Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  The conviction that I had helped to lead him astray, by not standing my ground that first night, now became unpleasantly strong in my mind. What a fool I had been! Why did I not at first declare my temperance principles, and my promise to my mother. A little firmness then might have cost me an effort, but it would have made my after-way easy. Now I was every day miserably conscious of being under a sort of slavery. I did not smoke very often. I excused myself, when invited, on various pleas. It did not agree with me. It confused my head. It hurt my eyes, and so on. In the same manner I sometimes took a sip of El’s wine, but generally apologized for declining it.

  All this did no good. It was no testimony to principle, one way nor the other. But what frightened me to think of was that Jimmy seemed to be developing a real taste, both for tobacco and for drink. How horrid, I thought, if there should be a serpent lying coiled up at the bottom of the poor boy’s heart, which these things should rouse and strengthen, till it should strangle him!

  All this dimly came before my mind as I walked silently by Lucy’s side, but I had not courage to tell her the whole story. I thought once or twice I would do it; but it is very hard when you see that people evidently have a very high esteem for you, to begin deliberately to pull yourself down in their eyes. I think Lucy must have wondered what made me so absent and silent, for in the conflict of my mind I often quite forgot to talk.

  “What in the world has come over you?” said Lucy to me, finally, after I had been standing looking gloomily over the gate after she had passed through it that night, and turned, as her custom was, for a little farewell chat in the moonlight. “I was thinking of Jimmy,” said I.

  “I knew you would feel it,” she said, with enthusiasm. “I know Jimmy’s mother, and last week I wrote her how fortunate it was that he had you for a room-mate.”

  I could have kicked myself, in the utterness of my selfcontempt, and I abruptly bade Lucy good-evening, and turned away.

  CHAPTER IV

  Things went on in this way for some weeks. Boys, and men, too, sometimes, by a single step, and that step taken in a sudden hurry of inconsideration, get into a net-work of false positions, in which they are very uneasy and unhappy, but live along, from day to day, seeing no way out.

  This was my ease. I was in false relations with Lucy, feeling that she thought altogether too well of me, but did not have the courage to undeceive her.

  I was in false relations with Jimmy, having assumed the part of a true friend to him, and now wanting the steadiness and firmness necessary to save him from the dangerous courses into which he was entering.

  El Vinton’s whirl of animal spirits, his wit and fun, kept a sort of vortex round him, into which it appeared impossible to get a serious consideration. The slightest attempt in me to say a word of the kind was shouted down by the general laugh of the room.

  My conscience was so stirred by what Lucy had said to me, that I tried, as far as I was concerned personally, to keep out of the smoking, and drinking, and violation of school rides that went on in our room, and for that I was voted a wet blanket, a muff, and sometimes El would ask me if I intended to report them to Mr. Exeter, or the parson.

  The thing came to a crisis in an attack on the minister’s watermelon patch, as I am about to relate.

  For two or three days El Vinton and Tom and Jimmy had seemed to have some plan on foot from which I was excluded. There was a great deal of chaffing and laughing among them, and passing of catch-words from one to another; and it was evident that something was going on which was not to be communicated to me.

  One evening, just at twilight, El proposed that we should all go in swimming together in a neighboring pond. The evening was delightful — it had been a hot August day — the full moon was just rising, and would light our way home. El Vinton put his arm in mine, and made himself unusually gracious and agreeable. In fact, he usually did that, and if he had not possessed that easy, jolly kind of way, I think I should not have borne as I did the sort of dictation he exercised over us all.

  He rattled, and chattered, and talked all the way to the pond, and we had a glorious swim. By the time we started to return home, it was broad, clear moonlight, clear enough to see to read by.

  We came along cross-lots, swishing through the high, dewy meadow-grass, and I gathered, as I went, handfuls of bright, spicy wild roses and golden lilies, as a bouquet for Lucy. Suddenly we came to the minister’s watermelon patch, and I was going to propose that we should make a circuit round it, to avoid tramping the vines, when El Vinton, putting one hand on the top rail, swung himself over, saying, —

  “Now for it, boys! Here’s a dessert for us!”

