Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary, fu’ o’ care?”

  To the heart struck through with its first experiences of real suffering all nature is full of cruelty, and the young and light-hearted are a large part of nature.

  “She has no feeling,” he said to himself. “Well, there is one reason the more for my going. She won’t break her heart for me; nobody loves me but mother, and it’s for her sake I must go. She mustn’t work herself to death for me.”

  And then he sat down in the window to write a note to be given to his mother after he had sailed, for he could not trust himself to tell her what he was about to do. He knew that she would try to persuade him to stay, and he felt faint-hearted when he thought of her. “She would sit up early and late, and work for me to the last gasp,” he thought, “but father was right. It is selfish of me to take it,” and so he sat trying to fashion his parting note into a tone of cheerfulness.

  “My dear mother,” he wrote, “this will come to you when I have set off on a four years’ voyage round the world. Father has convinced me that it’s time for me to be doing something for myself; and I couldn’t get a school to keep — and, after all, education is got other ways than at college. It’s hard to go, because I love home, and hard because you will miss me — though no one else will. But father may rely upon it, I will not be a burden on him another day. Sink or swim, I shall never come back till I have enough to do for myself, and you too. So good bye, dear mother. I know you will always pray for me, and wherever I am I shall try to do just as I think you would want me to do. I know your prayers will follow me, and I shall always be your affectionate son.

  “P.S. — The boys may have those chestnuts and walnuts in my room — and in my drawer there is a bit of ribbon with a locket on it I was going to give cousin Diana. Perhaps she won’t care for it, though; but if she does, she is welcome to it — it may put her in mind of old times.”’

  And this is all he said, with bitterness in his heart, as he leaned on the window and looked out at the great yellow moon that was shining so bright as to show the golden hues of the overhanging elm boughs and the scarlet of an adjoining maple.

  A light ripple of laughter came up from below, and a chestnut thrown up struck him on the hand, and he saw Diana and Bill step from out the shadowy porch.

  “There’s a chestnut for you, Mr. Owl,” she called, gaily, “if you will stay moping up there! Come, now, it’s a splendid evening; won’t you come?”

  “No, thank you. I sha’n’t be missed,” was the reply.

  “That’s true enough; the loss is your own. Good bye, Mr. Philosopher.”

  “Good bye, Diana.”

  Something in the tone struck strangely through her heart. It was the voice of what Diana never had felt yet — deep suffering — and she gave a little shiver.

  “What an awfully solemn voice James has sometimes,” she said; and then added, with a laugh, “it would make his fortune as a Methodist minister.”

  The sound of the light laugh and little snatches and echoes of gay talk came back like heartless elves to mock Jim’s sorrow.

  “So much for her,” he said, and turned to go and look for his mother.

  CHAPTER V.

  MOTHER AND SON.

  He knew where he should find her. There was a little, low work-room adjoining the kitchen that was his mother’s sanctum. There stood her work-basket — there were always piles and piles of work, begun or finished; and there also her few books at hand, to be glanced into in rare snatches of leisure in her busy life.

  The old times New England house mother was not a mere unreflective drudge of domestic toil. She was a reader and a thinker, keenly appreciative in intellectual regions. The literature of that day in New England was sparse; but whatever there was, whether in this country or in England, that was noteworthy, was matter of keen interest, and Mrs. Pitkin’s small library was very dear to her. No nun in a convent under vows of abstinence ever practiced more rigorous self-denial than she did in the restraints and government of intellectual tastes and desires. Her son was dear to her as the fulfillment and expression of her unsatisfied craving for knowledge, the possessor of those fair fields of thought which duty forbade her to explore.

  James stood and looked in at the window, and saw her sorting and arranging the family mending, busy over piles of stockings and shirts, while on the table beside her lay her open Bible, and she was singing to herself, in a low, sweet undertone, one of the favorite minor-keyed melodies of those days:

  “O God, our help in ages past,

  Our hope for years to come,

  Our shelter from the stormy blast

  And our eternal home!”

