Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  It was with such thoughts as these that he started out on his usual afternoon tour of visiting and ministration in one of the poorest alleys of his neighborhood. As he was making his way along, a little piping voice was heard at his elbow: —

  “Mr. St. Don; Mr. St. Don.”

  He looked hastily down and around, to meet the gaze of a pair of dark’ childish eyes looking forth from a thin, sharp little face. Gradually, he recognized in the thin, barefoot child, the little girl whom he had seen in Angie’s class, leaning on her.

  “What do you want, my child?”

  “Mother’s took bad, and Poll’s gone to wash for her. They told me to watch till you came round, and call you. Mother wants to see you.”

  “Well, show me the way,” said Mr. St. John affably, taking the thin, skinny little hand.

  The child took him under an alleyway, into a dark, back passage, up one or two rickety staircases, into an attic, where lay a woman on a poor bed in the corner.

  The room was such a one as his work made only too familiar to him — close, dark, bare of comforts, yet not without a certain lingering air of neatness and self-respect. The linen of the bed was clean, and the woman that lay there had marks of something refined and decent in her worn face. She was burning with fever; evidently, hard work and trouble had driven her to the breaking point.

  “Well, my good woman, what can I do for you?” said Mr. St. John.

  The woman roused from a feverish sleep and looked at him.

  “Oh, sir, please send her here. She said she would come any time I needed her, and I want her now.”

  “Who is she? Who do you mean?”

  “Please, sir, she means my teacher,” said the child, with a bright, wise look in her thin little face. “It’s Miss Angie. Mother wants her to come and talk to father; father’s getting bad again.”

  “He isn’t a bad man,” put in the woman, “except they get him to drink; it’s the liquor. God knows there never was a kinder man than John used to be.”

  “Where is he? I will try to see him,” said Mr. St. John.

  “Oh, don’t; it won’t do any good. He hates ministers; he wouldn’t hear you; but Miss Angie he will hear; he promised her he wouldn’t drink any more, but Ben Jones and Jim Price have been at him and got him off on a spree. Oh dear!”

  At this moment a feeble wail was heard from the basket cradle in the corner, and the little girl jumped from the bed, and in an important, motherly way, began to soothe an indignant baby, who put up his stomach and roared loudly after the manner of his kind, astonished and angry at not finding the instant solace and attention which his place in creation demanded.

  Mr. St. John looked on in a kind of silent helplessness, while the little skinny creature lifted a child who seemed almost as large as herself and proceeded to soothe and assuage his ill humor by many inexplicable arts, till she finally quenched his cries in a sucking-bottle, and peace was restored.

  “The only person in the world that can do John any good,” resumed the woman, when she could be heard, “is Miss Angie. John would turn any man, especially any minister, out of the house, that said a word about his ways; but he likes to have Miss Angie come here. She has been here Saturday afternoons and read stories to the children, and taught them little songs, and John always listens, and she almost got him to promise he would give up drinking; she has such pretty ways of talking a man can’t get mad with her. What I want is, can’t you tell her John’s gone, and ask her to come to me? He’ll be gone two days or more, and when he comes back he’ll be sorry — he always is then; and then if Miss Angie will talk to him; you see, she’s so pretty, and dresses so pretty. John says she is the brightest, prettiest lady he ever saw, and it sorter pleases him that she takes notice of us. John always puts his best foot foremost when she is round. John’s used to being with gentlefolk,” she said, with a sigh; “he knows a lady when he sees her.”

  “Well, my good woman,” said Mr. St. John, “I shall see Miss Angie this evening, and you may be sure that I shall tell her all about this. Meanwhile, how are you off? Do you need money now?”

  “I am pretty well off, sir. He took all my last week’s money when he went, but Poll has gone to my wash-place to-day, and I told her to ask for pay. I hope they’ll send it.”

  “If they don’t,” said Mr. St. John, “here is something to keep things going,” and he slipped a bill into the woman’s hand.

  “Thank you, sir. When I get up, if you’ll please give me some washing, I’ll make it square. I’ve been held good at getting up linen.”

  Poor woman! She had her little pride of independence and her little accomplishment — she could wash and iron! There she felt strong! Mr. St. John allowed her the refuge, and let her consider the money as an advance, not a charity.

  He turned away, and went down the cracked and broken stairs with the thought struggling in an undefined manner in his breast, how much there was of pastoral work which transcended the power of man, and required the finer intervention of woman. With all, there came a glow of shy pleasure that there was a subject of intercommunication opened between him and Angie, something definite to talk about; and to a diffident man a definite subject is a mine of gold.

  CHAPTER XVII

  OUR FIRST THURSDAY

  THE Hendersons’ first “Evening” was a social success. The little parlors were radiant with the blaze of the wood fire, which gleamed and flashed and made faces at itself in the tall, old-fashioned brass andirons, and gave picturesque tints to the room.

