“What ye doin’ there?”
Abner started, looked confused and resumed his work, only saying, “I was thinking about Mother.”
“Nonsense! Don’t make a fool of yourself. Mother’ll come all right.”
“The doctor said” — said Abner.
“Don’t tell me nothin’ what the doctor said; I don’t want to hear on’t,” said Zeph, in a high voice; and the two hoes worked on in silence for a while, till finally Zeph broke out again.
“Wal! what did the doctor say? Out with it; as good say it’s think it. What did the doctor say? Why don’t you speak?”
“He said she was a very sick woman,” answered Abner.
“He’s a fool. I don’t think nothin’ o’ that doctor’s jedgment. I’ll have Dr. Sampson over from East Poganuc. Your mother’s got the best constitution of any woman in this neighborhood.”
“Yes’ but she hasn’t been well lately, and I’ve seen it,” said Abner.
“That’s all croakin’. Don’t believe a word on’t. Mother’s been right along, stiddy as a clock; ‘taint nothin’ but one o’ these ‘ere pesky spring colds she’s got. She’ll be up and ‘round by to-morrow or next day. I’ll have another doctor, and I’ll get her wine and bark, and strengthenin’ things, and Nabby shall do the work, and she’ll come all right enough.”
“I’m sure I hope so,” said Abner.
“Hope! what d’ye say hope for? I ain’t a goin’ to hope nothin’ ‘bout it. I know so; she’s got to git well — ain’t no two ways ‘bout that.”
Yet Zeph hurried home an hour before his usual time and met Nabby at the door.
“Wal, ain’t your mother gettin’ better?”
There were tears in Nabby’s eyes as she answered.
“Oh, dear! she’s been a raisin’ blood. Doctor says it’s from her lungs. Mis’ Persis says it’s a bad sign. She’s very weak — and she looks so pale!”
“They must give her strengthenin’ things,” said Zeph. “Do they?”
“They’re givin’ what the Doctor left. Her fever’s beginnin’ to rise now. Doctor says we mustn’t talk to her, nor let her talk.”
“Wal, I’m a goin’ up to see her, anyhow. I guess I’ve got a right to speak to my own wife.” And Zeph slipped off his heavy cowhide boots, and went softly up to the door of the room, and opened it without stopping to knock.
The blinds were shut; it seemed fearfully dark and quiet. His wife was lying with her eyes closed, looking white and still; but in the center of each pale cheek was the round, bright, burning spot of the rising hectic.
Mis’ Persis was sitting by her with the authoritative air of a nurse who has taken full possession; come to stay and to reign. She was whisking the flies away from her patient with a feather fan, which she waved forbiddingly at Zeph as he approached.
“Mother,” said he in an awe-struck tone, bending over his wife, “don’t you know me?”
She opened her eyes; saw him; smiled and reached out her hand. It was thin and white, burning with the rising fever. “Don’t you feel a little better?” he asked. There was an imploring eagerness in his tone.
“Oh, yes; I’m better.”
“You’ll get well soon, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes; I shall be well soon,” she said, looking at him with that beautiful bright smile.
His heart sank as he looked. The smile was so strangely sweet — and all this quiet, this stillness, this mystery! She was being separated from him by impalpable shadowy forces that could not be battled with or defied. In his heart a warning voice seemed to say that just so quietly she might fade from his sight — pass away, and be forever gone. The thought struck cold to his heart, and he uttered an involuntary groan.
His wife opened her eyes, moved slightly, and seemed as if she would speak, but Mis’ Persis put her hand authoritatively over her mouth. “Don’t you say a word,” said she.
Then turning with concentrated energy on Zeph, she backed him out of the room and shut the door upon him and herself in the entry before she trusted herself to speak. When she did, it was as one having authority.
“Zephaniah Higgins,” she said, “air you crazy? Do you want to kill your wife? Ef ye come round her that way and git her a-talkin’ she’ll bleed from her lungs agin, and that’ll finish her. You’ve jest got to shet up and submit to the Lord, Zephaniah Higgins, and that’s what you hain’t never done yit; you’ve got to know that the Lord is goin’ to do his sovereign will and pleasure with your wife, and you’ve got to be still. That’s all. You can’t do nothin’. We shall all do the best we can; but you’ve jest got to wait the Lord’s time and pleasure.”
So saying, she went back into the sick-room and closed the door, leaving Zeph standing desolate in the entry.
Zeph, like most church members of his day, had been trained in theology, and had often expressed his firm belief in what was in those days spoken of as the “doctrine of divine sovereignty.”
A man’s idea of his God is often a reflection of his own nature. The image of an absolute monarch, who could and would always do exactly as he pleased, giving no account to any one of his doings, suited Zeph perfectly as an abstract conception; but when this resistless awful Power was coming right across his path, the doctrine assumed quite another form.
The curt statement made by Mis’ Persis had struck him with a sudden terror, as if a flash of lightning had revealed an abyss opening under his feet. That he was utterly helpless in his Sovereign’s hands he saw plainly; but his own will rose in rebellion — a rebellion useless and miserable. His voice trembled that night as he went through the familiar words of the evening prayer; a rush of choking emotions almost stopped his utterance, and the old words, worn smooth with use, seemed to have no relation to the turbulent tempest of feeling that was raging in his heart.
