Mr. Rossiter came in to tea, and both of them bore down exultingly on Ellery Davenport in regard to the disturbances in France.
“Just what I always said!” said Mr. Rossiter. “French democracy is straight from the Devil. It ‘s the child of misrule, and leads to anarchy. See what their revolution is coming to. Well, I may not be orthodox entirely on the question of total depravity, but I always admitted the total depravity of the French nation.”
“O, the French are men of like passions with us!” said Ellery Davenport. “They have been ground down and debased and imbruted till human nature can bear no longer, and now there is a sudden outbreak of the lower classes, – the turning of the worm.”
“Not a worm,” said Mr. Rossiter, “a serpent, and a strong one.”
“Davenport,” said Mr. Avery, “don’t you see that all this is because this revolution is in the hands of atheists?”
“Certainly I do, sir. These fellows have destroyed the faith of the common people, and given them nothing in its place.”
“I am glad to see you recognize that,” said Mr. Avery.
“Recognize, my dear sir! Nobody knows the worth of religion as a political force better than I do. Those French people are just like children, – full of sentiment, full of feeling, full of fire, but without the cold, judging, logical power that is frozen into men here by your New England theology. If I have got to manage a republic, give me Calvinists.”
“You admit, then,” said Mr. Avery, delightedly, “the worth of Calvinism.”
“As a political agent, certainly I do,” said Ellery Davenport. “Men must have strong, positive religious beliefs to give them vigorous self-government; and republics are founded on the self-governing power of the individual.”
“Davenport,” said Mr. Avery, affectionately laying his hand on his shoulder, “I should like to have said that thing myself, I could n’t have put it better.”
“But do you suppose,” said Esther, trembling with eagerness, “that they will behead the Queen?”
“Certainly I do,” said Ellery Davenport, with that air of cheerful composure with which the retailer of the last horror delights to shock the listener. “O certainly! I would n’t give a pin for her chance. You read the account of the trial, I suppose; you saw that it was a foregone conclusion?”
“I did, indeed,” said Esther, “But, O Mr. Davenport! can nothing be done? There is Lafayette; can he do nothing?”
“Lafayette may think himself happy if he keeps his own head on his shoulders,” said Davenport. “The fact is, that there is a wild beast in every human being. In our race it is the lion. In the French race it is the tiger, – hotter, more tropical, more blindly intense in rage and wrath. Religion, government, education, are principally useful in keeping the human dominant over the beast; but when the beast gets above the human in the community, woe be to it.”
“Davenport, you talk like an apostle,” said Mr. Avery.
“You know the devils believe and tremble,” said Ellery.
“Well, I take it,” said Mr. Rossiter, “you ‘ve come home from France disposed to be a good Federalist.”
“Yes, I have,” said Ellery Davenport. “We must all live and learn, you know.”
And so in one evening, Ellery witched himself into the good graces of every one in the simple parsonage; and when Tina at last appeared she found him reigning king of the circle. Mr. Rossiter, having drawn from him the avowal that he was a Federalist, now looked complacently upon him as a hopeful young neophyte. Mr. Avery saw evident marks of grace in his declarations in favor of Calvinism, while yet there was a spicy flavor of the prodigal son about him, – enough to engage him for his conversation. Your wild, wicked, witty prodigal son is to a spiritual huntsman an attractive mark, like some rare kind of eagle, whose ways must be studied, and whose nest must be marked, and in whose free, savage gambols in the blue air and on the mountain-tops he has a kind of hidden sympathy.