  Eva’s tea-table was spread in one corner, dainty with its white drapery, and with her pretty wedding present of china upon it — not china like Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden’s, of the real old Chinese fabric, but china fresh from the modern improvements of Paris, and so adorned with violets and grasses and field flowers that it made a December tea-table look like a meadow where one could pick bouquets. Every separate teacup and saucer was an artist’s study, and a topic for conversation.

  The arrangement of the rooms had been a day’s work of careful consideration between Eva and Angelique. There was probably not a perch or eyrie accessible by chairs, tables, or ottomans, where these little persons had not been mounted, at divers times of the day, trying the effect of various floral decorations. The amount of fatigue that can be gone through in the mere matter of preparing one little set of rooms for an evening reception is something that men know nothing about; only the sisterhood could testify to that frantic “fanaticism of the beautiful” which seizes them when an evening company is in contemplation, and their house is to put, so to speak, its best foot forward. Many an aching back and many a drooping form could testify how the woman spends herself in advance, in this sort of altar-dressing for home worship.

  But, as a consequence, the little rooms were bowers of beauty. The pictures were overshadowed with nodding wreaths of pressed ferns and bright bitter-sweet berries, with glossy holly leaves; the statuettes had backgrounds of ivy which threw out their whiteness. Harry’s little workroom adjoining the parlor had become a green alcove, where engravings and books were spread out under the shade of a German student-lamp. Everywhere that a vase of flowers could make a pretty show there was a vase of flowers, though it was December, and the ground frozen like lead. For the next-door neighbor, sweet Ruth Baxter, had clipped and snipped every rosebud, and mignonette blossom, and even a splendid calla lily, with no end of scarlet geranium, and sent them in to Eva; and Miss Dorcas had cut away about half of an ancient and well-kept rose-geranium, which was the apple of her eye, to help out her little neighbor. So they reveled in flowers, without cutting those which grew on Eva’s own bushes, which were all turned to the light and arranged in appropriate situations, blossoming their best. The little diningroom also was thrown open, and dressed and adorned with flowers, pressed ferns, berries, and autumn leaves; with a distant perspective of light in it, that there might be a place of withdrawal and quiet chats over books and pictures. In every spot were disposed objects to start conv
ersation. Books of autographs, portfolios of sketches, photographs of distinguished people, stereoscopic views with stereoscope to explain them, — all sorts of intervening means and appliances by which people, not otherwise acquainted, should find something to talk about in common.

  Eva was admirably seconded by her friends, from long experience versed in the art of entertaining. Mrs. Van Arsdel, gentle, affable, society-loving, and with a quick tact at reading the feelings of others, was a host in herself. She at once took possession of Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden, who came in a very short dress of rich India satin, and very yellow and mussy but undeniably precious old lace, and walked the rooms with a high-shouldered independence of manner most refreshing in this day of long trains and modern inconveniences.

  “Sensible old girl,” was Jim Fellows’s comment in Alice’s ear as Miss Dorcas marched in; for which, of course, he got a reproof, and was ordered to remember and keep himself under.

  As to Mrs. Betsey, with her white hair, and lace cap with lilac ribbons, and black dress, with a flush of almost girlish timidity in her pink cheeks, she won an instant way to the heart of Angelique, who took her arm and drew her to a cosy armchair before a table of engravings, and began an animated conversation on a book of etchings of the “Old Houses of New York.” These were subjects on which Mrs. Betsey could talk, and talk entertainingly. They carried her back to the days of her youth; bringing back scenes, persons, and places long forgotten, her knowledge of which was full of entertainment. Angelique wonderingly saw her transfigured before her eyes. It seemed as if an after-glow from the long set sun of youthful beauty flashed back in the old, worn face, as her memory went back to the days of youth and hope. It is a great thing to the old and faded to feel themselves charming once more, even for an hour; and Mrs. Betsey looked into the blooming face and wide-open, admiring, hazel eyes of Angelique, and felt that she was giving pleasure, that this charming young person was really delighted to hear her talk. It was one of those “cups of cold water” that Angelique was always giving to neglected and out-of-the-way people, without ever thinking that she did so, or why she did it, just because she was a sweet, kind-hearted, loving little girl.

  When Mr. St. John, with an apprehensive spirit, adventured his way into the room, he felt safe and at ease in a moment. All was light, and bright, and easy — nobody turned to look at him, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to thread his way through busy chatting groups to where Eva made a place for him by her side at the tea-table, passed him his cup of tea, and introduced him to Dr. Campbell, who sat on her other side, cutting the leaves of a magazine.

  “You see,” said Eva, laughing, “I make our Doctor useful on the Fourier principle. He is dying to get at those magazine articles, so I let him cut the leaves and take a peep along here and there, but I forbid reading — in our presence men have got to give over absorbing, and begin radiating. Doesn’t St. Paul say, Mr. St. John, that if women are to learn anything they are to ask their husbands at home? and doesn’t that imply that their husbands at home are to talk to them, and not sit reading newspapers?”

