We talked of our loves, our hopes, of the past, the present, and the great hereafter, in which we hoped forever to mingle. And then Harry spoke to me of his mother, and told in burning words of that life of bitterness and humiliation and sorrow through which he had passed with her.
“O Harry,” said I, “did it not try your faith, that God should have left her to suffer all that?”
“No, Horace, no, because in all that suffering she conquered, – she was more than conqueror. O, I have seen such divine peace in her eyes, at the very time when everything earthly was failing her! Can I ever doubt? I who saw into heaven when she entered? No, I have seen her crowned, glorified, in my soul as plainly as if it had been a vision.”
At that moment I felt in myself that magnetic vibration of the great central nerves which always prefaced my spiritual visions, and looking up I saw that the beautiful woman I had seen once before was standing by Harry, but now more glowing and phosphorescent than I saw her last; there was a divine, sweet, awful radiance in her eyes, as she raised her hands above his head, he, meanwhile, stooping down and looking intently into the water.
“Harry,” said I, after a few moments of silence, “do you believe your mother sees and knows what you do in this world, and watches over you?”
“That has always been one of those things that I have believed without reasoning,” said Harry, musingly. “I never could help believing it; and there have been times in my life when I felt so certain that she must be near me, that it seemed as though, if I spoke, she must answer, – if I reached out my hand, it would touch hers. It is one of my instinctive certainties. It is curious,” he added, “that the difference between Esther and myself is just the reverse kind of that which generally subsists between man and woman. She has been all her life so drilled in what logicians call reasoning, that, although she has a glorious semi-spiritual nature, and splendid moral instincts, she never trusts them. She is like an eagle that should insist upon climbing a mountain by beak and claw instead of using wings. She must always see the syllogism before she will believe.”
“For my part,” said I, “I have always felt the tyranny of the hard New England logic, and it has kept me from really knowing what to believe about many phenomena of my own mind that are vividly real to me.” Here I faltered and hesitated, and the image that seemed to stand by us slowly faded. I could not and did not say to Harry how often I had seen it.
“After all I have heard and thought on this subject,” said Harry, “my religious faith is what it always was, – a deep, instinctive certainty, an embrace by the soul of something which it could not exist without. My early recollections are stronger than anything else of perfect and utter helplessness, of troubles entirely beyond all human aid. My father – “ He stopped and shuddered. “Horace, he was one of those whom intemperance makes mad. For a great part of his time he was a madman, with all the cunning, all the ingenuity, the devilishness of insanity, and I have had to stand between him and my mother, and to hide Tina out of his way.” He seemed to shudder as one convulsed. “One does not get over such a childhood,” he said. “It has made all my religious views, my religious faith, rest on two ideas, – man’s helplessness, and God’s helpfulness. We are sent into this world in the midst of a blind, confused jangle of natural laws, which we cannot by any possibility understand, and which cut their way through and over and around us. They tell us nothing; they have no sympathy; they hear no prayer; they spare neither vice nor virtue. And if we have no friend above to guide us through the labyrinth, if there is no Father’s heart, no helping hand, of what use is life? I would throw myself into this river, and have it over with at once.”
“I always noticed your faith in prayer,” said I. “But how can it consist with this known inflexibility of natural laws?”
“And what if natural laws were meant as servants of man’s moral life? What if Jesus Christ and his redeeming, consoling work were the first thing, and all things made by him for this end? Inflexible physical laws are necessary; their very inflexibility is divine order; but ‘what law cannot do, in that it is weak through the flesh, God did by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.’ Christ delivers us from slavery to natural law; he comes to embody and make visible the paternal idea; and if you and I, with our small knowledge of physical laws, can so turn and arrange them that their inflexible course shall help, and not hinder, much more can their Maker.”
“You always speak of Christ as God.”
“I have never thought of God in any other way,” he answered. “Christ is the God of sufferers; and those who learn religion by sorrow always turn to him. No other than a suffering God could have helped my mother in her anguish.”
“And do you think,” said I, “that prayer is a clew strong enough to hold amid the rugged realities of life?”
“I do,” said Harry. “At any rate, there is my great venture; that is my life-experiment. My mother left me that as her only legacy.”
