Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Yours for ever,

  HORACE VANZANDT.

  Mark was thoroughly glad to find that one of the old set was coming out to be near him, though it were but for a time. Of course, he found that Mrs. Worboise had room enough for Horace, and he was only sorry that he had established himself on the West Side. She was in that part of the city well at the southward, where it begins to become a little open, and her good spacious house had room enough and to spare for Horace and his belongings. Well pleased was she to know that fate had thrown him under her roof again. Mark was quite sure that the letter gave him pleasure so far. He was also sure that it gave him no pain-no, no sort of pain-to find Horace speaking of Rachel and Rachel’s drawing as if he were so in the habit of regarding her as entirely his own property, that there need be no explanation why she was drawing illustrations of specifications for him. He was sure this gave him no pain. But he wondered a little why it gave him no pain. He knew very well, that ever since Valentine’s Day, and before, every poem he had written to anybody had been written to Jane Burgess. There was a true woman, who could appreciate him and his. Still, he could not but remember, also, that night when Rachel’s mother died, and the verses he wrote to her the next Valentine’s Day; and, indeed, he remembered that he wished he knew how he could ask her for a little drama of his, called “The Pearl in the Well,” which he had sent to her with a pretty dedication, and which nobody had any copy of excepting her. He was not quite sure but he could get it brought out at Crosby’s Opera House; and, if he had not wholly dropped correspondence with Rachel, he would write and ask her for it. It puzzled him a little to know, first, how he ever could have thought that she was so good a critic of his work; and, second, why he was not more jealous of Horace, of whom, in fact, he was not jealous at all.

  Of which mysteries the explanation was simple enough to anybody who could look at them without the obscuring films which clouded Master Mark’s vision. He and Rachel Holley had been to school together, and had gone home together. She had ridden on his sled, and, in return, had taught him to play cat’s-cradle. Then she had become a woman at the period when he was ceasing to be a boy, but had not become a man. Being the woman he knew best, he honored her, prized her, and supposed he loved her. It is a mistake which often happens where propinquity, as Miss Edge-worth calls it, has brought a boy and girl together. The woman Rachel judged the situation better than the fledgling Mark; and this was the reason why Rachel did not engage herself to him, when he plead so earnestly, and wrote verses which were so pretty, after her mother’s death.

  But Mark was to become a man in his time. A dreamy man, if you please; a man who did not yet know much about how the wolf was to be kept from the door, or whether the little god of love could or could not turn the spit. Still, he was a man. Being a man, he had been thrown into near and confidential intercourse with another charming woman, Jane Burgess. Who, indeed, was not in confidential intercourse with this sympathetic Jane? Yet, again, she was the first cultivated and accomplished woman whom the man Mark Hinsdale had seen nearly. Being the woman he knew best, he honored her in turn, prized her, and supposed he loved her. He wrote her very pretty verses, and sent her very charming letters. He certainly loved her as he had never loved Rachel, and that was really the reason why he was not in the least jealous of Horace Vanzandt. But all this, which it is easy enough for all of us to understand, was not so clear to Mark, who could not understand that as lately as two years ago he was in that transition condition of the polliwog, or the tadpole, which, by the more careful writers in anthropology, is called the condition of the hobbledehoy.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  THE Bardles family, with full contingents of nurses for the children, even with a man-servant who was to see to the baggage, as if it needed any seeing to, and with Jane, of course, had gone to sleep at Rochester, N. Y., and had waked some forty miles east of Windsor, opposite Detroit, in Canada. Jane had gulped down an immense regret when she had found that she was to be trundled by Niagara, actually “in full sight of the cataract,” as Ned Bardles told her, without any idea of the pain he gave her, and that she was not to have any sight of it, not even to be waked to see the shimmer of the white spray in the moonlight, nor to hear the roar of the water. She even had rebellious plans that she would sit up till midnight and go out upon the platform as they passed, if so she might fulfil the dream of twenty years, and at least feel that she had “seen Niagara.” But no one gave the least countenance to this. Her berth had to be made up when the other berths were made up. All she could do was to resolve that she would not go to sleep. Perhaps she could jump up when the time came. But, alas! before the time came, she was so far asleep that she thought it was ironing day at Deacon Spinley’s, and each successive kitchybunk of each twenty-foot rail that they passed over, appeared in her dream as a flat-iron thrown by Mrs. Spinley at the crash towel which was hanging on her roller. So Jane did not “see Niagara” that time.

