“Why, ye see, boys, she was as withered and wrinkled and brown as an old frosted punkin-vine; and her little snaky eyes sparkled and snapped, and it made yer head kind o’ dizzy to look at ‘em; and folks used to say that anybody that Ketury got mad at was sure to get the worst of it fust or last. And so, no matter what day or hour Ketury had a mind to rap at anybody’s door, folks gen’lly thought it was best to let her in; but then, they never thought her coming was for any good, for she was just like the wind, — she came when the fit was on her, she staid jest so long as it pleased her, and went when she got ready, and not before. Ketury understood English, and could talk it well enough, but always seemed to scorn it, and was allers mo win’ and mutterin’ to herself in Indian, and winkin’ and blinkin’ as if she saw more-folks round than you did, so that she wa’n’t no way pleasant company; and yet everybody took good care to be polite to her. So old Cack asked her to come in, and didn’t make-no question where she come from, or what she come on; but he knew it was twelve good miles from where she lived to his hut, and the snow was drifted above her middle: and Cap’n Eb declared that there wa’n’t no track, nor sign o’ a track, of anybody’s coming through that snow next morning.”
“How did she get there, then?” said I.
“Didn’t ye never see brown leaves a-ridin’ on the wind? Well,’ Cap’n Eb he says, ‘she came on the wind,’ and I’m sure it was strong enough to fetch her. But Cack he got her down into the warm corner, and he poured her out a mug o’ hot toddy, and give her: but ye see her bein’ there sort o’ stopped the conversation; for she sot there a-rockin’ back’ards and for’ards, a-sippin her toddy, and a-mutterin’, and lookin’ up chimbley.
“Cap’n Eb says in all his born days he never hearn such screeches and yells as the wind give over that chimbley; and old Cack got so frightened, you could fairly hear his teeth chatter.
“But Cap’n Eb he was a putty brave man, and he wa’n’t goin’ to have conversation stopped by no woman, witch or no witch; and so, when he see her mutterin’, and lookin’ up chimbley, he spoke up, and says he, ‘Well, Ketury, what do you see?’ says he. ‘Come, out with it; don’t keep it to yourself.’ Ye see Cap’n Eb was a hearty fellow, and then he was a leetle warmed up with the toddy.
“Then he said he see an evil kind o’ smile on Ketury’s face, and she rattled her necklace o’ bones and snakes’ tails; and her eyes seemed to snap; and she looked up the chimbley, and called out, ‘Come down, come down! let’s see who ye be.’
“Then there was a scratchin’ and a rumblin’ and a groan; and a pair of feet come down the chimbley, and stood right in the middle of the haarth, the toes pi’ntin’ out’rds, with shoes and silver buckles a-shin-in’ in the firelight. Cap’n Eb says he never come so near bein’ scared in his life; and, as to old Cack, he jest wilted right down in his chair.
“Then old Ketury got up, and reached her stick up chimbley, and called out louder, ‘Come down, come down! let’s see who ye be.’ And, sure enough, down came a pair o’ legs, and j’ined right on to the feet: good fair legs they was, with ribbed stockings and leather breeches.
“‘Wal, we’re in for it now,’ says Cap’n Eb. ‘Go it, Ketury, and let’s have the rest on him.’
“Ketury didn’t seem to mind him: she stood there as stiff as a stake, and kep’ callin’ out, ‘Come down, come down! let’s see who ye be.’ And then come down the body of a man with a brown coat and yellow vest, and j’ined right on to the legs; but there wa’n’t no arms to it. Then Ketury shook her stick up chimbley, and called, ‘Come down, come down!’ And there came down a pair o’ arms, and went on each side o’ the body; and there stood a man all finished, only there wa’n’t no head on him.
“‘Wal, Ketury,’ says Cap’n Eb, ‘this ‘ere’s getting serious. I ‘spec’ you must finish him up, and let’s see what he wants of us.’
“Then Ketury called out once more, louder’n ever, ‘Come down, come down! let’s see who ye be.’ And, sure enough, down comes a man’s head, and settled on the shoulders straight enough; and Cap’n Eb, the minit he sot eyes on him, knew he was Jehiel Lommedieu.
“Old Cack knew him too; and he fell flat on his face, and prayed the Lord to have mercy on his soul: but Cap’n Eb he was for gettin’ to the bottom of matters, and not have his scare for nothin’; so he says to him, ‘What do you want, now you hev come?’