  “I confess I never thought of that inference from the passage,” said Mr. St. John, smiling.

  “But the modern woman,” said Dr. Campbell, “scorns to ask her husband at home. She holds that her husband should ask her.”

  “Oh, well, I am not the modern woman. I go for the old boundaries and the old privileges of my sex; and besides, I am a good Churchwoman and prefer to ask my husband. But I insist, as a necessary consequence, that he must hear me and answer me, as he cannot do if he is reading newspapers or magazines. Isn’t that case fairly argued, Mr. St. John?”

  “I don’t see but it is.”

  “Well, then, the spirit” of it applies to the whole of your cultured and instructive sex. Men, in the presence of women, ought always to be prepared to give them information, to answer questions, and make themselves generally entertaining and useful.”

  “You see, Mr. St. John,” said Dr. Campbell, “that Mrs. Henderson has a dangerous facility for generalizing. Set her to interpreting and there’s no saying where her inferences mightn’t run.”

  “I’d almost release Mr. St. John from my rules, to allow him to look over this article of yours, though, Dr. Campbell,” said Eva. “Harry has read it to me, and I said, along in different parts of it, if ministers only knew these things, how much good they might do!”

  “What is the article?”

  “It is simply something I wrote on ‘Abnormal Influences upon the Will;’ it covers a pretty wide ground as to the question of human responsibility and the recovery of criminals, and all that.”

  Mr. St. John remembered at this moment the case of the poor woman whom he had visited that afternoon, and the periodical fatality which was making her family life a shipwreck, and he turned to Dr. Campbell a face so full of eager inquiry and dawning thought that Eva felt that the propitious moment was come to leave them together, and instantly she moved from her seat between them, to welcome a newcomer who was entering the room.

  “I’ve got them together,” she whispered to Harry a few minutes after, as she saw that the two were turned towards each other, apparently intensely absorbed in conversation.

  The two might have formed a not unapt personification of flesh and spirit. Dr. Campbell, a broad-shouldered, deep-breathed, long-limbed man, with the proudly set head and quivering nostrils of a high-blooded horse — an image of superb physical vitality: St. John, so delicately and sparely built, with his Greek forehead and clear blue eye, the delicate vibration of his cleanly cut lips and the cameo purity of every outline of his profile. Yet was he not without a certain air of vigor, the out-shining of spiritual forces. One could fancy Campbell as the Berserker who could run, race, wrestle, dig, and wield the forces of nature, and St. John as the poet and orator who could rise to higher regions and carry souls upward with him. It takes both kinds to make up a world.

  And now glided into the company the vision of two women in soft, dove-colored silks, with white crape kerchiefs crossed upon their breasts, and pressed crape caps bordering their faces like a transparent aureole. There was the neighbor, Ruth Baxter, round, rosy, young, blooming, but dressed in the straitest garb of her sect. With her back turned, you might expect to see an aged woman stricken in years, so prim and antique was the fashion of her garments; but when her face was turned, there was the rose of youth blooming amid the cool snows of cap and kerchief. The smooth pressed hair rippled and crinkled in many a wave, as if it would curl if it dared, and the round blue eyes danced with a scarce suppressed light of cheer that might have become mirthfulness if set free; but yet the quaint primness of her attire set off her womanly charms beyond all arts of the toilet.

  Her companion was a matronly person, who might be fifty or thereabouts. She had that calm, commanding serenity that comes to woman only from the habitual exaltation of the spiritual nature. Sibyl Selwyn was known in many lands as one of the most zealous and best accepted preachers of her sect. Her life had been an inspiration of pity and mercy; and she had been in far countries of the earth, where there was sin to be reproved or sorrow to be consoled, a witness to testify and a medium through whom guilt and despair might learn something of the Divine Pity.

  She bore about with her a power of personal presence very remarkable. Her features were cast in large and noble mould; her clear-cut, wide-open gray eyes had a penetrating yet kind expression, that seemed adapted both to search and to cheer, and went far to justify the opinion of her sect, which attributed to Sibyl in an eminent degree the apostolic gift of the discerning of spirits. Somehow, with her presence there seemed to come an atmosphere of peace and serenity, such as one might fancy clinging about? even the raiment of one just stepped from a higher sphere. Yet, so gliding and so dove-like was the movement by which the two had come in — so perfectly, cheerfully, and easily had they entered into the sympathies of the occasion, that their entrance made no more break or disturbance in the social circle than the ste
aling in of a ray of light through a church window.

  Eva had risen and gone to them at once, had seated them at the opposite side of the little tea-table and poured their tea, chatting the while and looking into their serene faces with a sincere cordiality which was reflected back from them in smiles of confidence.

  Sibyl admired the pictures, flowers, and grasses on her teacup with the naïve interest of a child; for one often remarks, in intercourse with her sect, how the aesthetic sense, unfrittered and unworn by the petting of self-indulgence, is prompt to appreciate beauty.