  The boys followed him, and forthwith began, in the bright moonlight, sounding the melons.

  “Take care, fellows!” said El. “I’m the judge of ripeness. Don’t cut till I give verdict.”

  “Boys,” said I, “what are you doing?”

  “Oh, you’ll see if you live long enough,” said El, coolly cutting off one or two fine melons, and taking them to a retired spot under a large tree. “This way, Tom, with that one. Jimmy, don’t you cut any; let me cut them.”

  “But,” said I, “boys, this is too bad. This is Mr. Sewell’s patch — the minister.”

  “All the better,” said El. “Just as if we didn’t know that. I wouldn’t have taken Deacon Sharpe’s, for I know they would give us a stomach-ache; but Mr. Sewell’s are your real Christian melons — won’t hurt anybody.”

  The boys all laughed as they sat down under the tree, and El began cutting up a great, ripe, red melon. I stood irresolute.

  “Perhaps you had better run and tell of us,” said El.

  “I think it’s a shame for you to say that, El Vinton,” said I. “You know it’s unjust.”

  “Well, so ‘t is,” he said, with a frank, dashing air. “I know, Bill, that you are as good-hearted a fellow as breathes, and any one that says you are a sneak or a spy, I’ll fight him. So sit down with us.”

  “But seriously,” said I, sitting down, “I must expostulate.”

  “Well, wet your whistle first,”said El, cutting a great fresh piece, and holding it up to my mouth.

  Now, if you imagine a thirsty boy, on a hot August night, with a cool, trickling slice of watermelon held right to his lips, you will, perhaps, see how it was that I ate my slice of watermelon before I was well aware what I did.

  “Goes down pretty well, don’t it?” said El, stroking my back. “You see there’s nothing like your real orthodox, pious melons. Why, I don’t doubt that there’s grace grown into these melons that will set us a long way on in saintship.”

  There was a general laugh at this sally, and I laughed, too, but still said, in an uneasy voice, —

  “After all, El, it isn’t handsome to take the minister’s melons in this way.”

  “Bless you!” said El, “it isn’t the melons we care for, it’s the fun. Let’s see. These melons are worth, say half a dollar apiece; that’s a liberal estimate. Well, suppose we eat six of them; that’s three dollars! What’s three dollars?” he said, with a magnificent slap of his pocket. “Now I, for one, am ready to plank down five dollars, this minute, as my part of a subscription to get Sewell a concordance, or a cyclopaedia, or set of Shakespeare, or any such thing as folks give to ministers; but I want my fun out of him, you see. I want my melons in this pastoral way, just when I feel like eating ‘em, — and enough of them, — and so here goes a roarer,” giving a smart slash of his knife across the third melon.

  And so, on and on we went, never knowing that Abner Stearns, the parson’s hired man, had his eye at a hole in the shrubbery, and was taking an exact account of us. Long before we left the fields, Abner had made his way across the lots, and detailed to Mr. Sewell the whole that he had seen and heard.

  “There’s one on ‘em, — that are Bill Somers, — he seemed rather to go agin it, but they wouldn’t hear to it, and kind o’ roped him in among ‘em,” said Abner. “And now, Mr. Sewell, if you
say so, I can jest go up with you to Mr. Exeter, with this ere story, ‘cause I got a good look at every one on ‘em, and knows exactly who they be, and I can testify on ’em slick as a whistle. That air Vinton boy, from Boston, he’s the head o’ the hull. I haint never had no great opinion o’ him. He’s up to every kind o’ shine, and jest the one to rope in other boys.”

  “Well, Abner,” said Mr. Sewell, “I have my own plan about this affair, and you must promise me not to say a single word about it to any human being, not even to your wife.”

  “That’s pretty well put in, too,” said Abner, “for if I told Cinthy, she’d want to tell Dolly Ann, and Dolly Ann, she’d want to tell Dolly, and ’twould be all over town afore night.”

  “Precisely so,” said the minister, “but my plan requires absolute silence. I can’t manage without.”