After prayers he threw down the Bible with an impatient bang, bolted for his room and shut himself in alone.
“Poor Father! he takes it hard,” said Nabby, wiping her eyes.
“He takes everything hard,” said Abner. “I don’t know how we’ll get along with him, now Mother isn’t round.”
“Well, let’s hope Mother’s goin’ to get well,” said Nabby. “I can’t — I ain’t goin’ to think anything else.”
CHAPTER XXV. DOLLY BECOMES ILLUSTRIOUS.
AT the Parsonage the illness in Zeph’s household brought social revolution.
The whole burden of family ministration, which had rested on Nabby’s young and comely shoulders, fell with a sudden weight upon those of Mrs. Cushing. This was all the more unfortunate because the same exigency absorbed the services of Mis’ Persis, who otherwise might have been relied on to fill the gap.
But now was Dolly’s hour for feeling her own importance and assuming womanly cares. She rushed to the front with enthusiasm and attacked every branch of domestic service, with a zeal not always according to knowledge but making her on the whole quite an efficient assistance. She washed and wiped dishes, and cleared, and cleaned, and dusted, and set away, as she had seen Nabby do; she propped herself on a stool at the ironing-table and plied the irons vigorously; and, resenting the suggestion that she should confine herself to towels and napkins, struck out boldly upon the boys’ shirts and other complicated tasks, burning her fingers and heating her face in the determination to show her prowess and ability.
“Dolly is really quite a little woman,” she overheard her mother saying to her father; and her bosom swelled with conscious pride and she worked all the faster.
“Now, you boys must be very careful not to make any more trouble than you can help,” she said with an air of dignity as Will and Bob burst into the kitchen and surprised her at the ironing-table. “Nabby is gone, and there is nobody to do the work but me.”
“Upon my word, Mrs. Puss!” said Will, stopping short and regarding the little figure with a serio-comic air. “How long since you’ve been so grand? How tall we’re getting in our own eyes — oh, my!” and Will seized her off the ir
oning stool and, perching her on his shoulder, danced round the table with her in spite of her indignant protests.
Dolly resented this invasion of her dignity with all her little might, and the confusion called her mother down out of the chamber where she had been at work.
“Boys, I’m astonished at you,” said she. Now Mrs. Cushing had been “astonished” at these same boys for about thirteen or fourteen years, so that the sensation could not be quite over-powering at this time.
“Well, Mother,” said Will, with brisk assurance, setting Dolly down on her stool, “I was only giving Dolly a ride,” and he looked up in her face with the confident smile that generally covered all his sins, and brought out an answering smile on the face of his mother.
“Come now, boys,” she said, “Nabby has gone home; you must be good, considerate children, make as little trouble as possible and be all the help you can.”
“But, Mother, Dolly was taking such grown-up airs, as if she was our mother. I had just to give her a lesson, to show her who she was.”
“Dolly is a good, helpful little girl, and I don’t know what I should do without her,” said Mrs. Cushing; “she does act like a grown-up woman, and I am glad of it.”
Dolly’s face flushed with delight; she felt that at last she had reached the summit of her ambition: she was properly appreciated!
“And you boys,” continued Mrs. Cushing, “must act like grown-up men, and be considerate and helpful.”
“All right, Mother; only give the orders. Bob and I can make the fires, and bring in the wood, and fill the tea-kettle, and do lots of things.” And, to do the boys justice, they did do their best to lighten the domestic labors of this interregnum.
The exigency would have been far less serious were it not that the minister’s house in those days was a sort of authorized hotel, not only for the ministerial brotherhood but for all even remotely connected with the same, and all that miscellaneous drift-wood of hospitality that the eddies of life cast ashore. The minister’s table was always a nicely-kept one; the Parsonage was a place where it was pleasant to abide; and so the guest-chamber of the Parsonage was seldom empty. In fact, this very week a certain Brother Waring, an ex-minister from East Poganuc, who wanted to consult the Poganuc Doctor, came, unannounced, with his wife and trunk, and they settled themselves comfortably down.
Such inflictions were in those days received in the literal spirit of the primitive command to “use hospitality without grudging;” but when a week had passed and news came that Mrs. Higgins was going down to the grave in quick consumption, and that Nabby would be wanted at home for an indefinite period, it became necessary to find some one to fill her place at the Parsonage, and Hiel Jones’s mother accepted the position temporarily — considering her services in the minister’s family as a sort of watch upon the walls of Zion. Not that she was by any means insensible to the opportunity of receiving worldly wages; but she wished it explicitly understood that she was not going out to service. She was “helpin’ Mis’ Cushing.” The help, however, was greatly balanced in this case by certain attendant hindrances such as seem inseparable from the whole class of “lady helps.”