When Tina appeared, it was with an air unusually shy and quiet. She took all his compliments on her growth and change of appearance with a negligent, matter-of-course air, seated herself in the most distant part of the room, and remained obstinately still and silent. Nevertheless, it was to be observed that she lost not a word that he said, or a motion that he made. Was she in that stage of attraction which begins with repulsion? Or did she feel stirring within her that intense antagonism which woman sometimes feels toward man, when she instinctively divines that he may be the one who shall one day send a herald and call on her to surrender. Woman are so intense, they have such prophetic, fore-reaching, nervous systems, that sometimes they appear to be endowed with a gift of prophecy. Tina certainly was an innocent child at this time, uncalculating, and acting by instinct alone, and she looked upon Ellery Davenport as a married man, who was and ought to be and would be nothing to her; and yet, for the life of her, she could not treat him as she treated other men.
If there was in him something which powerfully attracted there was also something of the reverse pole of the magnet that repelled, and inspired a feeling not amounting to fear by having an undefined savor of dread, as if some invisible spirit about him gave mysterious warning. There was a sense of such hidden, subtile power under his suavities, the grasp of the iron hand was so plain through the velvet glove, that delicate and impressible natures felt it. Ellery Davenport was prompt and energetic and heroic; he had a great deal of impulsive good-nature, as his history in all our affairs shows. He was always willing to reach out the helping hand, and helped to some purpose when he did so; and yet I felt, rather than could prove, in his presence, that he could be very remorseless and persistently cruel.
Ellery Davenport inherited the whole Edwards nature, without its religious discipline, – a nature strong both in intellect and passion. He was an unbelieving Jonathan Edwards. It was this whole nature that I felt in him, and I looked upon the gradual interest which I saw growing in Tina toward him, in the turning of her thoughts upon him, in her flights from him and attraction to him, as one looks on the struggles of a fascinated bird, who flees and returns, and flees and returns, each time drawn nearer and nearer to the diamond eyes.
These impressions which come to certain kinds of natures are so dim and cloudy, it is so much the habit of the counter-current of life to disregard them, and to feel that an impression of which you no physical, external proof is of necessity an absurdity and a weakness, that they are seldom acted on, – seldom, at least, in New England, where the habit of logic is so formed from childhood in the mind, and the believing of nothing which you cannot prove is so constant a portion of the life education. Yet with regard to myself, as I have stated before, there was always a sphere of impression surrounding individuals, for which often I could give no reasonable account. It was as if there had been an emanation from the mind, like that from the body. From some it was an emanation of moral health and purity and soundness; from others, the sickly effluvium of moral decay, sometimes penetrating through all sorts of outward graces and accomplishments, like the smell of death though the tube-roses and lilies on the coffin.
I could not prove that Ellery Davenport was a wicked man but I had an instinctive abhorrence of him, for which I reproached myself constantly, deeming it only the madness of an unreasonable jealousy.
His stay with us at this time was only for a few hours. The next morning he took Harry alone and communicated to him some intelligence quite important to his future.
“I have been to visit your father,” he said, “and have made him aware what treasures he possesses in his children.”
“His children have no desire that he should be made aware of it,” said Harry, coldly. “He has broken all ties between them and him.”
“Well, well!” said Ellery Davenport, “the fact is Sir Harry had gone into the virtuous stage of an Englishman’s life, where a man is busy taking care of gouty feet, looking after his tenants, and repenting at his leisure of the sins of his youth. But you will find, when you come to enter
college next year, that there will be a handsome allowance at your disposal; and, between you and me, I ‘ll just say to you that young Sir Harry is about as puny and feeble a little bit of mortality as I ever saw. To my way of thinking, they ‘ll never raise him; and his life is all that stands between you and the estate. You know that I got your mother’s marriage certificate, and it is safe in Parson Lothrop’s hands. So you see there may be a brilliant future before you and your sister. It is well enough for you to know it early, and keep yourself and her free from entanglements. School friendships and flirtations and all that sort of thing are pretty little spring flowers, – very charming in their way and time; but it is n’t advisable to let them lead us into compromising ourselves for life. If your future home is to be England, of course you will want your marriage to strengthen your position there.”
“My future home will never be England,” said Harry, briefly. “America has nursed me and educated me, and I shall always be, heart and soul, an American. My life must be acted in this country.”
