Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  I nodded to my mother to answer in the affirmative.

  The three girls who composed our establishment had usually roomed in one large apartment, but there was a small closet of a room which I had taken for books, fishing-rods, guns, and any miscellaneous property of my own. I mentally turned these out, and devoted the room to the newcomer, whose appearance interested me.

  And, as my mother hesitated, I remarked, with the assured tone of master of the house, that “certainly she could have a small room to herself.”

  “It is all I ask,” she briefly answered. “In that case, I will come for the same wages you paid the last girl in my situation.”

  “When will you come?” said my mother.

  “I am ready to come immediately. I only want time to go and order my things to be sent here.”

  She rose and left us, saying that we might expect her that afternoon.

  “Well, sir,” said my mother, “you seem to have taken it upon you to settle this matter on your own authority.”

  “My dear little mother,” said I, in a patronizing tone, “I have an instinctive certainty that she will do. I wanted to make sure of a prize for you.”

  “But the single room.”

  “Never mind; I’ll move all my traps out of the little third-story room. It’s my belief that this girl or woman has seen better days; and if she has, a room to herself will be a necessity of her case, — poor thing!”

  “I don’t know,” said my mother hesitatingly. “I never wish to employ in my service those above their station, — they always make trouble; and there is something in this woman’s air and manner and pronunciation that makes me feel as if she had been born and bred in cultivated society.”

  “Supposing she has,” said I; “it’s quite evident that she, for some reason, means to conform to this position. You seldom have a girl apply for work who comes dressed with such severe simplicity; her manner is retiring, and she seemed perfectly willing and desirous to undertake any of the things which you mentioned as among her daily tasks.”

  On the afternoon of that day our new assistant came, and my mother was delighted with the way she set herself at work. The china-closet, desecrated and disordered in the preceding reigns of terror and confusion, immediately underwent a most quiet but thorough transformation. Everything was cleaned, brightened, and arranged with a system and thoroughness which showed, as my mother remarked, a good head; and all this was done so silently and quietly that it seemed like magic. By the time we came down to breakfast the next morning, we perceived that the reforms of our new prime minister had extended everywhere. The dining-room was clean, cool, thoroughly dusted, and freshly aired; the tablecloth and napkins were smooth and clean; the glass glittered like crystal, and the silver wore a cheerful brightness. Added to this were some extra touches of refinement, which I should call table coquetry. The cold meat was laid out with green fringes of parsley; and a bunch of heliotrope, lemon verbena, and mignonette, with a fresh rosebud, all culled from our little back yard, stood in a wineglass on my mother’s waiter.

  “Well, Mary, you have done wonders,” said my mother, as she took her place; “your arrangements restore appetite to all of us.”

  Mary received our praises with a gracious smile, yet with a composed gravity which somewhat puzzled me. She seemed perfectly obliging and amiable, yet there was a serious reticence about her that quite piqued my curiosity. I could not help recurring to the idea of a lady in disguise; though I scarcely knew to what circumstance about her I could attach the idea. So far from the least effort to play the lady, her dress was, in homely plainness, a perfect contrast to that of the girls who had preceded her. It consisted of strong dark-blue stuff, made perfectly plain to her figure, with a narrow band of white linen around her throat. Her dark brown hair was brushed smoothly away from her face, and confined simply behind in a net; there was not the slightest pretension to coquetry in its arrangement; in fact, the object seemed to be to get it snugly out of the way, rather than to make it a matter of ornament. Nevertheless, I could not help remarking that there was a good deal of it, and that it waved very prettily, notwithstanding the care that had been taken to brush the curl out of it.

  She was apparently about twenty years of age. Her face was not handsome, but it was a refined and intelligent one. The skin had a sallow hue, which told of ill health or of misfortune; there were lines of trouble about the eye; but the mouth and chin had that unmistakable look of firmness which speaks a person able and resolved to do a quiet battle with adverse fate, and to go through to the end with whatever is needed to be done, without fretfulness and without complaint. She had large, cool, gray eyes, attentive and thoughtful, and she met the look of any one who addressed her with an honest firmness; she seemed to be, in fact, simply and only interested to know and to do the work she had undertaken, — but what there might be behind and beyond that I could not conjecture.

