Tina’s letters to us were full of this mirthful, effervescent sparkle, to which everything in Oldtown afforded matter of amusement; and the margins of them were scrawled with droll and lifelike caricatures, in which we recognized Sam Lawson, and Hepsie, and Uncle Fliakim, and, in fact, all the Oldtown worthies, – not even excepting Miss Mehitable and Polly, the minister and his lady, my grandmother, Aunt Lois, and Aunt Keziah. What harm was there in all this, when Tina assured us that aunty read the letters before they went, and laughed until she cried over them?
“But, after all,” I said to Harry one day, “it ‘s rather a steep thing for girls that have kept step with us in study up to this point, and had their minds braced just as ours have been, with all the drill of regular hours and regular lessons, to be suddenly let down, with nothing in particular to do.”
“Except to wait the coming man,” said Harry, “who is to teach her what to do.”
“Well,” said I, “in the interval, while this man is coming, what has Tina to do but to make a frolic of life? to live like a bobolink on a clover-head, to sparkle like a dewdrop in a thorn bush, to whirl like a bubble on a stream? Why could n’t she as well find the coming man while she is doing something as while she is doing nothing? Esther and you found each other while you were working side by side, your minds lively and braced, toiling at the same great ideas, knowing each other in the very noblest part of your natures; and you are true companions; it is a mating of souls and not merely of bodies.”
“I know that,” said Harry, “I know, too, that in these very things that I set my heart on in the college course Esther is by far my superior. You know, Horace, that she was ahead of us in both Greek and mathematics; and why should she not go through the whole course with us as well as the first part? The fact is, a man never sees a subject thoroughly until he sees what a woman will think of it, for there is a woman’s view of every subject, which has a different shade from a man’s view, and that is what you and I have insensibly been absorbing in all our course hitherto. How splendidly Esther lighted up some of those passages of the Greek tragedy! and what a sparkle and glitter there were in some of Tina’s suggestions! All I know, Horace, is that it is confoundedly dull being without them; these fellows are well enough, but they are cloddish and lumpish.”
Well,” said I, “that is n’t the worst of it. When such a gay creature of the elements as Tina is has nothing earthly to do to steady her mind and task her faculties, and her life becomes a mere glitter, and her only business to amuse the passing hour, it throws her open to all sorts of temptations from that coming man, whoever he may be. Can we wonder that girls love to flirt, and try their power on lovers? And then they are fair game for men who want to try their powers on them, and some man who has a vacation in his life purpose, and wants something to amuse him, makes an episode by getting up some little romance, which is an amusement to him, but all in all to her. Is that fair?”
“True,” said Harry, “and there ‘s everything about Tina to tempt one; she is so dazzling and bewildering and exciting that a man might intoxicate himself with her for the mere pleasure of the thing, as one takes opium or champagne; and that sort of bewilderment and intoxication girls often mistake for love! I would to Heaven, Horace, that I were as sure that Tina loves you as I am that Esther loves me.”
“She does love me with her heart,” said I, “but not with her imagination. The trouble with Tina, Harry, is this: she is a woman that can really and truly love a man as a sister, or as a friend, or as a daughter, and she is a woman that no man can love in that way long. She feels nothing but affection, and she always creates passion. I have not the slightest doubt that she loves me dearly, but I have a sort of vision that between her and me will come some one who will kindle her imagination; and all the more so that she has nothing serious to do, nothing to keep her mind braced, and her intellectual and judging faculties in the ascendant, but is fairly set adrift, just like a little flowery boat, without steersman or oars, on a bright, swift-rushing river. Did you ever notice, Harry, what a singular effect Ellery Davenport seems to have on her?”
“No,” said Harry, starting and looking surprised. “Why, Horace, Ellery Davenport is a good deal older than she is, and a married man too.”
“Well, Harry, did n’t you ever hear of married men that liked to try experiments with girls? and in our American society they can do it all the more safely, because here, thank Heaven! nobody ever dreams but what marriage is a perfect regulator and safeguard.”
