Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  And as if to illustrate and justify this train of thought, Uncle Eliakim’s wagon at this moment came round the corner of the street, driving at a distracted pace. The good man came with such headlong speed and vivacity that his straw hat was taken off by the breeze, and flew far behind him, and he shot up to our door, as he usually did to that of the meeting-house, as if he were going to drive straight in.

  “Lordy, massy, Mr. Sheril,” said Sam, “don’t get out; I ‘ll get your hat. Horace, you jest run and pick it up; that ‘s a good boy.”

  I ran accordingly, but my uncle had sprung out as lively as an autumn grasshopper. “I ‘ve been through a sea of troubles this morning,” he said. “I lent my waggin to Jake Marshall yesterday afternoon, to take his wife a ride. I thought if Jake was a mind to pay the poor woman any attention, I ‘d help; but when he brought it back last night, one of the bolts was broken, and the harness gave out in two places.”

  “Want to know?” said Sam, leisurely examining the establishment. “I think the neighbors ought to subscribe to keep up your team, Mr. Sheril, for it ‘s free to the hull on ‘em.”

  “And what thanks does he get?” said Aunt Lois, sharply. “Well, Uncle ‘Liakim, it ‘s almost dinner-time.”

  “I know it, I know it, I know it, Lois. But there ‘s been a lot o’ things to do this morning. Just as I got the waggin mended come Aunt Bathsheba Sawin’s boy and put me in mind that I promised to carry her corn to grind; and I had to stop and take that round to mill; and then I remembered the pills that was to go to Hannah Dexter –”

  “I dare say, and forty more things like it,” said Aunt Lois.

  “Well, jump in now,” said Uncle Fly; “we ‘ll be over and back in no time.”

  “You may as well put it off till after dinner now,” said Aunt Lois.

  “Could n’t stop for that,” said Uncle ‘Liakim; “my afternoon is all full now. I ‘ve got to be in twenty places before night.” And away we rattled, while Aunt Lois stood looking after us in silent, unutterable contempt.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop! Whoa! Whoa!” said Uncle ‘Liakim, drawing suddenly up. “There ‘s that plaster for Widdah Peters, after all. I wonder if Lois would n’t just run up with it.” By this time he had turned the horse, who ran, with his usual straightforward, blind directness, in a right line, against the doorstep again.

  “Well, what now?” said Aunt Lois, appearing at the door.

  “Why, Lois, I ‘ve just come back to tell you I forgot I promised to carry Widdah Peters that plaster for lumbago; could n’t you just find time to run up there with it?”

  “Well, give it to me,” said Aunt Lois, with sharp precision, and an air of desperate patience.

  “Yes, yes, I will,” said Uncle Fly, standing up and beginning a rapid search into that series of pockets which form a distinguishing mark of masculine habiliments, – searching with such hurried zeal that he really seemed intent on tearing himself to pieces. “Here ‘t is! – no, pshaw, pshaw! that ‘s my handkerchief! O, here! – pshaw, pshaw! Why, where is it? Did n’t I put it in? – or did I – O, here it is in my vest-pocket; no, though. Where a plague!” and Uncle Fly sprang from the wagon and began his usual active round-and-round chase after himself, slapping his pockets, now before and now behind, and whirling like a dancing dervis, while Aunt Lois stood regarding him with stony composure.

  “If you could ever think where anything was, before you began to talk about it, it would be an improvement,” she said.

  “Well, fact is,” said Uncle Eliakim, “now I think of it, Mis’ Sheril made me change my coat just as I came out, and that ‘s the whole on ‘t. You just run up, Lois, and tell Mis’ Sheril to send one of the boys down to Widdah Peters’s with the plaster she ‘ll find in the pocket, – right-hand side. Come now, get up.”

  These last words were addressed, not to Aunt Lois, but to the horse, who, kept in rather a hungry and craving state by his master’s hurrying manner of life, had formed the habit of sedulously improving every spare interval in catching at a mouthful of anything to eat, and had been accordingly busy in cropping away a fringe of very green grass that was growing up by the kitchen doorstep, from which occupation he was remorselessly twitched up and started on an impetuous canter.

  “Wal, now I hope we ‘re fairly started,” said Sam Lawson, “and, Mr. Sheril, you may as well, while you are about it, take the right road as the wrong one, ‘cause that ‘ere saves time. It ‘s pleasant enough anywhere, to be sure, to-day; but when a body ‘s goin’ to a place, a body likes to get there, as it were.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Uncle Fly, “we ‘re on the right road, ain’t we?”