“The man he didn’t speak; he only sort o’ moaned, and p’inted to the chimbley. He seemed to try to speak, but couldn’t; for ye see it isn’t often that his sort o’ folks is permitted to speak: but just then there came a screechin’ blast o’ wind, and blowed the door open, and blowed the smoke and fire all out into the room, and there seemed to be a whirlwind and darkness and moans and screeches; and, when it all cleared up, Ketury and the man was both gone, and only old Cack lay on the ground, rolling and moaning as if he’d die.
“Wal, Cap’n Eb he picked him up, and built up the fire, and sort o’ comforted him up, ‘cause the crit-tur was in distress o’ mind that was drefful. The awful Providence, ye see, had awakened him, and his sin had been set home to his soul; and he was under such conviction, that it all had to come out, — how old Cack’s father had murdered poor Lommedieu for his money, and Cack had been privy to it, and helped his father build the body up in that very chimbley; and he said that he hadn’t had neither peace nor rest since then, and that was what had driv’ him away from ordinances; for ye know sinnin’ will always make a man leave prayin’. Wal, Cack didn’t live but a day or two. Cap’n Eb he got the minister o’ Sherburn and one o’ the selectmen down to see him; and they took his deposition. He seemed railly quite penitent; and Parson Carryl he prayed with him, and was faithful in settin’ home the providence to his soul: and so, at the eleventh hour, poor old Cack might have got in; at least it looks a leetle like it. He was distressed to think he couldn’t live to be hung. He sort o’ seemed to think, that if he was fairly tried, and hung, it would make it all square. He made Parson Carryl promise to have the old mill pulled down, and bury the body; and, after he was dead, they did it.
“Cap’n Eb he was one of a party o’ eight that pulled down the chimbley; and there, sure enough, was the skeleton of poor Lommedieu.
“So there you see, boys, there can’t be no iniquity so hid but what it’ll come out. The Wild Indians of the forest, and the stormy winds and tempests, j’ined together to bring out this ‘ere.”
“For my part,” said Aunt Lois sharply, “I never believed that story.”
“Why, Lois,” said my grandmother, “Cap’n Eb Sawin was a regular church-member, and a most respectable man.”
“Law, mother! I don’t doubt he thought so. I suppose he and Cack got drinking toddy together, till he got asleep, and dreamed it. I wouldn’t believe such a thing if it did happen right before my face and eyes. I should only think I was crazy, that’s all.”
“Come, Lois, if I was you, I wouldn’t talk so like a Sadducee,” said my grandmother. “What would become of all the accounts in Dr. Cotton Mather’s ‘Magnilly’ if folks were like you?”
“Wal,” said Sam Lawson, drooping contemplatively over the coals, and gazing into the fire, “there’s a putty consid’able sight o’ things in this world that’s true; and then ag’in there’s a sight o’ things that ain’t true. Now, my old gran’ther used to say, ‘Boys, says he, ‘if ye want to lead a pleasant and prosperous life, ye must contrive allers to keep jest the happy medium between truth and falsehood.’ Now, that are’s my doctrine.”
Aunt Lois knit severely.
“Boys,” said Sam, “don’t you want ter go down with me and get a mug o’ cider?”
Of course we did, and took down a basket to bring up some apples to roast.
“Boys,” says Sam mysteriously, while he was drawing the cider, “you jest ask your Aunt Lois to tell you what she knows ‘bout Ruth Sullivan.”
“Why, what is it?”
“Oh! you must ask her. These ‘ere folks that’s so kind o’
toppin’ about sperits and sich, come sift ’em down, you gen’lly find they knows one story that kind o’ puzzles ‘em. Now you mind, and jist ask your Aunt Lois about Ruth Sullivan.”
THE SULLIVAN LOOKING-GLASS.
“Aunt Lois,” said I, “what was that story about Ruth Sullivan?”
Aunt Lois’s quick black eyes gave a surprised flash; and she and my grandmother looked at each other a minute significantly. “Who told you any thing about Ruth Sullivan,” she said sharply.
“Nobody. Somebody said you knew something about her,” said I.
I was holding a skein of yarn for Aunt Lois; and she went on winding in silence, putting the ball through loops and tangled places.
“Little boys shouldn’t ask questions,” she concluded at last sententiously. “Little boys that ask too many questions get sent to bed.”
I knew that of old, and rather wondered at my own hardihood.
Aunt Lois wound on in silence; but, looking in her face, I could see plainly that I had started an exciting topic.
