Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  By some rare good fortune of nature or of grace, she found her little protégée already able to read with fluency, and a tolerable mistress of the use of the needle and thimble. Thus she possessed the key of useful knowledge and of useful feminine practice. But truth compels us to state that there appeared not the smallest prospect, during the first few weeks of Miss Mehitable’s educational efforts, that she would ever make a good use of either. In vain Miss Mehitable had written a nice card, marking out regular hours for sewing, for reading, for geography and grammar, with suitable intervals of amusement; and in vain Miss Tina, with edifying enthusiasm, had promised, with large eyes and most abundant eloquence, and with many overflowing caresses, to be “so good.” Alas! when it came to carrying out the programme, all alone in the old house, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and all days, Tina gaped and nestled, and lost her thimble and her needle, and was infinite in excuses, and infinite in wheedling caresses, and arguments, enforced with flattering kisses, in favor of putting off the duties now of this hour and then of that, and substituting something more to her fancy. She had a thousand plans of her own for each passing hour, and no end of argument and eloquence to persuade her old friend to follow her ways, – to hear her read an old ballad instead of applying herself to her arithmetic lesson, or listen to her recital of something that she had just picked out of English history, or let her finish a drawing that she was just inspired to commence, or spend a bright, sunny hour in flower-gatherings and rambles by the brown river-side; whence she would return laden with flowers, and fill every vase in the old, silent room till it would seem as if the wilderness had literally blossomed as the rose. Tina’s knack for the arranging of vases and twining of vines and sorting of wild-flowers amounted to a species of genius; and, as it was something of which Miss Mehitable had not the slightest comprehension, the child took the lead in this matter with a confident assurance. And, after all, the effect was so cheerful and so delightful, that Miss Mehitable could not find it in her heart to call to the mind of the little wood-fairy how many hours these cheerful decorations had cost.

  Thus poor Miss Mehitable found herself daily being drawn, by the leash that held this gay bird, into all sorts of unseemly gyrations and wanderings, instead of using it to tether the bird to her own well-considered purposes. She could not deny that the child was making her old days pass in a very amusing manner, and it was so much easier to follow the lively little sprite in all her airy ways and caprices, seeing her lively and spirited and happy, than to watch the ennui and the yawns and the restlessness that came over her with every effort to conform to the strict letter of the programme, that good Miss Mehitable was always yielding. Every night she went to bed with an unquiet conscience, sensible that, though she had had an entertaining day, she had been letting Tina govern her, instead of governing Tina.

  Over that grave supposed necessity of governing Tina, this excellent woman groaned in spirit on many a night after the little wheedling tongue had become silent, and the bright, deluding eyes had gone down under their fringy lashes. “The fact is,” said the sad old woman, “Miss Asphyxia spoke the truth. It is a fact, I am not fit to bring up a child. She does rule over me, just as she said she would, and I ‘m a poor old fool; but then, what am I to do? She is so bright and sweet and pretty, and I ‘m a queer-looking, dry, odd old woman, with nobody to love me if she does n’t. If I cross her and tie her to rules, and am severe with her, she won’t love me, and I am too selfish to risk that. Besides, only think what came of using severe measures with poor Emily! people can be spoilt by severity just as much as by indulgence, and more hopelessly. But what shall I do?”

  Miss Mehitable at first had some hope of supporting and backing up the weaknesses of her own heart by having recourse to Polly’s well-known energy. Polly was a veritable dragon of education, and strong in the most efficient articles of faith. Children must have their wills broken, as she expressed it, “short off”; they must mind the very first time you speak; they must be kept under and made to go according to rule, and, if they swerved, Polly recommended measures of most sanguinary severity.