The other suggestion contained in Ellery Davenport’s advice was passed over without a word. Harry was not one that could discuss his private relations with a stranger. He could not but feel obliged to Ellery Davenport for the interest that he had manifested in him, and yet there was something about this easy patronizing manner of giving advice that galled him. He was not yet old enough not to feel vexed at being reminded he was young.
It seemed but a few hours, and Ellery Davenport was gone again; and yet how he had changed everything! The hour that he drove up, how perfectly innocently happy and united we all were! Our thoughts needed not to go beyond the present moment: the moss that we had gathered from the wood-pile, and the landscapes that we were going to make with it, were greater treasures than all those of that unknown world of brightness and cleverness and wealth and station, out of which Ellery Davenport had shot like a comet, to astonish us, and then go back and leave us in obscurity.
Harry communicated the intelligence given him by Ellery Davenport, first to me, then to Tina and Esther and Mr. Avery, but begged that it not be spoken of beyond our little circle. It could and it should make no change, he said. But can expectations of such magnitude be awakened in young minds without change?
On the whole, Ellery Davenport left a trail of brightness behind him, notwithstanding my sinister suspicions. “How open-handed and friendly it was of him,” said Esther, “to come up here, when he had so much on his hands! He told father that he should have to be in Washington next week, to talk with them there about the French affairs.”
“And I hope he may do Tom Jefferson some good!” said Mr. Avery, indignantly, – “teach him what he is doing in encouraging this hideous, atheistical French revolution! Why, it will bring discredit on republics, and put back the cause of liberty in Europe a century! Davenport sees into that as plainly as I do.”
“He ‘s a shrewd fellow,” said Mr. Rossiter. “I heard him talk three or four years ago, when he was over here, and he was about as glib-tongued a Jacobin as you ‘d wish to see; but now my young man has come around handsomely. I told him he ought to tell Jefferson just how the thing is working. I go for government by the respectable classes of society.”
“Davenport evidently is not a regenerated man,” said Mr. Avery, thoughtfully; “but as far as speculative knowledge goes, he is as good a theologian as his grandfather. I had a pretty thorough talk with him, before we went to bed last night, and he laid down the distinctions with a clearness and a precision that were astonishing. He sees right through that point of difference between natural and moral inability, and he put it into a sentence that was as neat and compact and clear as a quartz crystal. I think there was a little rub in his mind on the consistency of the freedom of the will with the divine decrees and I just touched him off with an illustration or two there, and I could see, by the flash of his eye, how quickly he took it. ‘davenport,’ said I to him, ‘you are made for the pulpit; you ought to be in it.’
“‘I know it,’ he said, ‘mr. Avery; but the trouble is, I am not good enough. I think,’ he said, ‘sometimes I should like to have been as good a man as my grandfather; but then, you see, there ‘s the world, the flesh, and the Devil, who all have something to say to that.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘davenport, the world and the flesh last only a little while –’
“‘But the Devil and I last forever, I suppose you mean to say,’ said he, getting up with a sort of careless swing; and then he said he must go to bed; but before he went he reached out his hand and smiled on me, and said, ‘Good night, and thank you, Mr. Avery.’ That man has a beautiful smile. It ‘s like a spirit in his face.”
Had Ellery Davenport been acting the hypocrite with Mr. Avery? Supposing a man is made like an organ, with two or three bands of keys, and ever so many stops, so that he can play all sorts of tunes on himself; is it being a hypocrite with each person to play precisely the tune, and draw out exactly the stop, which he knows will make himself agreeable and further his purposes? Ellery Davenport did understand the New England theology as thoroughly as Mr. Avery. He knew it from turret to foundation-stone. He knew all the evidences of natural and revealed religion, and, when he chose to do so, could make most conclusive arguments upon them. He had a perfect appreciation of devotional religion, and knew precisely what it would do for individuals. He saw into politics with unerring precision, and knew what was in men, and whither things were tending. His unbelief was purely and simply what had been called in New England the natural opposition of the heart to God. He loved his own will, and he hated control, and he determined, per fas aut nefas, to carry his own plans in this world, and attend to the other when he got to it. To have his own way, and to carry his own points, and to do so as he pleased, were the ruling purposes of his life.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
LAST DAYS IN CLOUD-LAND.