  An indescribable feeling, blended of pity and reverence, swelled in his heart as he looked at her and marked the whitening hair, the thin worn little hands so busy with their love work, and thought of all the bearing and forbearing, the waiting, the watching, the long-suffering that had made up her life for so many years. The very look of exquisite calm and resolved strength in her patient eyes and in the gentle lines of her face had something that seemed to him sad and awful — as the purely spiritual always looks to the more animal nature. With his blood bounding and tingling in his veins, his strong arms pulsating with life, and his heart full of a man’s vigor and resolve, his mother’s life seemed to him to be one of weariness and drudgery, of constant, unceasing self-abnegation. Calm he knew she was, always sustained, never faltering; but her victory was one which, like the spiritual sweetness in the face of the dying, had something of sadness for the living heart.

  He opened the door and came in, sat down by her on the floor, and laid his head in her lap.

  “Mother, you never rest; you never stop working.”

  “Oh, no!” she said gaily, “I’m just going to stop now. I had only a few last things I wanted to get done.”

  “Mother, I can’t bear to think of you; your life is too hard. We all have our amusements, our rests, our changes; your work is never done; you are worn out, and get no time to read, no time for anything but drudgery.”

  “Don’t say drudgery, my boy — work done for those we love never is drudgery. I’m so happy to have you all around me I never feel it.”

  “But, mother, you are not strong, and I don’t see how you can hold out to do all you do.”

  “Well,” she said simply, “when my strength is all gone I ask God for more, and he always gives it. ‘They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.’” And her hand involuntarily fell on the open Bible.

  “Yes, I know it,” he said, following her hand with his eyes — while “Mother,” he said, “I want you to give me your Bible and take mine. I think yours would do me more good.”

  There was a little bright flush and a pleased smile on his mother’s face —

  “Certainly, my boy, I will.”

  “I see you have marked your favorite places,” he added. “It will seem like hearing you speak to read them.”

  “With all my heart,” she added, taking up the Bible and kissing his forehead as she put it into his hands.

  There was a struggle in his heart how to say farewell without saying it — without letting her know that he was going to leave her. He clasped her in his arms and kissed her again and again.

  “Mother,” he said, “if I ever get into heaven it will be through you.”

  “Don’t say that, my son — it must be through a better Friend than I am — who loves you more than I do. I have not died for you — He did.”

  “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, then. You I can see — Him I cannot.”

  His mother looked at him with a face full of radiance, pity, and hope.

  “I feel sure you will” she said. “You are consecrated,” she added, in a low voice, laying her hand on his head.

  “Amen,” said James, in a reverential tone. He felt that she was at that moment — as she often

  was — silently speaking to One invisible of and for him, and t
he sense of it stole over him like a benediction. There was a pause of tender silence for many minutes.

  “Well, I must not keep you up any longer, mother dear — it’s time you were resting. Good-night.” And with a long embrace and kiss they separated. He had yet fifteen miles to walk to reach the midnight stage that was to convey him to Salem.

  As he was starting from the house with his bundle in his hand, the sound of a gay laugh came through the distant shrubbery. It was Diana and Bill returning from the husking. Hastily he concealed himself behind a clump of old lilac bushes till they emerged into the moonlight and passed into the house. Diana was in one of those paroxysms of young girl frolic which are the effervescence of young, healthy blood, as natural as the gyrations of a bobolink on a clover head. James was thinking of dark nights and stormy seas, years of exile, mother’s sorrows, home perhaps never to be seen more, and the laugh jarred on him like a terrible discord. He watched her into the house, turned, and was gone.

  CHAPTER VI.

  GONE TO SEA.

  A little way on in his moonlight walk James’s ears were saluted by the sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James’s mind. The note to his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a pine board — there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the Eastern Star, and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his education.