“But,” said Harry, rubbing his eyes like a person just waking up, “Horace, it must be the mere madness of jealousy that would put such a thing into your head. Why, there has n’t been the slightest foundation for it.”
“That is to say, Harry, you ‘ve been in love with Esther, and your eyes and ears and senses have all run one way. But I have lived in Tina, and I believe I have a sort of divining power, so that I can almost see into her heart. I feel in myself how things affect her, and I know, by feeling and sensation, that from her childhood Ellery Davenport has had a peculiar magnetic effect upon her.”
“But, Horace, he is a married man,” persisted Harry.
“A fascinating married man, victimized by a crazy wife, and ready to throw himself on the sympathies of womanhood in this affliction. The fair sex are such Good Samaritans that some fellows make capital of their wounds and bruises.”
“Well, but,” said Harry, “there ‘s not the slightest thing that leads me to think that he ever cared particularly about Tina.”
“That ‘s because you are Tina’s brother, and not her lover,” said I. “I remember as long ago as when we were children, spending Easter at Madam Kittery’s, how Ellery Davenport’s eyes used to follow her, – how she used constantly to seem to excite and interest him; and all this zeal about your affairs, and his coming up to Oldtown, and cultivating Miss Mehitable’s acquaintance so zealously, and making himself so necessary to her; and then he has always been writing letters or sending messages to Tina, and then, when he was up in Cloudland, did n’t you see how constantly his eyes followed her? He came there for nothing but to see her, – I ‘m perfectly sure of it.”
“Well, Horace, you are about as absurd as a lover need be!” said Harry. “Mr. Davenport is rather a conceited man of the world; I think he patronized me somewhat extensively; but all this about Tina is a romance of your own spinning, you may be sure of it.”
This conversation occurred one Saturday morning, while we were dressing and arraying ourselves to go into Boston, where we had engaged to dine at Madam Kittery’s.
From the first of our coming to Cambridge, we had remembered our old-time friendship for the Kitterys, and it was an arranged thing that we were to dine with them every Saturday. The old Kittery mansion we had found the same still, charming, quaint, inviting place that it seemed to us in our childhood. The years that had passed over the silvery head of dear old Madam Kittery had passed lightly and reverently, each one leaving only a benediction.
She was still to be found, when we called, seated, as in days long ago, on her little old sofa in the sunny window, and with her table of books before her, reading her Bible and Dr. Johnson, and speaking on “Peace and good-will to men.”
As to Miss Debby, she was as up and down, as high-stepping and outspoken and pleasantly sub-acid as ever. The French Revolution had put her in a state of good-humor hardly to be conceived of. It was so delightful to have all her theories of the bad effects of republics on lower classes illustrated and confirmed in such a striking manner, that even her indignation at the destruction of such vast numbers of the aristocracy was but a slight feature in comparison with it.
She kept the newspapers and magazines at hand which contained all the accounts of the massacres, mobbings, and outrages, and read them, in a high tone of voice, to her serving-women, butler, and footman after family prayers. She catechized more energetically than ever, and bore more stringently on ordering one’s self lowly and reverently to one’s betters,
enforcing her remarks by the blood-and-thunder stories of the guillotine in France.
We were hardly seated in the house, and had gone over the usual track of inquiries which fill up the intervals, when she burst forth on us, triumphant.
“Well, my English papers have come in. Have you seen the last news from France? They ‘re at it yet, hotter than ever. One would think that murdering the king and queen might have satisfied them, but it don’t a bit. Everybody is at it now, cutting everybody’s else throat, and there really does seem to be a prospect that the whole French nation will become extinct.”
“Indeed,” said Harry, with an air of amusement. “Well, Miss Debby, I suppose you think that would be the best way of settling things.”
“Don’t know but it would,” said Miss Debby, putting on her spectacles in a manner which pushed her cap-border up into a bristling, helmet-like outline, and whirling over her file of papers, seemingly with a view to edifying us with the most startling morsels of French history for the six months past.