  Forty miles east of Windsor everybody was awake, and began to say he had not slept a wink all night. Jane had washed herself in a few thimblefuls of cinder soup, which at her call distilled like dew into the bottom of a cinder-specked basin in the ladies’ dressing-room. She had rubbed some ring or lamp she had about her, and those good genii, who were always her friends, had arranged the “tangled dark-brown hair,” so that it seemed as if nothing had disturbed her. The same genii had created for her matchless and spotless cuffs and collars. Then Jane went back to the narrow quarters where she had slept, and found that some other genii had been round with wands, and that the berths had disappeared, and that in their places were wide and deep “rep-covered” seats, lighted by large plate-glass windows, through which she could see, what was a sight quite new to her, the blackened clearings, the log-cabins, and the September harvest and fruitage of a new country. The sun was well up, and the scene was exciting enough, even to a person less hearty, healthy, and alive than Jane.

  An hour of this rapid panorama shifting, and she knew, without question, that she was hungry. But Jane was a little reticent; and she lived on a principle which had never yet failed her, which the Western people embody in their direction, “Don’t be first to squawk.” Jane knew very well, that, by the same law of nature which made her hungry, Ned Bardles was already more hungry than she; and she knew that if he were in that condition, all powers in earth would be set in operation to meet his necessities, and, still more, that she should fare as well as he. So Jane still looked out upon pigs and stumps and corn and pumpkins and sheep and log-cabins; caught now and then the long, low line of the lake which they were skirting; saw in a few moments more that the number of cabins increased, and that they were approaching some place with a name; saw Ned Bardles begin to bustle, and to stir up the nurses and the children: and thus it happened that in fifteen minutes from the time when Jane was well aware that she was hungry, she was hustled upstairs in the steam ferry-boat at Windsor, had been placed opposite some sausages and fried oysters, by that most attentive tentive host who presides there, was receiving his assurances that every hand-bag, veil, umbrella, newspaper, and shawl-strap were in such safety as the bank of England even did not give its specie, and was listening to his explanations of the length of time which was before her for her meal. “Central Michigan! were they going by the Central?” Heavens! what hours were before them then for breakfast! In all which her voluble and hospitable friend was substantially correct. Jane had time enough for a good breakfast.

  The Bardles children, sandwiched in with nurses, were at her left. At their extreme left they were protected by Mrs. Bardles. Mr. Ned Bardles, belonging to a sex which has rights, was downstairs, far from any breakfast-room, watching their baggage as it passed the customs-officer. So were all the men of all the parties. The ladies and children, therefore, were well forward with their breakfast,-the children had finished their beefsteak and omelet, their sausages and fried oysters, and were beginning on their buckwheats and maple sirup, when four gentlemen filed up from the lower deck
to take such chance of breakfast as they might, and found seats opposite our friends. The last of them flung his cap and gloves on a table, ordered “coffee, steak, Indian bread,” drew a stool into place, and turned to sit opposite Jane. It was Horace Vanzandt. One of the lucky double-sixes of travelling!