  One thing about her dress most in contrast with that of the other servants was that she evidently wore no crinoline. The exuberance of this article in the toilet of our domestics had become threatening of late, apparently requiring that the kitchens and pantries should be torn down and rebuilt. As matters were, our three girls never could be in our kitchen at one time without reefings and manoeuvrings of their apparel which much impeded any other labor, and caused some loss of temper; and our china-closet was altogether too small for the officials who had to wash the china there, and they were constantly at odds with my mother for her firmness in resisting their tendency to carry our china and silver to the general mélée of the kitchen sink. Moreover, our dining-room not having been constructed with an eye to modern expansions of the female toilet, it happened that, if our table was to be enlarged for guests, there arose serious questions of the waiter’s crinoline to complicate the calculations; and for all these reasons, I was inclined to look with increasing wonder on a being in female form who could so far defy the tyranny of custom as to dress in a convenient and comfortable manner, adapted to the work which she undertook to perform. A good-looking girl without crinoline had a sort of unworldly freshness of air that really constituted a charm. If it had been a piece of refined coquetry, — as certainly it was not, — it could not have been better planned.

  Nothing could be more perfectly proper than the demeanor of this girl in relation to all the proprieties of her position. She seemed to give her whole mind to it with an anxious exactness; but she appeared to desire no relations with the family other than those of a mere business character. It was impossible to draw her into conversation. If a good-natured remark was addressed to her on any subject such as in kindly disposed families is often extended as an invitation to a servant to talk a little with an employer, Mary met it with the briefest and gravest response that was compatible with propriety, and with a definite and marked respectfulness of demeanor which had precisely the effect of throwing us all at a distance, like ceremonious politeness in the intercourse of good society.

  “I cannot make out our Mary,” said I to my mother; “she is a perfect treasure, but who or what do you suppose she is?”

  “I cannot tell you,” said my mother. “All I know is, she understands her business perfectly, and does it exactly; but she no more belongs to the class of common servants than I do.”

  “Does she associate with the other girls?”

  “Not at all — except at meal-times, and when about her work.”

  “I should think that would provoke the pride of sweet Erin,” said I.

  “One would think so,” said my mother; “but she certainly has managed her relations with them with a curious kind of tact. She always treats them with perfect consideration and politeness, talks with them during the times that they necessarily are thrown together in the most affable and cheerful manner, and never assumes any airs of supremacy with them. Her wanting a room to herself gave them at first an idea that she would hold herself aloof from them, and in fact, for the first few days, there was a subterranean fire in the ki
tchen ready to burst forth; but now all that is past, and in some way or other, without being in the least like any of them, she has contrived to make them her fast friends. I found her last night in the kitchen writing a letter for the cook, and the other day she was sitting in her room trimming a bonnet for Katy; and her opinion seems to be law in the kitchen. She seldom sits there, and spends most of her leisure in her own room, which is as tidy as a bee’s cell.”

  “What is she doing there?”

  “Reading, sewing, and writing, as far as I can see. There are a few books, and a portfolio, and a small inkstand there, — and a neat little work-basket. She is very nice with her needle, and obliging in putting her talents to the service of the other girls; but towards me she is the most perfectly silent and reserved being that one can conceive. I can’t make conversation with her; she keeps me off by a most rigid respectfulness of demeanor which seems to say that she wants nothing from me but my orders. I feel that I could no more ask her a question about her private affairs, than I could ask one of Mrs. McGregor in the next street. But then it is a comfort to have some one so entirely trustworthy as she is in charge of all the nice little articles which require attention and delicate handling. She is the only girl I ever had whom I could trust to arrange a parlor and a table without any looking after. Her eye and hand, and her ideas, are certainly those of a lady, whatever her position may have been.”

  In time our Mary became quite a family institution for us, seeming to fill a thousand little places in the domestic arrangement where a hand or an eye was needed. She was deft at mending glass and china, and equally so at mending all sorts of household things. She darned the napkins and tablecloths in a way that excited my mother’s admiration, and was always so obliging and ready to offer her services that, in time, a resort to Mary’s work-basket and ever ready needle became the most natural thing in the world to all of us. She seemed to have no acquaintance in the city, never went out visiting, received no letters, — in short, seemed to live a completely isolated life, and to dwell in her own thoughts in her own solitary little room.

  By that talent for systematic arrangement which she possessed, she secured for herself a good many hours to spend there. My mother, seeing her taste for reading, offered her the use of our books; and one volume after another spent its quiet week or fortnight in her room, and returned to our shelves in due time. They were mostly works of solid information, — history, travels, — and a geography and atlas which had formed part of the school outfit of one of the younger children she seemed interested to retain for some time. “It is my opinion,” said my mother, “that she is studying, — perhaps with a view to getting some better situation.”

  “Pray keep her with us,” said I, “if you can. Why don’t you raise her wages? You know that she does more than any other girl ever did before in her place, and is so trustworthy that she is invaluable to us. Persons of her class are worth higher wages than common uneducated servants.”