“I should think,” pursued my grandmother in her corner, “that Ruth’s case might show you, Lois, that a good many things may happen, — more than you believe.”
“Oh, well, mother! Ruth’s was a strange case; but I suppose there are ways of accounting for it.”
“You believed Ruth, didn’t you?”
“Oh, certainly, I believed Ruth! Why shouldn’t I? Ruth was one of my best friends, and as true a girl as lives: there wasn’t any nonsense about Ruth. She was one of the sort,” said Aunt Lois reflectively, “that I’d as soon trust as myself: when she said a thing was so and so, I knew it was so.”
“Then, if you think Ruth’s story was true,” pursued my grandmother, “what’s the reason you are always cavilling at things just ‘cause you can’t understand how they came to be so?”
Aunt Lois set her lips firmly, and wound with grim resolve. She was the very impersonation of that obstinate rationalism that grew up at the New-England fireside, close alongside of the most undoubting faith in the supernatural.
“I don’t believe such things,” at last she snapped out, “and I don’t disbelieve them. I just let ’em alone. What do I know about ‘em? Ruth tells me a story; and I believe her. I know what she saw beforehand, came true in a most remarkable way. Well, I’m sure I’ve no objection. One thing may be true, or another, for all me; but, just because I believe Ruth Sullivan, I’m not going to believe, right and left, all the stories in Cotton Mather, and all that anybody can hawk up to tell. Not I.”
This whole conversation made me all the more curious to get at the story thus dimly indicated; and so we beset Sam for information.
“So your Aunt Lois wouldn’t tell ye nothin’,” said Sam. “Wanter know, neow! sho!”
“No: she said we must go to bed if we asked her.”
“That ‘are’s a way folks has; but, ye see, boys,” said Sam, while a droll confidential expression crossed the lack-lustre dolefulness of his visage, “ye see, I put ye up to it, ‘cause Miss Lois is so large and commandin’ in her ways, and so kind o’ up and down in all her doin’s, that I like once and a while to sort o’ gravel her; and I knowed enough to know that that ‘are question would git her in a tight place.
“Ye see, yer Aunt Lois was knowin’ to all this ‘ere about Ruth, so there wer’n’t no gettin’ away from it; and it’s about as remarkable a providence as any o’ them of Mister Cotton Marther’s ‘Magnilly.’ So if you’ll come up in the barn-chamber this arternoon, where I’ve got a lot o’ flax to hatchel out, I’ll tell ye all about it.”
So that afternoon beheld Sam arranged at full length on a pile of top-tow in the barn-chamber, hatchelling by proxy by putting Harry and myself to the service.
“Wal, now, boys, it’s kind o’ refreshing to see how wal ye take hold,” he observed. “Nothin’ like bein’ industrious while ye’r young: gret sight better now than loafin off, down in them medders.
“‘In books and work and useful play
Let my fust years be past:
So shall I give for every day
Some good account at last.’”
“But, Sam, if we work for you, you must tell us that story about Ruth Sullivan.”
“Lordy massy! yis, — course I will. I’ve had the best kind o’ chances of knowin’ all about that ‘are. Wal, you see there was old Gineral Sullivan, he lived in state and grande’r in the old Sullivan house out to Roxberry. I been to Roxberry, and seen that ‘are house o’ Gineral Sullivan’s. There was one time that I was a consid’able spell lookin’ round in Roxberry, a kind o’ seein’ how things wuz there, and whether or no there mightn’t be some sort o’ providential openin’ or suthin’. I used to stay with Aunt Polly Ginger. She was sister to Mehitable Ginger, Gineral Sullivan’s housekeeper, and hed the in and out o’ the Sullivan house, and kind o’ kept the run o’ how things went and came in it. Polly she was a kind o’ cousin o’ my mother’s, and allers glad to see me. Fact was, I was putty handy round house; and she used to save up her broken things and sich till I come round in the fall; and then I’d mend ’em up, and put the clock right, and split her up a lot o’ kindlings, and board up the cellar-windows, and kind o’ make her sort o’ comfortable, — she bein’ a lone body, and no man round. As I said, it was sort o’ convenient to hev me; and so I jest got the run o’ things in the Sullivan house pretty much as ef I was one on ‘em, Gineral Sullivan he kept a grand house, I tell you. You see, he cum from the old country, and felt sort o’ lordly and grand; and they used to hev the gretest kind o’ doin’s there to the Sullivan house. Ye ought ter a seen that ‘are house, — gret big front hall and gret wide stairs; none o’ your steep kind that breaks a feller’s neck to get up and down, but gret broad stairs with easy risers, so they used to say you could a cantered a pony up that ‘are stairway easy as not. Then there was gret wide rooms, and sofys, and curtains, and gret curtained bedsteads that looked sort o’ like fortifications, and pictur’s that was got in Italy and Rome and all them ‘are heathen places. Ye see, the Gineral was a drefful worldly old critter, and was all for the pomps and the vanities. Lordy massy! I wonder what the poor old critter thinks about it all now, when his body’s all gone to dust and ashes in the graveyard, and his soul’s gone to ‘tarnity! Wal, that are ain’t none o’ my business; only it shows the vanity o’ riches in a kind o’ strikin’ light, and makes me content that I never hed none.”