“It certainly seems to have worked well for you so far, Harry,” said I, “and for me too, for God has guided us to what we scarcely could have hoped for, two poor boys as we were, and so utterly helpless. But then, Harry, there must be a great many prayers that are never answered.”
“Of course,” said Harry, “I do not suppose that God has put the key of all the universe into the hand of every child; but it is a comfort to have a Father to ask of, even though he refuse five times out of six, and it makes all the difference between having a father and being an orphan. Yes,” he added, after a few moments of thought, “my poor mother’s prayers seemed often to be denied, for she prayed that my father might reform. She often prayed from day to day that we might be spared miseries that he still brought upon us. But I feel sure that she has seen by this time that her Father heard the prayers that he seemed to deny, and her faith in him never failed. What is that music?” he said.
At this moment there came softly over the gleaming water, from the direction of the sea, the faintest possible vibration of a sound, like the dying of an organ tone. It might be from some ship, hidden away far off in the mist, but the effect was soft and dreamy as if it came from some spirit-land.
“I often think,” said Harry, listening for a moment, “that no one can pronounce on what this life has been to him until he has passed entirely through it, and turns around and surveys it from the other world. I think then we shall see everything in its true proportions; but till then we must walk by faith and not by sight, – faith that God loves us, faith that our Saviour is always near us, and that all things are working together for good.”
“Harry,” said I, “do you ever think of your father now?”
“Horace, there is where I wish I could be a more perfect Christian than I am. I have a bitter feeling toward him, that I fear is not healthful, and that I pray God to take away. Tonight, since we have been standing here, I have had a strange, remorseful feeling about him, as if some good spirit were interceding for him with me, and trying to draw me to love and forgive him. I shall never see him, probably, until I meet him in the great Hereafter, and then, perhaps, I shall find that her prayers have prevailed for him.”
It was past twelve o’clock when we got to our room that night and Harry found lying on his table a great sealed package from England. He opened it and found in it, first, a letter from his father, Sir Harry Percival. The letter was as follows: –
“HOLME HOUSE.
“MY SON HARRY: –
“I have had a dozen minds to write to you before now, having had good accounts of you from Mr. Davenport; but, to say truth, have been ashamed to write. I did not do right by your mother, nor by you and your sister, as I am now free to acknowledge. She was not of a family equal to ours, but she was too good for me. I left her in America like a brute as I was, and God has judged me for it.
“I married the woman my father picked out for me, when I came home, and resolved to pull up and live soberly like a decent man. But nothing went well with me. My children died o
ne after another; my boy lived to be seven years old, but he was feeble, and now he is dead too, and you are the heir. I am thinking that I am an old sinner, and in a bad way. Have had two turns of gout in the stomach that went hard with me, and the doctor don’t think I shall stand many such. I have made my will with a provision for the girl, and you will have the estate in course. I do wish you would come over and see a poor old sinner before he dies. It is n’t in the least jolly being here, and I am dev’lish cross, they say. I suppose I am, but if you were minded to come I ‘d try and behave myself, and so make amends for what ‘s past beyond recall.
“Your father,
“HARRY PERCIVAL.”
Accompanying this letter was a letter from the family lawyer, stating that on the 18th day of the month past Sir Harry Percival had died of an attack of gout. The letter went on to give various particulars about the state of the property, and the steps which had been taken in relation to it, and expressing the hope that the arrangements made would meet with his approbation.
It may well be imagined that it was almost morning before we closed our eyes, after so very startling a turn in our affairs. We lay long discussing it in every possible light, and now first I found courage to tell Harry of my own peculiar experiences, and of what I had seen that very evening. “It seems to me,” said Harry, when I had told him all, “as if I felt what you saw. I had a consciousness of a sympathetic presence, something breathing over me like wind upon harp-strings, something particularly predisposing me to think kindly of my father. My feeling towards him has been the weak spot of my inner life always, and I had a morbid horror of him. Now I feel at peace with him. Perhaps her prayers have prevailed to save him from utter ruin.”
CHAPTER XLII.
SPRING VACATION AT OLDTOWN.