  But somehow or other Tina had contrived to throw over this grimmest and most Calvinistic of virgins the glamour of her presence, so that she ruled, reigned, and predominated in the most awful sanctuaries of Polly’s kitchen, with a fearfully unconcerned and negligent freedom. She dared to peep into her yeast-jug in the very moment of projection, and to pinch off from her downy puffs of newly raised bread sly morsels for her own cooking experiments; she picked from Polly’s very hand the raisins which the good woman was stoning for the most awfully sacred election cake, and resolutely persisted in banging on her chair and chattering in her ear during the evolution of high culinary mysteries with which the Eleusinian, or any other heathen trumperies of old, were not to be named. Had n’t the receipt for election cake been in the family for one hundred years? and was not Polly the sacred ark and tabernacle in which that divine secret resided? Even Miss Mehitable had always been politely requested to step out of the kitchen when Polly was composing her mind for this serious work, but yet Tina neglected her geography and sewing to be present, chattered all the time, as Polly remarked, like a grist-mill, tasted the sugar and spices, and helped herself at intervals to the savory composition as it was gradually being put together, announcing her opinions, and giving Polly her advice, with an effrontery to which Polly’s submission was something appalling.

  It really used to seem to Miss Mehitable, as she listened to Polly’s dissonant shrieks of laughter from the kitchen, as if that venerable old girl must be slightly intoxicated. Polly’s laughter was in truth something quite formidable. All the organs in her which would usually be employed in this exercise were so rusty for want of use, so choked up with theological dust and débris that when brought into exercise they had a wild, grating dissonant sound, rather calculated to alarm. Miss Mehitable really wondered if this could be the same Polly of whom she herself stood in a certain secret awe, whose premises she never invaded, and whose will over and about her had been always done instead of her own; but if she ventured to open the kitchen door and recall Tina, she was sure to be vigorously snubbed by Polly, who walked over all her own precepts and maxims in the most shameless and astonishing manner.

  Polly, however, made up for her own compliances by heaping up censures on poor Miss Mehitable when Tina had gone to bed at night. When the bright eyes were fairly closed, and the little bewitching voice hushed in sleep, Polly’s conscience awoke like an armed man, and she atoned for her own sins of compliance and indulgence by stringently admonishing Miss Mebitable that she must be more particular about that child, and not let her get her own head so much, – most unblushingly ignoring her own share in abetting her transgressions, and covering her own especial sins under the declaration that “she never had undertaken to bring the child up, – she had to get along with her the best way she could, – but the child never would make anything if she was let to go on so.” Yet, in any particular case that arose, Polly was always sure to go over to Tina’s side and back her usurpations.

  For example, it is to be confessed that Tina never could or would be got to bed at those hours which are universally admitted to be canonical for well-brought-up children. As night drew on, the little one’s tongue ran with increasing fluency, and her powers of entertainment waxed more dizzy and dazzling; and so, oftentimes, as the drizzling, freezing night shut in, and the wind piped and howled lonesomely round the corners of the dusky old mansion, neither of the two forlorn women could find it in her heart to extinguish the little cheerful candle of their dwelling in bed; and so she was to them ballet and opera as she sung and danced, mimicked the dog, mimicked the cat and the hens and the tom-turkey, and at last talked and flew about the room like Aunt Lois, stirred up butter and pshawed like grandma, or invented imaginary scenes and conversations, or improvised unheard-of costumes out of strange old things she had rummaged out of Miss Mehitable’s dark closets. Neither of the
two worthy women had ever seen the smallest kind of dramatic representation, so that Tina’s histrionic powers fascinated them by touching upon dormant faculties, and seemed more wonderful for their utter novelty; and more than once, to the poignant self-reproach of Miss Mehitable, and Polly’s most moral indignation, nine o’clock struck, in the inevitable tones of the old family timepiece, before they were well aware what they were doing. Then Tina would be hustled off to bed, and Polly would preach Miss Mehitable a strenuous discourse on the necessity of keeping children to regular hours, interspersed with fragments of quotations from one of her venerable father’s early sermons on the Christian bringing up of households. Polly would grow inexorable as conscience on these occasions, and when Miss Mehitable humbly pleaded in extenuation how charming a little creature it was, and what a pleasant evening she had given, Polly would shake her head, and declare that the ways of sin were always pleasant for a time, but at the last it would “bite like a serpent and sting like an adder”; and when Miss Mehitable, in the most delicate manner, would insinuate that Polly had been sharing the forbidden fruit, such as it was, Polly would flare up in sudden wrath, and declare that “everything that went wrong was always laid to her.”