  “Wal naow — you don’t say so,” was Biah’s commentary. “Wal, yis, ’tis hard sleddin’ for the deacon — drefful hard sleddin.’ Wal, naow, s’pose you’re disapp’inted — shouldn’t wonder — jes’ so. Eddication’s a good thing, but ‘taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin’ round the world — and then they make money. Jes’ see, there’s Cap’n Stebbins and Cap’n Andrews and Cap’n Merryweather — all livin’ on good farms, with good, nice houses, all got goin’ to sea. Expect Mis’ Pitkin’ll take it sort o’ hard, she’s so sot on you; but she’s allers sayin’ things is for the best, and maybe she’ll come to think so ‘bout this — folks gen’ally does when they can’t help themselves. Wal, yis, naow — goin’ to walk to the cross-road tavern? better not. Jest wait a minit and I’ll hitch up and take ye over.

  “Thank you, Biah, but I can’t stop, and I’d rather walk, so I won’t trouble you.”

  “Wal, look here — don’t ye want a sort o’ nest-egg? I’ve got fifty silver dollars laid up: you take it on venture and give me half what it brings.”

  “Thank you, Biah. If you’ll trust me with it I’ll hope to do something for us both.”

  Biah went into the house, and after some fumbling brought out a canvas bag, which he put into James’s hand.

  “Wanted to go to sea confoundedly myself, but there’s Mariar Jane — she won’t hear on’t, and turns on the water-works if I peep a single word. Farmin’s drefful slow, but when a feller’s got a gal he’s got a cap’n; he has to mind orders. So you jest trade and we’ll go sheers. I think consid’able of you, and I expect you’ll make it go as fur as anybody.”

  “I’ll try my best, you may believe, Biah,” said James, shaking the hard hand heartily, as he turned on his way towards the cross-roads tavern.

  The whole village of Maplewood on Thanksgiving Day morning was possessed of the fact that James Pitkin had gone off to sea in the Eastern Star, for Biah had felt all the sense of importance which the possession of a startling piece of intelligence gives to one, and took occasion to call at the tavern and store on his way up and make the most of his information, so that by the time the bell rang for service the news might be said to be everywhere. The minister’s general custom on Thanksgiving Day was to get off a political sermon reviewing the State of New England, the United States of America, and Europe, Asia, and Africa; but it may be doubted if all the affairs of all these continents produced as much sensation among the girls in the singers’ seat that day as did the news that James Pitkin had gone to sea on a four years’ voyage. Curious eyes were cast on Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked

  before — the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time had never known a grief.

  For the letter had fallen on the heads of the Pitkin household like a thunderbolt. Biah came in to breakfast and gave it to Mrs. Pitkin, saying that James had handed him that last night, on his way over to take the midnight stage to Salem, where he was going to sail on the Eastern Star to-day — no doubt he’s off to sea by this time. A confused sound of exclamations went up around the table, while Mrs. Pitkin, pale and calm, read the letter and then passed it to her husband without a word. The bright, fixed color in Diana’s face had meanwhile been slowly ebbing away, till, with cheeks and lips pale as ashes, she hastily rose and left the table and went to her room. A strange, new, terrible pain — a sensation like being choked or smothered — a rush of mixed emotions — a fearful sense of some inexorable, unalterable crisis having come of her girlish folly — overwhelmed her. Again she remembered the deep tones of his good-by, and how she had only mocked at his emotion. She sat down and leaned her head on her hands in a tearless, confused sorrow.