  A bright, hearty, pleasant addition he made to their party. He and Jane had not met now for more than a year, and only for a few moments then. All six of us suppose, looking back upon it, that neither of them appeared to the other as changed; certainly, neither would have said that the other was “improved;” still, as we have talked it over, our verdict has been, that these two fresh and true young people could not have knocked about in the world as much as they had in two years, more or less, since the famous Greyford sleigh-ride, without gaining that self-possession, information, tact, if you please; that facility in expression, and facility in listening, which varied society gives, to which the reading of good novels contributes, which, all combined, so lighten up man or woman in intercourse, even with the nearest of their old friends. At all events, Horace had a world of information about people in whom Jane was interested, which was new to her, and she as much that was new to him. Still more, he had been making rapid steps in his profession. He had learned very thoroughly, by this time, how little he knew; an immense acquisition for the youngster of three and twenty. She had moved, as people say, in the society of Boston and Newport; among people no whit more intelligent or highly-bred than those she left at Greyford,-but among people of many more types, and their experience had varied hers, and had quickened her methods of expression. So it happened, if we six have rightly analyzed and synthetized, that Horace was more quiet, more simple, and far more profound in what he had to say; that Jane was less shy, and more animated, in what she had to say. Certainly, talk ranged over an immense range; but neither said any thing of the bear.

  The Bardleses all made Horace feel at home. Indeed, they were occupying almost the whole of a drawing-room car with their immense party. Nor is there a better chance for long and satisfactory talk than in a good drawing-room car, when the road is well ballasted, and the train well run. No postman, nay, no door-bell, there! So, for a happy hundred and fifty miles, be the same more or less, they talked, they amused the children, they read the September “Old and New,” they talked again, and cut out cats and horses from paper for the little ones, and talked again, and talked again; and so they came to Marshall, where the train stopped for dinner. Dinner was soon over, and all the party were back again in their car but Ned Bardles himself, who was taking the last possible moment with his cigar. His wife, as usual, began to be uneasy; the train began to start, when Ned appeared at the door triumphant, threw it open, and waited on the platform for Nettie Sylva to come in!

  Our readers may recollect the circumstances under which Horace Vanzandt and Nettie Sylva parted at the North Denmark sleigh-ride. We have tried to make them understand with how much and with how little feeling Nettie wrote to him when he was first in New York; how far she then felt hurt by his manner in writing to her, and how far she pretended to feel hurt. We have also tried to make the reader understand how deep was the wound which Jane Burgess had received, when, in face of the observations of the mild police of Greyford, and of every decision of its common law, Jeff Fleming, who had been supposed to be hers, and hers only since they outspelled the best spellers in the district, had transferred his heart and hand to this same Nettie, after his long illness at the deacon’s. To analyze and synthetize on those yearnings was comparatively easy. It is not quite so easy to say just what went through each heart of the three, and each mind, when they met so unexpectedly in the drawing-room car at Marshall.

  They were all fond of each other; that was certain. The girls were very fond of each other. Still, Jane did not think Nettie had ever treated Horace fairly, and she had told her so more than once. For all that, in the very depth of her heart, Jane was glad that, as things had turned, Nettie had treated Horace as she had. It was clear to Jane’s well-balanced mind that Nettie never could have made Horace happy, and she doubted whether Horace would have made her happy. Now, to pass to Nettie, the bright, pretty, coquettish thing we must confess she was; she was “just as glad as she could be” to see them both. She said so, and we all six think she was. It was her way to be glad; and she was more apt to be glad when she was on the top crest of a wave that seemed likely to topple right over, than on any conceivable level of any summer sea. Still, though Nettie was “just as glad as she could be,” she undoubtedly was well aware that Jeff Fleming was as entirely Jane’s property, when he came frozen stiff into the deacon’s house, had only Jane asserted suzerainty, as was any unmarked log the deacon’s property when it was flung up by the river on his meadow. Nettie knew this in her guilty heart; and she knew as well that that night when she had played “Les Larmes” to Jeff, and he, susceptible, tender fellow, had been so tearful, so tender, and so happy, she knew, or thought she knew, she had been giving a great wrench at Jane’s heart-strings. And as for Horace,-Horace had comforted himself self with Rachel; yes, verily. Still Nettie did happen to notice that the guard-chain Horace wore was that she knit for him, and that there had been a time when she could have kept him in Greyford for ever had she chosen. So, though Nettie was “just as glad as she could be” to see them both, we all six think that it was with the joy of wild adventure, and that she was curious to know how many of the egg-shells among which they were all to tread would be broken, and how many would hold firm their yolks and their albumen.