“Here ‘s the account of how they worshipped ‘the Goddess of Reason’!” She cried, eyeing us fiercely, as if we had been part and party in the transaction. “Here ‘s all about how their philosophers and poets, and what not, put up a drab, and worshipped her as their ‘Goddess of Reason’! And then they annulled the Sabbath, and proclaimed that ‘death is an Eternal Sleep’! Now, that is just what Tom Jefferson likes; it ‘s what suits him. I read it to Ellery Davenport yesterday, to show him what his principles come to.”
Harry immediately hastened to assure Miss Debby that we were stanch Federalists, and not in the least responsible for any of the acts or policy of Thomas Jefferson.
“Don’t know anything about that; you see it ‘s the Democrats that have got the country, and are running as hard as they can after France. Ah, here it is,” Miss Debby added, still turning over her files of papers. “Here are the particulars of the execution of the queen. You can see, – they had her on a common cart, hands tied behind her, rattling and jolting, with all the vile fishwomen and dirty drabs of Paris leering and jeering at her, and they even had the cruelty,” she added, coming indignantly at us as if we were responsible for it, “to stop the cart in front of her palace, so that she might be agonized at seeing her former home, and they might taunt her in her agonies! Anybody that can read that, and not say the French are devils, I ‘d like to know what they are made of!”
“Well,” said Harry, undismayed by the denunciations; “the French are an exceedingly sensitive and excitable people, who had been miseducated and mismanaged, and taught brutality and cruelty by the examples of the clergy and nobility.”
“Excitable fiddlesticks!” said Miss Debby, who, like my grandmother, had this peculiar way of summing up an argument. “I don’t believe in softening sin and iniquity by such sayings as that.”
“But you must think,” said Harry, “that the French are human beings, and only act as any human beings would under their circumstances.”
“Don’t believe a word of it!” said she, shortly. “I agree with the man who said, ‘God made two kinds of nature, – human nature and French nature.’ Voltaire, was n’t it, himself, that said the French were a compound of the tiger and the monkey? I wonder what Tom Jefferson thinks of his beautiful, darling French Republic now! I presume he likes it. I don’t doubt it is just such a state of things as he is trying to bring to pass here in America.”
“O,” said I, “the Federalists will head him at the next election.”
“I don’t know anything about your Democrats and your Federalists,” said she. “I thank Heaven I wash my hands of this government.”
“And does King George still reign here?” said Harry.
“Certainly he does, young gentleman! Whatever happens to this government, I have no part in it.”
Miss Debby, upon this, ushered us to the dinner-table, and said grace in a resounding, and belligerent voice, and, sitting down, began to administer the soup to us with great determination.
Old Madam Kittery, who had listened with a patient smile to all the preceding conversation, now began in a gentle aside to me.
“I really don’t think it is good for Debby to read those bloody-bone stories morning, noon, and night, as she does,” she said. “She really almost takes away my appetite some days, and it does seem as if she would n’t talk about anything else. Now, Horace,” she said to me, appealingly, “the Bible says ‘Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity,’ and I can’t help feeling that Debby talks as if she were really glad to see those poor French making such a mess of things. I can’t feel so. If they are French, they ‘re our brothers, you know, and Debby really seems to go against the Bible, – not that she means to, dear,” she added, earnestly, laying her hand on mine; “Debby is an excellent woman; but, between you and me, I think she is a little excitable.”
“What ‘s that mother ‘s saying?” said Miss Debby, who kept a strict survey over all the sentiments expressed in her household. “What was mother saying?”
“I was saying, Debby, that I did n’t think it did any good for you to keep reading over and over those dreadful things.”
“And who does keep reading them over?” said Miss Debby, “I should like to know. I ‘m sure I don’t; except when it is absolutely necessary to instruct the servants and put them on their guard. I ‘m sure I am as averse to such details as anybody can be.”
Miss Debby said this with that innocent air with which good sort of people very generally maintain that they never do things which most of their acquaintances consider them particular nuisances for doing.