  Deacon’ Pitkin was at first more shocked and overwhelmed than his wife. His yesterday’s talk with James had no such serious purpose. It had been only the escape-valve for his hypochondriac forebodings of the future, and nothing was farther from his thoughts than having it bear fruit in any such decisive movement on the part of his son. In fact, he secretly was proud of his talents and his scholarship, and had set his heart on his going through college, and had no more serious purpose in what he said the day before than the general one of making his son feel the difficulties and straits he was put to for him. Young men were tempted at college to be too expensive, he thought, and to forget what it cost their parents at home. In short, the whole thing had been merely the passing off of a paroxysm of hypochondria, and he had already begun to be satisfied that he should raise his interest money that year without material difficulty. The letter showed him too keenly the depth of the suffering he had inflicted on his son, and when he had read it he cast a sort of helpless, questioning look on his wife, and said, after an interval of silence:

  “Well, mother!”

  There was something quite pathetic in the appealing look and voice.’

  “Well, father,” she answered in subdued tones; “all we can do now is to leave it.”

  LEAVE IT!

  Those were words often in that woman’s mouth, and they expressed that habit of her life which made her victorious over all troubles, that habit of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could and did leave every accomplished event in His hand, without murmur and without conflict.

  If there was any one thing in her uniformly self-denied life that had been a personal ambition and a personal desire, it had been that her son should have a college education. It was the center of her earthly wishes, hopes and efforts. That wish had been cut off in a moment, that hope had sunk under her feet, and now only remained to her the task of comforting the undisciplined soul whose unguided utterances had wrought the mischief. It was not the first time that, wounded by a loving hand in this dark struggle of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own hu
rt that he that had wounded her might the better forgive himself.

  “Dear father,” she said to him, when over and over he blamed himself for his yesterday’s harsh words to his son, “don’t worry about it now; you didn’t mean it. James is a good boy, and he’ll see it right at last; and he is in God’s hands, and we must leave him there. He overrules all.”

  When Mrs. Pitkin turned from her husband she sought Diana in her room.

  “Oh, cousin! cousin!” said the girl, throwing herself into her arms. “Is this true? Is James gone? Can’t we do any thing? Can’t we get him back? I’ve been thinking it over. Oh, if the ship wouldn’t sail! and I’d go to Salem and beg him to come back, on my knees. Oh, if I had only known yesterday! Oh, cousin, cousin! he wanted to talk with me, and I wouldn’t hear him! — oh, if I only had, I could have persuaded him out of it! Oh, why didn’t I know?”

  “There, there, dear child! We must accept it just as it is, now that it is done. Don’t feel so. We must try to look at the good.”

  “Oh, show me that letter,” said Diana; and Mrs. Pitkin, hoping to tranquilize her, gave her James’s note. “He thinks I don’t care for him,” she said, reading it hastily. “Well, I don’t wonder! But I do care! I love him better than anybody or anything under the sun, and I never will forget him; he’s a brave, noble, good man, and I shall love him as long as I live — I don’t care who knows it! Give me that locket, cousin, and write to him that I shall wear it to my grave.”

  “Dear child, there is no writing to him.”

  “Oh, dear! that’s the worst. Oh, that horrid, horrid sea! It’s like death — you don’t know where they are, and you can’t hear from them — and a four years’ voyage! Oh, dear! oh, dear!”

  “Don’t, dear child, don’t; you distress me,” said Mrs. Pitkin.

  “Yes, that’s just like me,” said Diana, wiping her eyes. “Here I am thinking only of myself, and you that have had your heart broken are trying to comfort me, and trying to comfort Cousin Silas. We have both of us scolded and flouted him away, and now you, who suffer the most of either of us, spend your breath to comfort us. It’s just like you. But, cousin, I’ll try to be good and comfort you. I’ll try to be a daughter to you. You need somebody to think of you, for you never think of yourself. Let’s go in his room,” she said, and taking the mother by the hand they crossed to the empty room. There was his writing-table, there his forsaken books, his papers, some of his clothes hanging in his closet. Mrs. Pitkin, opening a drawer, took out a locket hung upon a bit of blue ribbon, where there were two locks of hair, one of which Diana recognized as her own, and one of James’s. She hastily hung it about her neck and concealed it in her bosom, laying her hand hard upon it, as if she would still the beatings of her heart.