  “Go ahead, Parson Sewell,” said Abner, “I’ll be dumb as a catfish,” and Abner went home, wondering what the minister’s plan was.

  “Lucy,” said Mr. Sewell, coming out of his study, “I think we had four nice, ripe melons put down cellar this morning, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, papa.”

  “Well, I’m going to invite the boys over to the opposite house to a little melon supper. I’ll bring up the melons, and you set out a table, and I’ll go over and invite them.”

  Now, as Lucy had particularly friendly feelings towards, at least, one boy in the lot, she set about her hospitality with alacrity.

  We were coming up the street in the full, broad moonlight.

  “I tell you,” said El, “I’m about as full as I can wag. It’s wonderful how watermelons can fill a fellow up. I feel as I used to after a Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “So do I,” said Tom. “I couldn’t really get down another morsel.”

  At this moment, as we turned the corner to our boardinghouse, Mr. Sewell stood out plain before us, in the moonlight.

  “Good-evening, young gentlemen,” he said, in a bland, polite tone. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Our hearts all thumped, I fancy, a little quicker than before, but Mr. Sewell was so calm and polite, it could not be that he suspected where we had been.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” said Mr. Sewell, “just to ask you to step in a few moments and eat watermelons with us. We have a splendid lot of nice, ripe watermelons, and I thought you could help us to put some of them away.”

  I saw El give Tom Danforth a look of despair; but of course there was nothing to be done but seem highly delighted and honored, and we followed Mr. Sewell into the house and to a table piled with ripe melons, for which, wearied and cloyed as we were, we had to feign a boy’s fresh appetite.

  Mr. Sewell was pressing. He cut and carved without mercy — would not hear an apology, piled up our plates with new slices before we had half demolished the old ones, while we munched away with the courage of despair.

  Lucy was there, doing her part of the hospitality in the prettiest and most graceful manner possible.

  I had reasons of my own why the feast seemed almost to choke me. I had eaten very little of the melons in the lot, but the sense of the meanness of my conduct oppressed me. I could not bear to meet Lucy’s eyes — and Mr. Sewell’s politeness was dreadful to me. I rather fancy that there never was a set of boys who groaned more in spirit over a delicious banquet than we over those melons. It was in vain we made excuses; feigned modesty, delicacy; said, “No, I thank you,” and so on. The hospitality was so pressing, and our guilty consciences made us so afraid of being suspected, that we nearly killed ourselves in the effort. But at last we had to stop short of what was provided for us.

  There was a sort of subdued twinkle in Mr. Sewell’s eye, as he bade us good-night, that struck me singularly. It was like a sudden flash of lightning on a dark night. I felt perfectly sure that somehow he knew all about us. I felt my cheeks flame up to my hair, and my misery was at its climax.

  When we stumbled home the boys were alternately laughing and groaning, and declaring that the parson had caught them; but I stumbled into bed, blind and despairing. Oh, the misery of utter shame and self-contempt! I really wished I had never been born; I wished I had never come to Highland Academy; never known Lucy or Mr. Sewell; wished that El Vinton had kept a thousand miles away; and, finally, it occurred to me to wish the right wish which lay at the bottom of all, — that I had had sense and manliness enough, weeks ago, to begin with my room-mates as I knew I ought to go on, and not get into the miserable tangle which had ended in this disgrace!

  I did not sleep a wink that night, and next morning, at five o’clock, I was up, and seeing Mr. Sewell out in his garden, I resolved to go to him and make a clean breast of it.

  I went and told him I wanted to see him alone, and went with him into his study and told him what a miserable, silly fool I had been for the few weeks past.

  “I tell you, Mr. Sewell, because I won’t play the hypocrite any longer,” I said. “Lucy thinks a great deal too well of me; and you have been a great deal too kind to me; and I thought I might as well let you see just how mistaken you had been in me, and what a mean, miserable humbug I am.”

  “Oh no, not quite a humbug,” said Mr. Sewell, smiling. “Courage, my boy. You’ve made a clean breast of it, and now you’ve got down to firm ground, I think. It’s just as well to get through this kind of experience while you are a boy, if you are one of those that can learn anything by experience.”