  In consequence of this, though Miss Mehitable found the first few weeks with her little charge altogether the gayest and brightest that had diversified her dreary life, yet there was a bitter sense of self-condemnation and perplexity with it all. One day she opened her mind to my grandmother.

  “Laws a massy! don’t try to teach her yourself,” said that plain-spoken old individual, – “send her to school with the boys. Children have to go in droves. What ‘s the use of fussing with ’em all day? let the schoolmaster take a part of the care. Children have to be got rid of sometimes, and we come to them all the fresher for having them out of our sight.”

  The consequence was, that Tina rode to school on our sleds in triumph, and made more fun, and did more mischief, and learned less, and was more adored and desired, than any other scholar of us all.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  WE TAKE A STEP UP IN THE WORLD.

  ONE of my most vivid childish remembrances is the length of our winters, the depth of the snows, the raging fury of the storms that used to whirl over the old farm-house, shrieking and piping and screaming round each angle and corner, and thundering down the chimney in a way that used to threaten to topple all down before it.

  The one great central kitchen fire was the only means of warming known in the house, and duly at nine o’clock every night that was raked up, and all the family took their way to bedchambers that never knew a fire, where the very sheets and blankets seemed so full of stinging cold air that they made one’s fingers tingle; and where, after getting into bed, there was a prolonged shiver, until one’s own internal heat-giving economy had warmed through the whole icy mass. Delicate people had these horrors ameliorated by the application of a brass warming-pan, – an article of high respect and repute in those days, which the modern conveniences for warmth in our houses have entirely banished.

  Then came the sleet storms, when the trees bent and creaked under glittering mail of ice, and every sprig and spray of any kind of vegetation was reproduced in sparkling crystals. These were cold days par excellence, when everybody talked of the weather as something exciting and tremendous, – when the cider would freeze in the cellar, and the bread in the milk-room would be like blocks of ice, – when not a drop of water could be got out of the sealed well, and the very chimney-back over the raked-up fire would be seen in the morning sparkling with a rime of frost crystals. How the sledges used to squeak over the hard snow, and the breath freeze on the hair, and beard, and woolly comforters around the necks of the men, as one and another brought in news of the wonderful, unheard-of excesses of Jack Frost during the foregone night! There was always something exhilarating about those extremely cold days, when a very forest of logs, heaped up and burning in the great chimney, could not warm the other side of the kitchen; and when Aunt Lois, standing with her back so near the blaze as to be uncomfortably warm, yet found her dish-towel freezing in her hand, while she wiped the teacup drawn from the almost boiling water. When things got to this point, we little folks were jolly. It was an excitement, an intoxication; it filled life full of talk. People froze the tips of their noses, their ears, their toes; we froze our own. Whoever touched a door-latch incautiously, in the early morning, received a skinning bite from Jack. The axe, the saw, the hatchet, all the iron tools, in short, were possessed of a cold devil ready to snap out at any incautious hand that meddled with him. What ponderous stalactites of ice used to hang from the eaves, and hung unmelted days, weeks, and months, dripping a little, perhaps, towards noon, but hardening again as night came on! and how long all this lasted! To us children it seemed ages.

  Then came April with here and there a sunny day. A bluebird would be vaguely spoken of as having appeared. Sam Lawson was usually the first to announce the fact, to the sharp and sceptical contempt of his helpmeet.

  On a shimmering April morning, with a half-mind to be sunshiny, Sam saw Harry and myself trotting by his door, and called to us for a bit of gossip.

