—without individuality or history. Every one of these curtains had its story. The one on the right, nearest the window, and already falling into holes, is a Chinese linen, and even now displays unfaded, quaint patterns of sleepy-looking Chinamen, in conical hats, standing on the leaves of most singular herbage, and with hands forever raised in act to strike bells, which never are struck and never will be till the end of time. These, Mrs. Katy Scudder had often instructed Mary, were brought from the Indies by her great-great-grandfather, and were her grandmother’s wedding-curtains, —the grandmother who had blue eyes like hers and was just about her height.

  The next spread was spun and woven by Mrs. Katy’s beloved Aunt Eunice,—a mythical personage, of whom Mary gathered vague accounts that she was disappointed in love, and that this very article was part of a bridal outfit, prepared in vain, against the return of one from sea, who never came back,—and she heard of how she sat wearily and patiently at her work, this poor Aunt Eunice, month after month, starting every time she heard the gate shut, every time she heard the tramp of a horse’s hoof, every time she heard the news of a sail in sight,—her color, meanwhile, fading and fading as life and hope bled away at an inward wound,—till at last she found comfort and reunion beyond the veil.

  Next to this was a bed-quilt pieced in tiny blocks, none of them bigger than a sixpence, containing, as Mrs. Katy said, pieces of the gowns of all her grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and female relatives for years back,—and mated to it was one of the blankets which had served Mrs. Scudder’s uncle in his bivouac at Valley Forge,1 when the American soldiers went on the snows with bleeding feet, and had scarce anything for daily bread except a morning message of patriotism and hope from George Washington.

  Such were the memories woven into the tapestry of our little boudoir. Within, fronting the window, stands the large spinning-wheel, one end adorned with a snowy pile of fleecy rolls,—and beside it, a reel and a basket of skeins of yarn,—and open, with its face down on the beam of the wheel, lay always a book, with which the intervals of work were beguiled.

  The dusky picture of which we have spoken hung against the rough wall in one place, and in another appeared an old engraved head of one of the Madonnas of Leonardo da Vinci, a picture which to Mary had a mysterious interest, from the fact of its having been cast on shore after a furious storm, and found like a waif lying in the seaweed; and Mrs. Marvyn, who had deciphered the signature, had not ceased exploring till she found for her, in an Encyclopædia, a life of that wonderful man, whose greatness enlarges our ideas of what is possible to humanity,—and Mary pondering thereon, felt the seaworn picture as a constant vague inspiration.

  Here our heroine spun for hours and hours,—with intervals, when, crouched on a low seat in the window, she pored over her book, and then, returning again to her work, thought of what she had read to the lulling burr of the sounding wheel.

  By chance a robin had built its nest so that from her retreat she could see the five little blue eggs, whenever the patient brooding mother left them for a moment uncovered. And sometimes, as she sat in dreamy reverie, resting her small, round arms on the windowsill, she fancied that the little feathered watcher gave her familiar nods and winks of a confidential nature,—cocking the small head first to one side and then to the other, to get a better view of her gentle human neighbor.

  I dare say it seems to you, reader, that we have travelled in our story, over a long space of time, because we have talked so much and introduced so many personages and reflections; but, in fact, it is only Wednesday week since James sailed, and the eggs which were brooded when he went are still unhatched in the nest, and the apple-tree has changed only in having now a majority of white blossoms over the pink buds.

  This one week has been a critical one to our Mary;—in it, she has made the great discovery, that she loves; and she has made her first step into the gay world; and now she comes back to her retirement to think the whole over by herself. It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely face of the foreign Madame, so brilliant under its powdered hair and flashing gems,—the sweet, foreign accents of the voice,—the tiny, jewelled fan, with its glancing pictures and sparkling tassels, whence exhaled vague and floating perfumes; then she hears again that manly voice, softened to tones so seductive, and sees those fine eyes with the tears in them, and wonders within herself that he could have kissed her hand with such veneration, as if she had been a throned queen.

  But here the sound of busy, pattering footsteps is heard on the old, creaking staircase, and soon the bows of Miss Prissy’s bonnet part the folds of the boudoir drapery, and her merry, May-day face looks in.