Mrs. Jones had indeed a very satisfactory capability in all domestic processes; her bread was of the whitest and finest, her culinary skill above mediocrity, and she was an accomplished laundress. But so much were her spirits affected by the construction that might possibly be put on her position in the family that she required soothing attentions and expressions of satisfaction and confidence every hour of the day to keep her at all comfortable. She had stipulated expressly to be received at the family table, and, further than this, to be brought into the room and introduced to all callers; and, this being done, demeaned herself in a manner so generally abused and melancholy that poor Mrs. Cushing could not but feel that the burden which had been taken off from her muscles had been thrown with double weight upon her nerves.
After a call of any of the “town-hill” aristocracy, Mrs. Jones would be sure to be found weeping in secret places, because ‘Mrs. Colonel Davenport had looked down on her,’ or the Governor’s lady ‘didn’t speak to her,’ and she ‘should like to know what such proud folks was goin’ to do when they got to heaven!’ Then there was always an implication that if ministers only did their duty all these distinctions of rank would cease, and everybody be just as good as everybody else. The poor body had never even dreamed of a kingdom of heaven where the Highest was “as him that serveth;” and what with Mrs. Jones’s moans, and her tears, and her frequent sick headaches, accompanied by abundant use of camphor, Mrs. Cushing, in some desperate moments, felt as if she would rather die doing her own work than wear herself out in the task of conciliating a substitute.
Then, though not a serious evil, it certainly was somewhat disagreeable to observe Mrs. Jones’s statistical talents and habits of minute inspection, and to feel that she was taking notes which would put all the parish in possession of precise information as to the condition of Mrs. Cushing’s tablecloths, towels, napkins, and all the minuti¾ of her housekeeping arrangements. There is, of course, no sin or harm in such particularity; but almost every lady prefers the shades of poetic obscurity to soften the details of her domestic interior. In those days, when the minister was the central object of thought in the parish, it was specially undesirable that all this kind of information should be distributed, since there were many matrons who had opinions all ready made as to the proper manner in which a minister’s wife should expend his salary and order his household.
It was therefore with genuine joy that, after a fortnight’s care of this kind, a broad-faced, jolly African woman was welcomed by Mrs. Cushing to her kitchen in place of Mrs. Jones. Dinah was picked up in a distant parish, and entered upon her labors with an unctuous satisfaction and exuberance that was a positive relief after the recent tearful episode. It is true she was slow, and somewhat disorderly, but she was unfailingly good-natured, and had no dignity to be looked after; and so there was rest for a while in the Parsonage.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE VICTORY.
SUMMER with its deep blue skies was bending over the elms of Poganuc. The daisies were white in the mead-ows and the tall grass was nodding its feathery sprays of blossom. The windows of the farm houses stood open, with now and then a pillow or a bolster lounging out of them, airing in the sunshine. The hens stepped hither and thither with a drowsy continuous cackle of contentment as they sunned themselves in the warm embracing air.
In the great elm that overhung the roof of Zeph Higgins’s farm house was a mixed babble and confusion of sweet bird voices. An oriole from her swinging nest caroled cheerfully, and bobolinks and robins replied, and the sounds blended pleasantly with the whisper and flutter of leaves, as soft summer breezes stirred them.
But over one room in that house rested the shadow of death; there, behind the closed blinds, in darkened stillness days passed by; and watchers came at night to tend and minister; and bottles accumulated on the table; and those who came entered softly and spoke with bated breath; and the doctor was a daily visitor; and it was known that the path of the quiet patient who lay there was steadily going down to the dark river.
Every one in the neighborhood knew it: for, in the first place, everybody in that vicinity, as a matter of course, knew all about everybody else; and then, besides that, Mrs. Higgins had been not only an inoffensive, but a much esteemed and valued neighbor. Her quiet step, her gentle voice, her skillful ministry had been always at hand where there had been sickness or pain to be relieved, and now that her time was come there was a universal sympathy. Nabby’s shelves were crowded with delicacies made up and sent in by one or another good wife to tempt the failing appetite. In the laborious, simple life that they were living in those days, there was small physiological knowledge, and the leading idea in most minds in relation to the care of sickness was the importance of getting the patient to eat; for this end, dainties that might endanger the health of a well person were often sent in as a tribute to t
he sick. Then almost every house-mother had her own favorite specific, of sovereign virtue, which she prepared and sent in to increase the army of bottles which always gathered in a sick-room. Mis’ Persis, however, while graciously accepting these tributes, had her own mental reservations, and often slyly made away with the medicine in a manner that satisfied the giver and did not harm the patient. Quite often, too, Hiel Jones, returning on his afternoon course, stopped his horses at the farm-house door and descended to hand in some offering of sympathy and good will from friends who lived miles away.
Hiel did not confine himself merely to transmitting the messages of neighbors, but interested himself personally in the work of consolation, going after Nabby wherever she might be found — at the spinning wheel, in the garret, or in the dairy below — and Nabby, in her first real trouble, was so accessible and so confiding that Hiel found voice to say unreproved what the brisk maiden might have flouted at in earlier days.
“I’m sure I don’t know what we can do without Mother,” Nabby said one day, her long eye-lashes wet with tears. “Home won’t ever seem home without her.”
“Well,” answered Hiel, “I know what I shall want you to do, Nabby: come to me; and you and I’ll have a home all to ourselves.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 448