THE day was coming now that the idyl of Cloudland must end, and our last term wound up with a grand dramatic entertainment.
It was a time-honored custom in New England academics to act a play once a year as the closing exercise, and we resolved that our performance should surpass all other in scenic effect.
The theme of the play was to be the story of Jephthah’s daughter, from the Old Testament. It had been suggested at first to take Miss Hannah More’s sacred drama upon this subject; but Tina insisted upon it that it would be a great deal better to write an original drama ourselves, each taking a character, and composing one’s own part.
Tina was to be Jephthah’s daughter, and Esther her mother; and a long opening scene between them was gotten up by the two in a private session at their desks in the school-room one night, and, when perfected, was read to Harry and me for our critical judgement. The conversation was conducted in blank verse, with the usual appropriate trimmings and flourishes of that species of literature, and, on the whole, even at this time, I do not see but that it was quite as good as Miss Hannah More’s.
There was some skirmishing between Harry and myself about our parts, Harry being, as I thought, rather too golden-haired and blue-eyed for the grim resolve and fierce agonies of Jephthah. Moreover, the other part was to be that of Tina’s lover, and he was to act very desperate verses indeed, and I represented to Harry privately that here, for obvious reasons, I was calculated to succeed. But Tina overruled me with that easy fluency of good reasons which the young lady always had at command. “Harry would make altogether the best lover,” she said; “he was just cut out for a lover. Then, besides, what does Horace know about it? Harry has been practising for six months, and Horace has n’t even begun to think of such things yet.”
This was one of those stringent declarations that my young lady was always making with regard to me, giving me to understand that her whole confidence in me was built entirely upon my discretion. Well, I was happy enough to let it go so, for Ellery Davenport had gone like an evening meteor, and we had ceased talking and thinking about him. He was out of our horizon entirely
. So we spouted blank verse at each other, morning, noon, and night, with the most cheerful courage. Tina and Harry had, both of them, a considerable share of artistic talent, and made themselves very busy in drawing and painting scenery, – a work in which the lady principal, Miss Titcomb, gave every assistance; although, as Tina said, her views of scenery were mostly confined to what was proper for tombstones. “But then,” she added, “let her have the whole planning of my grave, with a great weeping willow over it, – that ‘ll be superb! I believe the weeping willows will be out by that time, and we can have real branches. Won’t that be splendid!”
Then there was the necessity of making our own drama popular, by getting in the greatest possible number of our intimate friends and acquaintances. So Jephthah had to marshal an army on the stage, and there was no end of paper helmets to be made. In fact, every girl in school who could turn her hand to anything was making a paper helmet.
There was to be a procession of Judæan maidens across the stage, bearing the body of Jephthah’s daughter on a bier, after the sacrifice. This took in every leading girl in the school; and as they were all to be dressed in white, with blue ribbons, one may fancy the preparation going on in all the houses far and near. There was also to be a procession of youths, bearing the body of the faithful lover, who, of course, was to die, to keep departed company in the shades.
We had rehearsals every night for a fortnight, and Harry, Tina, and I officiated as stage-managers. It is incredible the trouble we had. Esther acted the part of Judæan matron to perfection, – her long black hair being let down and dressed after a picture in the Biblical Dictionary, which Tina insisted upon must be authentic. Esther, however, rebelled at the nose-jewels. There was no making her understand the Oriental taste of the thing; she absolutely declined the embellishment, and finally it was agreed among us that the nose-jewels should be left to the imagination.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 290