  It must be confessed that neither of the girls seemed externally in the least disturbed by any of these reflections; they kissed and laughed, and held each other by all four hands; then Nettie did all the necessary civilities to Mrs. Bardles and the rest; and then the three, Jane, Nettie, and Horace, nestled down into one vis — vis, and began talking of how it had all fallen out that they had all come together. Horace was trying to persuade himself that he ought not to feel confused. Had not Nettie snubbed him, once, twice, thrice, n times? to take his favorite mathematical formulas. Nay, had she not accepted Jeff willingly, in defiance of him and of Jane both, and of all Greyford beside? None the less is it true, that, of the three, Horace was the only one who for a moment appeared to be ill at ease.

  But this did not last long. They were soon telling each other facts, and facts are an immense relief when there is any loose screw in people’s sentiments. Nettie was explaining about her journeyings. Mr. Holley was prospecting in his eternal lumber speculations, and had taken Rachel with him. They had been up in Minnesota, beyond St. Paul’s, she knew not where. Nettie, meanwhile, had been staying with an old friend at Ann Arbor. She was to meet the Holleys at the Sherman House in Chicago on this particular day, and here she was, so far on her way. She had been riding with them all the way from Ann Arbor without knowing it.

  Then the Holleys would be in Chicago with them all! And Mark was there already. What fun!

  Neither Jane nor Horace dared ask Nettie where Jeff was. And Nettie, dashing as she was, did not happen to tell.

  Evening found them at Chicago. Horace was to go to his quarters at Mrs. Worboise’s. The Bardleses and Jane were all to go to the new house in Erie Street. But all parties first went with Nettie to the Sherman House. There, sure enough, they found Rachel Holley and her father. There, as it happened, was Mark Hinsdale, making a friendly call. The girls both thought that he and Rachel seemed on a very brotherly and sisterly footing. Five of the six, in the chances of life, had brought up at Chicago. They agreed they would all see the sights together the next day. Who could tell when they all should come together again!

  CHAPTER XX.

  THE sight-seeing lasted longer than they had expected; and all parties of our friends grew well wonted to Chicago before it was at an end. The Bardles cortge was settling down in their new house. Mr. Holley’s combinations about the lumber lands in Minnesota seemed to draw out into longer and longer convolutions, which he explained to no one, and for whi
ch no one cared. They began on their lion-hunting with determined ardor, supposing that they must finish it in three days. But the days lengthened into weeks; and for every day of every week, these young people found themselves together almost every afternoon, every evening without exception, and sometimes in the morning. There was an excursion to Hyde Park, the pretty watering-place of Chicago; there was an excursion to Riverside, that wonderful and beautiful country town, where, before your house is built, your sidewalk is laid, your water and gas-pipes ready, your drainage adjusted; where in short, every grievance of ordinary building is cared for before you begin. There were the stock-yards to be seen, under the oversight of Mr. Denison, a new-made friend of Mark’s, who was very attentive, and with whom that sad flirt Nettie made very rapid acquaintance. Always there was, for a place of rendezvous, the cool, pleasant reading-room of the Johnsonian Library, where Mark had created for the time a vat of lemonade, having ordered ice by the week from the ice-man. There were the elevators to be seen, and explained in detail by Horace. There were the water-works, with the most interesting and courteous explanations from Mr. Chesborough and Mr. Clarke. Jane, Nettie, and Rachel had all been teachers; and they had found some old Normal-School acquaintance in the high school, which had a great interest for them. And in Mr. Barry they had the most instructive and kind guide in the treasures, then still in their fulness, of the Chicago Historical Library. In those days there was a great deal for intelligent curiosity to see and enjoy in the young city of the Lakeside.