  “Well, really, Mary, how do you do, to be sure? You wonder to see me, don’t you? but I thought I must just run in, a minute, on my way up to Miss Marvyn’s. I promised her at least a half-a-day, though I didn’t see how I was to spare it,—for I tell Miss Wilcox I just run and run till it does seem as if my feet would drop off; but I thought I must just step in to say, that I, for my part, do admire the Doctor more than ever, and I was telling your mother we mus‘n’t mind too much what people say. I ’most made Miss Wilcox angry, standing up for him; but I put it right to her, and says I, ‘Miss Wilcox, you know folks must speak what’s on their mind,—in particular ministers must; and you know, Miss Wilcox,’ I says, ‘that the Doctor is a good man, and lives up to his teaching, if anybody in this world does, and gives away every dollar he can lay hands on to those poor negroes, and works over ’em and teaches ‘em as if they were his brothers’; and says I, ‘Miss Wilcox, you know I don’t spare myself, night nor day, trying to please you and do your work to give satisfaction; but when it comes to my conscience,’ says I, ‘Miss Wilcox, you know I always must speak out, and if it was the last word I had to say on my dying bed, I’d say that I think the Doctor is right.’ Why! what things he told about the slave-ships, and packing those poor creatures so that they couldn’t move nor breathe!—why, I declare, every time I turned over and stretched in bed, I thought of it;—and says I, ‘Miss Wilcox, I do believe that the judgments of God will come down on us, if something a’n’t done, and I shall always stand by the Doctor,’ says I;—and, if you’ll believe me, just then I turned round and saw the General; and the General, he just haw-hawed right out, and says he, ’Good for you, Miss Prissy! that’s real grit,’ says he, ‘and I like you better for it.’—Laws,” added Miss Prissy, reflectively, “I sha’n’t lose by it, for Miss Wilcox knows she never can get anybody to do the work for her that I will.”

  “Do you think,” said Mary, “that there are a great many made angry?”

  “Why,
bless your heart, child, haven’t you heard?—Why, there never was such a talk in all Newport. Why, you know Mr. Simeon Brown is gone clear off to Dr. Stiles; and Miss Brown, I was making up her plum-colored satin o’ Monday, and you ought to ‘a’ heard her talk. But, I tell you, I fought her. She used to talk to me,” said Miss Prissy, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper, “ ’cause I never could come to it to say that I was willin’ to be lost, if it was for the glory of God; and she always told me folks could just bring their minds right up to anything they knew they must; and I just got the tables turned on her, for they talked and abused the Doctor till they fairly wore me out, and says I, ‘Well, Miss Brown, I’ll give in, that you and Mr. Brown do act up to your principles; you certainly act as if you were willing to be damned’;—and so do all those folks who will live on the blood and groans of the poor Africans, as the Doctor said; and I should think, by the way Newport people are making their money, that they were all pretty willing to go that way,—though, whether it’s for the glory of God, or not, I’m doubting. —But you see, Mary,” said Miss Prissy, sinking her voice again to a solemn whisper, “I never was clear on that point; it always did seem to me a dreadful high place to come to, and it didn’t seem to be given to me; but I thought, perhaps, if it was necessary, it would be given, you know,—for the Lord always has been so good to me that I’ve faith to believe that, and so I just say, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’ ”;—and Miss Prissy hastily whisked a little drop out of her blue eye with her handkerchief.

  At this moment, Mrs. Scudder came into the boudoir with a face expressive of some anxiety.

  “I suppose Miss Prissy has told you,” she said, “the news about the Browns. That’ll make a great falling off in the Doctor’s salary; and I feel for him, because I know it will come hard to him not to be able to help and do, especially for these poor negroes, just when he will. But then we must put everything on the most economical scale we can, and just try, all of us, to make it up to him. I was speaking to Cousin Zebedee about it, when he was down here, on Monday, and he is all clear;—he has made out free papers for Candace and Cato and Dinah, and they couldn‘t, one of ’em, be hired to leave him; and he says, from what he’s seen already, he has no doubt but they’ll do enough more to pay for their wages.”

  “Well,” said Miss Prissy, “I haven’t got anybody to care for but myself. I was telling sister Elizabeth, one time, (she’s married and got four children,) that I could take a storm a good deal easier than she could, ‘cause I hadn’t near so many sails to pull down; and now, you just look to me for the Doctor’s shirts, ’cause, after this, they shall all come in ready to put on, if I have to sit up till morning. And I hope, Miss Scudder, you can trust me to make them; for if I do say it myself, I a‘n’t afraid to do fine stitching ’longside of anybody, —and hemstitching ruffles, too; and I haven’t shown you yet that French stitch I learned of the nuns;—but you just set your heart at rest about the Doctor’s shirts. I always thought,” continued Miss Prissy, laughing, “that I should have made a famous hand about getting up that tabernacle in the wilderness, with the blue and the purple and fine-twined linen; it’s one of my favorite passages, that is;—different things, you know, are useful to different people.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Scudder, “I see that it’s our call to be a remnant small and despised, but I hope we sha’n’t shrink from it. I thought, when I saw all those fashionable people go out Sunday, tossing their heads and looking so scornful, that I hoped grace would be given me to be faithful.”

  “And what does the Doctor say?” said Miss Prissy.

  “He hasn’t said a word; his mind seems to be very much lifted above all these things.”