  “But now I don’t know what to do,” said I. “I am wrong all round; and seem to have lost the power of doing right.”

  “Well, you have made it pretty hard to do right,” he said; “but if you’ve pluck enough now, to face about, and to tell your room-mates just what you have told me, — that you have been going wrong, but that you are determined now to do right, and having told them so, if you will keep to it with steadiness for a week or two, you may get hack the ground that you never ought to have lost in the first place. It’s tremendously hard to face about when you have been yielding, but it can be done.”

  “It shall be done,” said I; and I took my hat up and walked over to our room, and got the boys together and made my speech to them. I blamed nobody but myself. I told them I had acted like a sneak; and that I didn’t wonder they had no respect for me, but I told them I meant to be done acting like a sneak, and be a man; that I should, for the future, keep from drinking and smoking, and breaking school rules, and that if they would join me, well and good, but if they didn’t, it should make no difference.

  Mr. Sewell that same day sent for El Vinton and Jimmy, and had a talk with them, and matters in our room began to wear quite another appearance.

  “I tell you, fellows,” said El Vinton, “it was rather bully of the parson not to blow on us. Exeter would have turned us out of school in less than no time. And Sewell gave me some precious good counsel,” he added; “and on the whole, I don’t know but I’ll make an experiment of the ways of virtue.”

  I had a penitential confession to make to Lucy, but she took it like an angel. The fact was, she seemed determined to make the best of me — a course in which she has persevered ever since.

  Mrs. William Somers having just looked over this manuscript, is of opinion that I have said too much about Lucy; but I am not.

  The moral of my tale I leave every boy to make out for himself.

  NELLY’S HEROICS WITH OTHER HEROIC STORIES

  CONTENTS

  NELLY’S HEROICS.

  THE CASTLE OF THE WINDS.

  CHARLIE’S FIRST DOUGHNUT.

  CAPTAIN SCAMPADORO.

  CHINESE DECORATION FOR EASTER EGGS.

  THE ISLE OF PEACE.

  THE KINKIPAWS.

  A CASE OF COINCIDENCE.

  NELLY’S HEROICS.

  “GEORGE, what should you do when papa is away, if a robber should break into the house?”

  “Do? I should get the gun and shoot him,” responded master George promptly.

  Nelly, aged ten years, looked up with awe and admirat
ion at George, aged twelve, when he made this heroic reply.

  Now one might think from this conversation that such an event as that of a robber entering a house was a common circumstance in the village of L — , where these young people resided.

  On the contrary, no such event had ever taken place in the annals of that very quiet and well-conduced village.

  It was sixty years ago that our young people lived, and at that time order and steady habits prevailed through New England. Everything went on from day to day with the most perfect regularity. Everybody got up early,: minded their own business, went to bed at the ring of the nine o’clock bell, went to prayer meeting once a week, and to church twice on Sunday, and one week went on quite another.

  Twice a week the New Haven stage came in and went out, and that event was about the only excitement in the little village.

  Nelly was a brisk, healthy, well-grown little girl, full of all sorts of thoughts and schemes and plans that kept her wide awake from morning to night. Dr. Morris, her father, was the village doctor, and Nelly, with her two brothers George and Henry, were the youngest of a large family. Nelly was a general favorite, because she was lively and good-natured, and always ready to help every one, but trouble with her was that she was always talking and thinking and planning either about what she would do when she was grown up or what she would do in certain other circumstances, so that she often forgot or neglected to do the work her mother gave her to do at the present hour.

  It was dreadfully dull work for Nelly to stitch wristbands, counting her threads, and to take up gathers and scratch them, and to darn the thin places in her stockings and to oversew long seams, and she sighed over such tasks disconsolately.

  Her mother trained her to do her little part of the family ironing, but Nelly hated to iron towels and pocket handkerchiefs and napkins because — anybody could do such things she thought; but she wanted to do a shirt all herself; thought there would be some glory in that.