  “Wal, so fur you be; but when you come out on the plains, you must take the fust left-hand road that drives through the woods, and you may jest as well know as much aforehand.”

  “Much obliged to you,” said my uncle. “I reely had n’t thought particularly about the way.”

  “S’pose not,” said Sam, composedly; “so it ‘s jest as well you took me along. Lordy massy, there ain’t a road nor a cart-path round Oldtown that I hain’t been over, time and time again. I believe I could get through any on ’em the darkest night that ever was hatched. Jake Marshall and me has been Indianing round these ‘ere woods more times ‘n you could count. It ‘s kind o’ pleasant, a nice bright day like this ‘ere, to be a joggin’ along in the woods. Everything so sort o’ still, ye know; and ye hear the chestnuts a droppin’, and the wa’nuts. Jake and me, last fall, went up by Widdah Peters’s one day, and shuck them trees, and got nigh about a good bushel o’ wa’nuts. I used to kind o’ like to crack ’em for the young uns, nights, last winter, when Hepsy ‘d let em sit up. Though she ‘s allers for drivin’ on ’em all off to bed, and makin’ it kind o’ solitary, Hepsy is.” And Sam concluded the conjugal allusion with a deep sigh.

  “Have you ever been into the grounds of the Dench house?” said Uncle Fly.

  “Wal, no, not reely; but Jake, he has; and ben into the house too. There was a fellow named ‘Biah Smith that used to be a kind o’ servant to the next family that come in after Lady Frankland went out, and he took Jake all over it once when there wa’n’t nobody there. ‘Biah, he said that when Sir Harry lived there, there was one room that was always kept shet up, and wa’n’t never gone into, and in that ‘ere room there was the long red cloak, and the hat and sword, and all the clothes he hed on when he was buried under the ruins in that ‘ere earthquake. They said that every year, when the day of the earthquake come round, Sir Harry used to spend it a fastin’ and prayin’ in that ‘ere room, all alone. ‘Biah says that he had talked with a fellow that was one of Sir Harry’s body-servants, and he told him that Sir Harry used to come out o’ that ‘ere room lookin’ more like a ghost than a live man, when he ‘d fasted and prayed for twenty-four hours there. Nobody knows what might have ‘peared to him there.”

  I wondered much in my own quiet way at this story, and marvelled whether, in Sir Harry’s long, penitential watchings, he had seen the air of the room all tremulous with forms and faces such as glided around me in my solitary hours.

  “Naow, you see,” said Sam Lawson, “when the earthquake come, Sir Harry, he was a driving with a court lady; and she, poor soul, went into ‘tarnity in a minit, – ‘thout a minit to prepare. And I ‘spect there ain’t no reason to s’pose but what she was a poor, mis’able Roman Catholic. So her prospects could n’t have been noways encouragin’. And it must have borne on Sir Harry’s mind to think she should be took and he spared, when he was a cuttin’ up just in the way he was. I should n’t wonder but she should ‘pear to him. You know they say there is a woman in white walks them grounds, and ‘Biah, he says, as near as he can find out, it ‘s that ‘ere particular chamber as she allers goes to. ‘Biah said he ‘d seen her at the windows a wringin’ her hands and a crying’ fit to break her heart, poor soul. Kind o’ makes a body feel bad, ‘cause, arter all, ‘t wa’n’t her fault she was born a Roman Catholic, – now was it?”

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p; The peculiarity of my own mental history had this effect on me from a child, that it wholly took away from me all dread of the supernatural. A world of shadowy forms had always been as much a part of my short earthly experience as the more solid and tangible one of real people. I had just as quiet and natural a feeling about one as the other. I had not the slightest doubt, on hearing Sam’s story, that the form of the white lady did tenant those deserted apartments; and so far from feeling any chill or dread in the idea, I felt only a sort of curiosity to make her acquaintance.

  Our way to the place wound through miles of dense forest. Sir Harry had chosen it, as a retreat from the prying eyes and slanderous tongues of the world, and a region of woodland solitude. And as we trotted leisurely under the bright scarlet and yellow boughs of the forest, Uncle Eliakim and Sam discoursed of the traditions of the place we were going to.