“By the by, Horace,” said Miss Debby, by way of changing the subject, “have you seen Ellery Davenport since he came home?”
“No,” said I, with a sudden feeling as if my heart was sinking down into my boots. “Has he come home to stay?”
“O yes,” said Miss Debby; “his dear, sweet, model, Republican France grew too hot to hold him. He had to flee to England, and now he has concluded to come home and make what mischief he can here, with his democratic principles and his Rousseau and all the rest of them.”
“Debby is n’t as set against Ellery as she seems to be,” said the old lady, in an explanatory aside to me. “You know, dear, he ‘s her cousin.”
“And you really think he intends to live in this country for the future?” said I.
“Well, I suppose so.” said Miss Debby. “You know that poor, miserable, crazy wife of his is dead, and my lord is turned loose on society as a widower at large, and all the talk here in good circles is, Who is the blessed woman that shall be Mrs. Ellery Davenport the second? The girls are all pulling caps for him, of course.”
It was perfectly ridiculous and absurd, but I suddenly lost all appetite for my dinner, and sat back in my chair playing with my knife and fork, until the old lady said to me compassionately: –
“Why, dear, you don’t seem to be eating anything! Debby, put an oyster-paté on Horace’s plate; he don’t seem to relish his chicken.”
I had to submit to the oyster-paté, and sit up and eat it like a man, to avoid the affectionate importunity of my dear old friend. In despair, I plunged into the subject least agreeable to me, and remarked: –
“Mr. Davenport is a very brilliant man, and I suppose in very good circumstances; is he not?”
“Yes, enormously rich,” said Miss Debby. “He still passes for young, with that face of his that never will grow old, I believe. And then he has a tongue that could wheedle a bird out of a tree; so I don’t know what is to hinder him from having as many wives as Solomon, if he feels so disposed. I don’t imagine there is anybody would say ‘No’ to him.”
“Well, I hope he will marry a good girl,” said the old lady, “poor dear boy. I always loved Ellery; and he would make any woman happy, I am sure.”
“That depends,” said Miss Debby, “on what the woman wants. If she wants laces and cashmere shawls, and horses and carriages, and a fine establishment, Ellery Davenport will g
ive her those. But if she wants a man to love her all her life, that ‘s what Ellery Davenport can’t do for any woman. He is a man that never cares for anything he has got. It ‘s always the thing that he has n’t got that he ‘s after. It ‘s the ‘pot of money at the end of the rainbow,’ or the ‘philosopher’s stone,’ or any other thing that keeps a man all his life on a canter, and never getting anywhere. And no woman will ever be anything to him but a temporary diversion. Ho can amuse himself in too many ways to want her.”
“Yes,” said the old lady, “but when a man marries he promises to cherish her.”
“My dear mother, that is in the Church Service, and I assure you Ellery Davenport has got beyond that. He ‘s altogether too fine and wise and enlightened to think that a man should spend his days in cherishing a woman merely because he went through the form of marriage with her in church. Much cherishing his crazy wife got of him! but he used his affliction to get half a dozen girls in love with him, so that he might be cherished himself. I tell you what, – Ellery Davenport lays out to marry a real angel. He ‘s to swear and she ‘s to pray! He is to wander where he likes, and she is always to meet him with a smile and ask no questions. That is the part for Mrs Ellery Davenport to act.”
“I don’t believe a word of it, Debby,” said the old lady “You ‘ll see now, – you ‘ll see.”
CHAPTER XLI.
NIGHT TALKS.
WE walked home that night by starlight, over the long bridge between Boston and Cambridge, and watched the image of the great round yellow moon just above the horizon, breaking and shimmering in the water into a thousand crystal fragments, like an orb of golden glass. We stopped midway in the calm obscurity, with our arms around each other, and had one of those long talks that friends, even the most confidential, can have only in the darkness. Cheek to cheek under the soft dim mantle of the starlight, the night flowers of the innermost soul open.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 292