“But, Sam, I hope General Sullivan wasn’t a wicked man, was he?”
“Wal, I wouldn’t say he was railly wickeder than the run; but he was one o’ these ‘ere high-stepping, big-feeling fellers, that seem to be a hevin’ their portion in this life. Drefful proud he was; and he was pretty much sot on this world, and kep’ a sort o’ court goin’ on round him. Wal, I don’t jedge him nor nobody: folks that hes the world is apt to get sot on it. Don’t none on us do more than middlin’ well.”
“But, Sam, what about Ruth Sullivan?”
“Ruth? — Oh, yis! — Ruth —
“Wal, ye see, the only crook in the old Gineral’s lot was he didn’t hev no children. Mis’ Sullivan, she was a beautiful woman, as handsome as a pictur’; but she never had but one child; and he was a son who died when he was a baby, and about broke her heart. And then this ‘ere Ruth was her sister’s child, that was born about the same time; and, when the boy died, they took Ruth home to sort o’ fill his place, and kind o’ comfort up Mis’ Sullivan. And then Ruth’s father and mother died; and they adopted her for their own, and brought her up.
“Wal, she grew up to be amazin’ handsome. Why, everybody said that she was jest the light and glory of that ‘are old Sullivan place, and worth more’n all the pictur’s and the silver and the jewels, and all there was in the house; and she was jest so innercent and sweet, that you never see nothing to beat it. Wal, your Aunt Lois she got acquainted with Ruth one summer when she was up to Old Town a visitin’ at Parson Lothrop’s. Your Aunt Lois was a gal then, and a pretty good-lookin’ on
e too; and, somehow or other, she took to Ruth, and Ruth took to her. And when Ruth went home, they used to be a writin’ backwards and forads; and I guess the fact was, Ruth thought about as much of your Aunt Lois as she did o’ anybody. Ye see, your aunt was a kind o’ strong up-and-down woman that always knew certain jest what she did know; and Ruth, she was one o’ them gals that seems sort o’ like a stray lamb or a dove that’s sort o’ lost their way in the world, and wants some one to show ’em where to go next. For, ye see, the fact was, the old Gineral and Madam, they didn’t agree very well. He wa’n’t well pleased that she didn’t have no children; and she was sort o’ jealous o’ him ‘cause she got hold o’ some sort of story about how he was to a married somebody else over there in England: so she got sort o’ riled up, jest as wim-men will, the best on ‘em; and they was pretty apt to have spats, and one could give t’other as good as they sent; and, by all accounts, they fit putty lively sometimes. And, between the two, Ruth she was sort o’ scared, and fluttered like a dove that didn’t know jest where to settle. Ye see, there she was in; that ‘are great wide house, where they was a feastin’ and a prancin’ and a dancin’, and a goin’ on like Ahashuerus and Herodias and all them old Scripture days. There was acomin’ and goin,’ and there was gret dinners and gret doin’s, but no love; and, you know, the Scriptur’ says, ‘Better is a dinner o’ yarbs, where love is, than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith.’
“Wal, I don’t orter say hatred, arter all. I kind o’ reckon, the old Gineral did the best he could: the fact is, when a woman gits a kink in her head agin a man, the best on us don’t allers do jest the right thing.
“Any way, Ruth, she was sort o’ forlorn, and didn’t seem to take no comfort in the goin’s on. The Gineral he was mighty fond on her, and proud on her; and there wa’n’t nothin’ too good for Ruth. He was free-handed, the Gineral wuz. He dressed her up in silks and satins, and she hed a maid to wait on her, and she hed sets o’ pearl and dimond; and Madam Sullivan she thought all the world on her, and kind o’ worshipped the ground she trod on. And yet Ruth was sort o’ lonesome.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 543