  “La, yes,” said Miss Prissy, “that’s one comfort; he’ll never know where his shirts come from; and besides that, Miss Scudder,” she said, sinking her voice to a whisper, “as you know, I haven’t any children to provide for,—though I was telling Elizabeth t’other day, when I was making up frocks for her children, that I believed old maids, first and last, did more providing for children than married women; but still I do contrive to slip away a pound-note, now and then, in my little old silver tea-pot that was given to me when they settled old Mrs. Simpson’s property, (I nursed her all through her last sickness, and laid her out with my own hands,) and, as I was saying, if ever the Doctor should want money, you just let me know.”

  “Thank you, Miss Prissy,” said Mrs. Scudder; “we all know where your heart is.”

  “And now,” added Miss Prissy, “what do you suppose they say? Why, they say Colonel Burr is struck dead in love with our Mary; and you know his wife’s dead, and he’s a widower; and they do say that he’ll get to be the next President. Sakes alive! Well, Mary must be careful, if she don’t want to be carried off; for they do say that there can’t any woman resist him, that sees enough of him. Why, there’s that poor French woman, Madame—what do you call her, that’s staying with the Vernons?—they say she’s over head and ears in love with him.”

  “But she’s a married woman,” said Mary; “it can’t be possible.”

  Mrs. Scudder looked reprovingly at Miss Prissy, and for a few moments there was great shaking of heads and a whispered conference between the two ladies, ending in Miss Prissy’s going off, saying, as she went down stairs,—

  “Well, if women will do so, I, for my part, can’t blame the men.”

  In a few moments Miss Prissy rushed back as much discomposed as a clucking hen who has seen a hawk.

  “Well, Miss Scudder, what do you think? Here’s Colonel Burr come to call on the ladies!”

  Mrs. Scudder’s first movement, in common with all middle-aged gentlewomen, was to put her hand to her head and reflect that she had not on her best cap; and Mary looked down at her dimpled hands, which were blue from the contact with mixed yarn she had just been spinning.

  “Now, I’ll tell you what,” said Miss Prissy,—“wasn’t it lucky you had me here? for I first saw him coming in at the gate, and I whipped in quick as a wink and opened the best-room window-shutters, and then I was back at the door, and he bowed to me as if I’d been a queen, and says he, ‘Miss Prissy, how fresh you’re looking this morning!’ You see, I was in working at the Vernons’, but I never thought as he’d noticed me. And then he inquired in the handsomest way for the ladies and the Doctor, and so I took him into the parlor and settled him down, and then I ran into the study, and you may depend upon it I flew round lively for a few minutes. I got the Doctor’s study-gown off, and got his best coat on, and put on his wig for him, and started him up kinder lively,—you know it takes me to get him down into this world,—and so there he’s in talking with him; and so you can just slip down and dress yourselves, —easy as not.

  Meanwhile Colonel Burr was entertaining the simple-minded Doctor with all the grace of a young neophyte come to sit at the feet of superior truth. There are some people who receive from Nature as a gift a sort of graceful facility of sympathy, by which they incline to take on, for the time being, the sentiments and opinions of those with whom they converse, as the chameleon was fabled to change its hue with every surrounding. Such are often supposed to be wilfully acting a part, as exerting themselves to flatter and deceive, when in fact they are only framed so sensitive to the sphere of mental emanation which surrounds others that it would require an exertion not in some measure to harmonize with it. In approaching others in conversation, they are like a musician who joins a performer on an instrument,—it is impossible for them to strike a discord; their very nature urges them to bring into play faculties according in vibration with those which another is exerting. It was as natural as possible for Burr to commence talking with the Doctor on scenes and incidents in the family of President Edwards, and his old tutor, Dr. Bellamy,—and thence to glide on to the points of difference and agreement in theology, with a suavity and deference which acted on the good man like a June sun on a budding elm-tree. The Doctor was soon wide awake, talking with fervent animation on the
topic of disinterested benevolence,—Burr the meanwhile studying him with the quiet interest of an observer of natural history, who sees a new species developing before him. At all the best possible points he interposed suggestive questions, and set up objections in the quietest manner for the Doctor to knock down, smiling ever the while as a man may who truly and genuinely does not care a sou for truth on any subject not practically connected with his own schemes in life. He therefore gently guided the Doctor to sail down the stream of his own thoughts till his bark glided out into the smooth waters of the Millennium, on which, with great simplicity, he gave his views at length.

  It was just in the midst of this that Mary and her mother entered. Burr interrupted the conversation to pay them the compliments of the morning,—to inquire for their health, and hope they suffered no inconvenience from their night-ride from the party; then, seeing the Doctor still looking eager to go on, he contrived with gentle dexterity to tie again the broken thread of conversation.