  “Lordy massy, boys, ain’t it pleasant? Why, bless your soul and body, I do believe spring ‘s a comin’, though Hepsy she won’t believe it,” he said, as he leaned over the fence contemplatively, with the axe in his hand. “I heard a bluebird last week, Jake Marshall and me, when we was goin’ over to Hopkinton to see how Ike Saunders is. You know he is down with the measles. I went over to offer to sit up with him. Where be ye goin’ this mornin’?”

  “We ‘re going to the minister’s. Grandfather is n’t well, and Lady Lothrop told us to come for some wine.”

  “Jes’ so,” said Sam. “Wal, now, he orter take something for his stomach’s sake, Scriptur’ goes in for that. A little good hot spiced wine, it ‘s jest the thing; and Ma’am Lothrop she has the very best. Why, some o’ that ‘ere wine o’ hern come over from England years ago, when her fust husband was living; and he was a man that knew where to get his things. Wal, you must n’t stop to play; allers remember when you ‘re sent on errands not to be a idlin’ on the road.”

  “Sam Lawson, will you split me that oven-wood or won’t you?” said a smart, cracking voice, as the door flew open and Hepsy’s thin face and snapping black eyes appeared, as she stood with a weird, wiry, sharp-visaged baby exalted on one shoulder, while in the other hand she shook a dish-cloth.

  “Lordy massy, Hepsy, I ‘m splittin’ as fast as I can. There, run along, boys; don’t stop to play.”

  We ran along, for, truth to say, the vision of Hepsy’s sharp features always quickened our speed, and we heard the loud, high-pitched storm of matrimonial objurgation long after we had left them behind.

  Timidly we struck the great knocker, and with due respect and modesty told our errand to the black doctor of divinity who opened the door.

  “I ‘ll speak to Missis,” he said; “but this ere’s Missis’ great day; it ‘s Good Friday, and she don’t come out of her room the whole blessed day.”

  “But she sent word that we should come,” we both answered in one voice.

  “Well, you jest wait here while I go up and see,” – and the important messenger creaked up stairs on tiptoe with infinite precaution, and knocked at a chamber door.

  Now there was something in all this reception that was vaguely solemn and impressive to us. The minister’s house of itself was a dignified and august place. The minister was in our minds great and greatly to be feared, and to be had in reverence of them that were about him. The minister’s wife was a very great lady, who wore very stiff silks, and rode in a coach, and had no end of unknown wealth at her control, so ran the village gossip.

  And now what this mysterious Good Friday was, and why the house was so still, and why the black doctor of divinity tiptoed up stairs so stealthily, and knocked at her door so timidly, we could not exactly conjecture; – it was all of a piece with the general marvellous
and supernatural character of the whole establishment.

  We heard above the silvery well-bred tones that marked Lady Lothrop.

  “Tell the children to come up.”

  We looked at each other, and each waited a moment for the other to lead the way; finally I took the lead, and Harry followed. We entered a bedroom shaded in a sombre gloom which seemed to our childish eyes mysterious and impressive. There were three windows in the room, but the shutters were closed, and the only light that came in was from heart-shaped apertures in each one. There was in one corner a tall, solemn-looking, high-post bedstead with heavy crimson draperies. There were heavy carved bureaus and chairs of black, solid oak.

  At a table covered with dark cloth sat Lady Lothrop, dressed entirely in black, with a great Book of Common Prayer spread out before her. The light from the heart-shaped hole streamed down upon this prayer-book in a sort of dusky shaft, and I was the more struck and impressed because it was not an ordinary volume, but a great folio bound in parchment, with heavy brass knobs and clasps, printed in black-letter, of that identical old edition first prepared in King Edward’s time, and appointed to be read in churches. Its very unusual and antique appearance impressed me with a kind of awe.

  There was at the other end of the room a tall, full-length mirror, which, as we advanced, duplicated the whole scene, giving back faithfully the image of the spare figure of Lady Lothrop, her grave and serious face, and the strange old book over which she seemed to be bending, with a dusky gleaming of crimson draperies in the background.