IT was the spring vacation, and Harry and I were coming again to Oldtown; and ten miles back, where we changed horses, we had left the crawling old Boston stage and took a footpath through a patch of land known as the Spring Pasture. Our road lay pleasantly along the brown, sparkling river, which was now just waked up, after its winter nap, as fussy and busy and chattering as a housekeeper that has overslept herself. There were downy catkins on the willows, and the water-maples were throwing out their crimson tassels. The sweet-flag was just showing its green blades above the water, and here and there, in nooks, there were yellow cowslips reflecting their bright gold faces in the dark water.
Harry and I had walked this way that we might search under the banks and among the dried leaves for the white waxen buds and flowers of the trailing arbutus. We were down on our knees, scraping the leaves away, when a well-known voice came from behind the bushes.
“Wal, lordy massy, boys! Here ye be! Why, I ben up to Siah’s tahvern, an’ looked inter the stage, an’ did n’t see yer. I jest thought I ‘d like to come an’ kind o’ meet yer. Lordy massy, they ‘s all a lookin’ out for yer ‘t all the winders; ‘n’ Aunt Lois, she ‘s ben bilin’ up no end o’ doughnuts, an’ tearin’ round ‘nough to drive the house out o’ the winders, to git everything ready for ye. Why, it beats the Prodigal Son all holler, the way they ‘re killin’ the fatted calves for yer; an’ everybody in Oldtown ‘s a wantin’ to see Sir Harry.”
“O nonsense, Sam!” said Harry, coloring. “Hush about that! We don’t have titles over here in America.”
“Lordy massy, that ‘s just what I wus a tellin’ on ’em up to store. It ‘s a pity, ses I, this yere happened arter peace was signed, ‘cause we might ha’ had a real live Sir Harry round among us. An’ I think Lady Lothrop, she kind o’ thinks so too.”
“O nonsense!” said Harry. “Sam, are the folks all well?”
“O lordy massy, yes! Chirk and chipper as can be. An there ‘s Tiny, they say she ‘s a goin’ to be an heiress nowadays, an’ there ‘s no end of her beaux. There ‘s Ellery Devenport ben down here these two weeks, a puttin’ up at the tahvern, with a landau an’ a span o’ crack horses, a takin’ on her out to ride every day, and Miss Mehitable, she ‘s so sot up, she ‘s reelly got a bran-new bonnet, an’ left off that ‘ere old un o’ hern that she ‘s had trimmed over spring an’ fall goin’ on these ‘ere ten years. I thought that ‘ere bonnet ‘s going to last out my time, but I see it hain’t. An’ she ‘s got a new Injy shawl, that Mr. Devenport gin her. Yeh see, he understan’s courtin’, all round.”
This intelligence, of course, was not the most agreeable to me. I hope, my good friends, that you have never known one of those quiet hours of life, when, while you are sitting talking and smiling, and to all appearance quite unmoved, you hear a remark or learn a fact that seems to operate on you as if somebody had quietly turned a faucet that was letting out your very life. Down, down, down, everything seems sinking, the strength passing away from you as the blood passes when an artery is cut. It was with somewhat this sensation that I listened to Sam’s chatter, while I still mechanically poked away the leaves and drew out the long waxy garlands that I had been gathering for her!
Sam seated himself on the bank, and, drawing his knees up to his chin and clasping his hands upon them, began moralizing in his usual strain.
“Lordy massy, lordy massy, what a changin’ world this ‘ere is! It ‘s jest see-saw, teeter-tawter, up an’ down. To-day it ‘s I ‘m up an’ you ‘re down, an’ to-morrow it ‘s you ‘re up and I ‘m down! An’ then, by an’ by, death comes an’ takes us all. I ‘ve been kind o’ dwellin’ on some varses to-day. –
‘death, like a devourin’ deluge,
Sweeps all away.
The young, the old, the middle-aged,
To him become a prey.’
That ‘ere is what Betty Poganut repeated to me the night we sot up by Statiry’s corpse. Yeh ‘member Statiry Poganut? Well, she ‘s dead at last. Yeh see, we all gits called in our turn. We hain’t here no continuin’ city.”
“But, Sam,” said I, “how does business get along? Have n’t you anything to do but tramp the pastures and moralize?”