  “Who was it bought the place after Lady Frankland went to England?” said Uncle Eliakim.

  “Wal, I believe ‘t was let a spell. There was some French folks hed it ‘long through the war. I heerd tell that they was pretty high people. I never could quite make out when they went off; there was a good many stories round about it. I did n’t clearly make out how ‘t was, till Dench got it. Dench, you know, got his money in a pretty peculiar way, ef all they say ‘s true.”

  “How’s that?” said my uncle.

  “Wal, they do say he got the great carbuncle that was at the bottom of Sepaug River. You ‘ve heard about the great carbuncle, I s’pose?”

  “O, no! do pray tell me about it,” said I, interrupting with fervor.

  “Why, did n’t you never hear ‘bout that? want to know. Wal, I ‘ll tell ye, then. I know all ‘bout it. Jake Marshall, he told me that Dench fust told him, and he got it from old Mother Ketury, ye know, – a regelar old heathen Injun Ketury is, – and folks do go so fur as to say that in the old times Ketury ‘d ‘a’ ben took up for a witch, though I never see no harm in her ways. Ef there be sperits, and we all know there is, what ‘s the harm o’ Ketery’s seein’ on ‘em?”

  “Maybe she can’t help seeing them,” suggested I.

  “Jes so, jes so; that ‘ere’s what I telled Jake when we’s a talking it over, and he said he did n’t like Dench’s havin’ so much to do with old Ketury. But la, old Ketury could say the Lord’s Prayer in Injun, cause I ‘ve heard her; though she would n’t say it when she did n’t want to and she would say it when she did, – jest as the fit took her. But lordy massy, them wild Injuns, they ain’t but jest half folks, they ‘re so kind o’ wild, and birchy and bushy as a body may say. Ef they take religion at all, it ‘s got to be in their own way. Ef you get the wild beast all out o’ one on ‘em, there don’t somehow seem to be enough left to make an ordinary smart man of, so much on em’s wild. Anyhow, Dench, he was thick with Ketury, and she told him all about the gret carbuncle, and gin him directions how to get it.”

  “But I don’t know what a great carbuncle is,” I interrupted.

  “Lordy massy, boy, did n’t you never read in your Bible about the New Jerusalem, and the precious stones in the foundation, that shone like the sun? Wal, the carbuncle was one on ‘em.”

  “Did it fall down out of heaven into the river?” said I.

  “Mebbe,” said Sam. “At any rate Ketury, she told ’em what they had to do to get it. They had to go out arter it jest exactly at twelve o’clock at night, when the moon was full. You was to fast all the day before, and go fastin’, and say the Lord’s Prayer in Injun afore you went; and when you come to where ‘t was, you was to dive after it. But there wa’n’t to be a work spoke; if there was, it went right off.”

  “What did they have to say the prayer in Indian for?” said I.

  “Lordy massy, boy, I s’pose ‘t was ‘cause ‘t was Indian sperits kep’ a watch over it. Any rate ‘t was considerable of a pull on ‘em, ‘cause Ketury, she had to teach ‘em; and she wa’n’t allers in the sperit on ‘t. Sometimes she ‘s crosser ‘n torment, Ketury is. Dench, he gin her fust and last as much as ten dollars, – so Jake says. However, they got all through with it, and then come a moonlight night, and they went out. Jake says it was the spendidest moonlight ye ever did see, – all jest as still, – only the frogs and the turtles kind o’ peepin’; and they did n’t say a word, and rowed out past the pint there, where the water’s ten feet deep, and he looked down and see it a shinin’ on the bottom like a great star, making the waters all light like a lantern. Dench, he dived for it, Jake said; and he saw him put his hand right on it; and he was so tickled, you know, to see he ‘d got it, that he could n’t help hollerin’ right out, “There, you got it!’ and it was gone. Dench was mad enough to ‘a’ killed him ‘cause, when it goes that ‘ere way, you can’t see it agin for a year and a day. But two or three year arter, all of a sudden Dench, he seemed to kind o’ spruce up and have a deal o’ money to spend. He said an uncle had died and left it to him in England; but Jake Marshall says you ‘ll never take him in that ‘ere way. He says he thinks it ‘s no better’n witchcraft, getting money that ‘ere way. Ye see Jake was to have had half it they ‘d ‘a’ got it, and not getting’ nothin’ kind o’ sot him to thinkin’ on it in a moral pint o’ view, ye know. – But, lordy massy, where be we, Mr. Sheril? This ‘ere’s the second or third time we ‘ve come round to this ‘ere old dead chestnut. We ain’t makin’ no progress.”