“Wal,” said Sam, “I ‘ve hed some pretty consid’able spells of blacksmithin’ lately. There ‘s Mr. Devenport, he ‘s sech a pleasant-spoken man, he told me he brought his team all the way up from Bostin a purpose so that I might ‘tend to their huffs. I ‘ve been a shoein’ on ’em fresh all round, an’ the off horse, he ‘d kind o’ got a crack in his huff, an’ I ‘ve been a doctorin’ on ‘t; an’ Mr Devenport, he said he had n’t found nobody that knew how to doctor a horse’s huffs ekal to me. Very pleasant-spoken man Mr. Devenport is; he ‘s got a good word for everybody. They say there ain’t no end to his fortin, an’ he goes a flingin’ on ‘t round, right en’ left, like a prince. Why, when I ‘d done shoein’ his hosses, he jest put his hand inter his pocket en’ handed me out ten dollars! ripped it out, he did, jest as easy as water runs! But there was Tiny a standin’ by; I think she kind o’ sot him on. O lordy massy, it ‘s plain to be seen that she rules him. It ‘s all cap in hand to her, an’ ‘What you will, madam,’ an’ ‘Will ye have the end o’ the rainbow, or a slice out o’ the moon, or what is it?’ It ‘s all ekal to him, so as Miss Tiny wants it. Lordy massy,” he said lowering his voice confidentially to Harry, “course these ‘ere things is all temporal, an’ our hearts ought n’t to be too much sot on ‘em; still he ‘s got about the most amazin’ fortin there is round Bostin. Why, if you b’lieve me, ‘tween you an’ me, it ‘s him as owns the Dench Place, where you and Tiny put up when you wus children! Don’t ye ‘member when I found ye? Ye little guessed whose house ye wus a puttin’ up at then; did yer? Lordy massy, lordy massy, who ‘d ha’ thought it? The wonderful ways of Providence! ‘He setteth the poor on high, an letteth the runagates continoo in scarceness.’ Wal, wal, it ‘s a kind o’ instructive world.”
“Do you suppose,” said Harry to me, in a low voice, “that this creature knows anything of what he is saying?”
“I ‘m afraid he does,” said I. “Sam seems to have but one talent, and that is picking up news; and generally his guesses turn out to be about true.�
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“Sam,” said I, by way of getting him to talk of something else, rather than on what I dreaded to hear, “you have n’t said a word about Hepsy and the children. How are they all?”
“Wal, the young uns hes all got the whoopin’ cough,” said Sam, “an’ I ‘m e’en a ‘most beat out with ‘em. For fust it ‘s one barks, an then another, an’ then all together. An’ then Hepsy, she gets riled an’ she scolds; an’, take it all together, a feller’s head gits kind o’ turned. When ye hes a lot o’ young uns, there ‘s allus suthin’ a goin’ on among ‘em; ef ‘t ain’t whoopin’ cough, it ‘s measles; an’ ef ‘t ain’t measles, it ‘s chicken-pox, or else it ‘s mumps, or scarlet-fever, or suthin’. They ‘s all got to be gone through, fust an’ last. It ‘s enough to wean a body from this world. Lordy massy, yest ‘day arternoon I see yer Aunt Keziah an’ yer Aunt Lois out a cuttin’ cowslip greens t’other side o’ th’ river, an’ the sun it shone so bright, an’ the turtles an’ frogs they kind o’ peeped so pleasant, an’ yer aunts they sot on the bank so kind o’ easy an’ free, an’ I stood there a lookin’ on ‘em, an’ I could n’t help a thinkin’, ‘Lordy messy, I wish t’ I wus an old maid.’ Folks ‘scapes a great deal that don’t hev no young uns a hangin’ onter ‘em.”
“Well, Sam,” said Harry, “is n’t there any news stirring round in the neighborhood?”
“S’pose ye had n’t heerd about the great church-quarrel over to Needmore?” he said.
“Quarrel? Why, no,” said Harry. “What is it about?”