  In fact there were many and crossing cart-paths through this forest, which had been worn by different farmers of the vicinity in going after their yearly supply of wood; and, notwithstanding Sam’s assertion of superior knowledge in these matters, we had, in the negligent inattention of his narrative, become involved in this labyrinth, and driven up and down, and back and forward, in the wood, without seeming at all to advance upon our errand.

  “Wal, I declare for’t, I never did see nothing beat it,” said Sam. “We ‘ve been goin’ jest round and round for this hour or more, and come out again at exactly the same place. I ‘ve heerd of places that ‘s kep’ hid, and folks allers gets sort o’ struck blind and confused that undertakes to look ’em up. Wal, I don’t say I believe in sich stories, but this ‘ere is curous. Why, I ‘d ‘a’ thought I could ‘a’ gone straight to it blindfolded, any day. Ef Jake Marshall were here, he ‘d go straight to it.”

  “Well, Sam,” said Uncle Eliakim, “it ‘s maybe because you and me got so interested in telling stories that we ‘ve missed the way.”

  “That ‘ere’s it, ‘thout a doubt,” said Sam. “Now I ‘ll just brush up, and kind o’ concentrate my ‘tention. I ‘ll just git out and walk a spell, and take an observation.”

  The result of this improved attention to the material facts of the case was, that we soon fell into a road that seemed to wind slowly up a tract of rising ground, and to disclose to our view, through an interlacing of distant boughs, the western horizon, toward which the sun was now sinking with long, level beams. We had been such a time in our wanderings, that there seemed a prospect of night setting in before we should be through with our errand and ready to return.

  “The house stan’s on the top of a sort o’ swell o’ ground,” said Sam; “and as nigh as I can make it out, it must be somewhere about there.”

  “There is a woman a little way before us,” said I; “why don’t you ask her?”

  I saw very plainly in a turn of the road a woman whose face was hidden by a bonnet, who stood as if waiting for us. It was not the white woman of ghostly memory, but apparently a veritable person in the every-day habiliments of common life, who stood as if waiting for us.

  “I don’t see no woman,” said Sam; “where is she?”

  I pointed with my finger, but as I did so the form melted away. I remember distinctly the leaves of the trees back of it appearing through it as through a gauze veil, and then it disappeared entirely.

  “There is n’t any woman that I can see,” said Uncle Eliakim, briskly. “The afternoon sun must have got into your eyes, boy.”

  I had been so often
severely checked and reproved for stating what I saw, that I now determined to keep silence, whatever might appear to me. At a little distance before us the road forked, one path being steep and craggy, and the other easier of ascent, and apparently going in much the same general direction. A little in advance, in the more rugged path, stood the same female form. Her face was hidden by a branch of a tree, but she beckoned to us. “Take that path, Uncle ‘Liakim,” said I, “it ‘s the right one.”

  “Lordy, massy,” said Sam Lawson, “how in the world should you know that? That ‘ere is the shortest road to the Dench house, and the other leads away from it.”

  I kept silence as to my source of information, and still watched the figure. As we passed it, I saw a beautiful face with a serene and tender expression, and her hands were raised as if in blessing. I looked back earnestly and she was gone.

  A few moments after, we were in the grounds of the place, and struck into what had formerly been the carriage way, though now overgrown with weeds, and here and there with a jungle of what was once well-kept ornamental shrubbery. A tree had been uprooted by the late tempest, and blown down across the road, and we had to make quite a little detour to avoid it.

  “Now how are we to get into this house?” said Uncle Eliakim. “No doubt it ‘s left fastened up.”

  “Do you see that?” said Sam Lawson, who had been gazing steadily upward at the chimneys of the house, with his eyes shaded by one of his great hands. “Look at that smoke from the middle chimbly.”

  “There ‘s somebody in the house, to be sure,” said Uncle Eliakim; “suppose we knock at the front door here?” – and with great briskness, suiting the action to the word, he lifted the black serpent knocker, and gave such a rat tat tat as must have roused all the echoes of the old house, while Sam Lawson and I stood by him, expectant, on the front steps.