“Wal, ye see, there ‘s a kind o’ quarrel ris ‘tween Parson Perry and Deacon Bangs. I can’t jest git the right on ‘t, but it ‘s got the hull town afire. I b’lieve it cum up in a kind o’ dispute how to spell Saviour. The Deacon he ‘s on the school committee, en’ Person Perry he ‘s on ‘t; an’ the Deacon he spells it iour, an’ Parson Perry he spells it ior, an’ they would n’t neither on ’em give up. Wal, ye know Deacon Bangs, – I s’pose he ‘s a Christian, – but, lordy massy, he ‘s one o’ yer dreadful ugly kind o’ Christians, that, when they gits their backs up, will do worse things than sinners will. I reelly think they kind o’ take advantage o’ their position, an’ think, es they ‘re goin’ to be saved by grace, grace shell hev enough on ‘t. Now, to my mind, ef either on ’em wus to give way, the Deacon oughter give up to the Parson; but the Deacon he don’t think so. Between you and me,” said Sam, “it ‘s my opinion that ef Ma’am Perry hed n’t died jest when she did, this ‘ere thing would never ha’ growed to where ‘t is. But ye see Ma’am Perry she died, an’ that left Parson Perry a widower, an’ folks did talk about him an’ Mahaley Bangs, an’ fact was, ‘long about last spring, Deacon Bangs an’ Mis’ Bangs an’ Mahaley wus jest as thick with the Parson as they could be. Why, Granny Watkins told me about their havin’ on him to tea two an’ three times a week, an’ Mahaley ‘d make two kinds o’ cake, an’ they ‘d have preserved watermelon rinds an’ peaches an’ cranberry saace, an’ then ‘t was all sugar an’ all sweet, an’ the Deacon he talked bout raisin’ Parson Perry’s salary. Wal, then, ye see, Parson Perry he went over to Oldtown an’ married Jerushy Peabody. Now, Jerushy’s a nice, pious gal, an’ it ‘s a free country, an’ parsons hes a right to suit ‘emselves as well’s other men. But Jake Marshall, he ses to me, when he heerd o’ that, ses he, ‘They ‘ll be findin’ fault with Parson Perry’s doctrines now afore two months is up; ye see if they don’t.’ Wal, sure enuff, this ‘ere quarrel ‘bout spellin’ Saviour come on fuss, an’ Deacon Bangs he fit the Parson like a bulldog. An’ next town-meetin’ day he told Parson Perry right out before everybody thet he was wuss then ‘n Armenian, – thet he was a rank Pelagian; ‘n’ he said there was folks thet hed taken notes o’ his sermons for two years back, n’ they could show thet he hed n’t preached the real doctrine of total depravity, nor ‘riginal sin, an’ thet he ‘d got the plan o’ salvation out o’ j’int intirely; he was all kind o’ flattin’ out onter morality. An’ Parson Perry he sed he ‘d preached jest ‘s he allers hed. ‘Tween you ‘n me, we know he must ha’ done that, cause these ‘ere ministers thet nev to go preachin’ round ‘n’ round like a hoss in a cider-mill, – wal’, course they must preach the same sermons over. I s’pose they kind o’ trim ’em up with new collars ‘n’ wristbands. But we used to say thet Parson Lothrop hed a bar’l o’ sermons, ‘n’ when he got through the year he turned his bar’l t’other side up, and begun at t’other end. Lordy massy, who ‘s to know it, when half on em ‘s asleep? And I guess the preachin ‘s full as good as the pay anyhow. Wal, the upshot on ‘t all is, they got a gret counsel there, an they ‘re a tryin’ Mr. Perry for heresy an’ what not. Wal, I don’t b’lieve there ‘s a yeller dog goes inter the Needmore meetin’-house now that ain’t got his mind made up one way or t’other about it. Yer don’t hear nothin’ over there now ‘xcept about Armenians an’ Pelagians an’ Unitarians an’ total depravity. Lordy massy! wal, they lives up to that doctrine any way. What do ye think of old Sphyxy Smith ‘s bein’ called in as one o’ the witnesses in council? She don’ know no more ‘bout religion than an’ old hetchel, but she ‘s ferce as can be on Deacon Bangs’s side, an’ Old Crab Smith he hes to hev’ his say ‘bout it.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 293