  My mother accordingly did make a handsome addition to Mary’s wages, and by the time she had been with us a year the confidence which her quiet manner had inspired was such that, if my mother wished to be gone for a day or two, the house, with all that was in it, was left trustingly in Mary’s hands, as with a sort of housekeeper. She was charged with all the last directions, as well as the keys to the jellies, cakes, and preserves, with discretionary power as to their use; and yet, for some reason, such was the ascendency she contrived to keep over her Hibernian friends in the kitchen, all this confidence evidently seemed to them quite as proper as to us.

  “She ain’t quite like us,” said Biddy one day, mysteriously, as she looked after her. “She’s seen better days, or I’m mistaken; but she don’t take airs on her. She knows how to take the bad luck quiet like, and do the best she can.”

  “Has she ever told you anything of herself, Biddy?” said my mother.

  “Me? No. It’s a quiet tongue she keeps in her head. She is ready enough to do good turns for us, and to smooth out our ways, and hear our stories, but it’s close in her own affairs she is. Maybe she don’t like to be talkin’, when talkin’ does no good, — poor soul!”

  Matters thus went on, and I amused myself now and then with speculating about Mary. I would sometimes go to her to ask some of those little charities of the needle which our sex are always needing from feminine hands; but never, in the course of any of these little transactions, could I establish the slightest degree of confidential communication. If she sewed on a shirt-button, she did it with as abstracted an air as if my arm were a post which she was required to handle, and not the arm of a good-looking youth of twenty-five, — as I fondly hoped I was. And certain remarks which I once addressed to her in regard to her studies and reading in her own apartment were met with that cool, wide-open gaze of her calm gray eyes, that seemed to say, “Pray, what is that to your purpose, sir?” and she merely answered, “Is there anything else that you would like me to do, sir?” with a marked deference that was really defiant.

  But one day I fancied I had got hold of a clue. I was standing in our lower front hall, when I saw young McPherson, whom I used to know in New York, coming up the doorsteps.

  At the moment that he rung the doorbell, our Mary, who had seen him from the chamber window, suddenly grew pale, and said to my mother, “Please, ma’am, will you be so good as to excuse my going to the door? I feel faint.”

  My mother spoke over the banisters, and I opened the door, and let in McPherson.

  He and I were jolly together, as old classmates are wont to be, and orders were given to lay a plate for him at dinner.

  Mary prepared the service with her usual skill and care, but pleaded that her illness increased so that it would be impossible for her to wait on table. Now, nobody in the house thought there was anything peculiar about this but myself. My mother, indeed, had noticed that Mary’s faintness had come on very suddenly, as she looked out on the street; but it was I who suggested to her that McPherson might have some connection with it.

  “Depend upon it, mother, he is somebody whom she has known in her former life, and doesn’t wish to meet,” said I.

  “Nonsense, Tom; you are always getting up mysteries, and fancying romances.”

  Nevertheless, I took a vicious pleasure in experimenting on the subject; and therefore, a day or two after, when I had got Mary fairly within eye-range, as she waited on table, I remarked to my mother carelessly, “By the bye, the McPhersons are coming to Boston to live.”

  There was a momentary jerk of Mary’s hand, as she was filling a tumbler, and then I could see the restraint of self-command passing all over her. I had hit something, I knew; so I pursued my game.

  “Yes,” I continued, “Jim is here to look at houses; he is thinking strongly of one in the next block.”

  There was a look of repressed fear and distress on Mary’s face as she hastily turned away, and made an errand into the china-closet.

  “I have found a clue,” I said to my mother triumphantly, going to her room after dinner. “Did you notice Mary’s agitation when I spoke of the McPhersons coming to Boston? By Jove! but the girl is plucky, though; it was the least little start, and in a minute she had her visor down and her armor buckled. This certainly becomes interesting.”

  “Tom, I certainly must ask you what business it is of yours,” said my mother, settling back into the hortatory attitude familiar to mothers. “Supposing the thing is as you think, — suppose that Mary is a girl of refinement and education, who, from some unfortunate reason, has no resource but her present position, — why should you hunt her out of it? If she is, as you think, a lady, there is the strongest reason why a gentleman should respect her feelings. I fear the result of all this restless prying and intermeddling of yours will be to drive her away; and really, now I have had her, I don’t know how I ever could do without her. People talk of female curiosity,” said my mother, with a slightly belligerent air; “I never found but men had fully as much curiosity as women. Now, wh
at will become of us all if your restlessness about this should be the means of Mary’s leaving us? You know the perfectly dreadful times we had before she came, and I don’t know anybody who has less patience to bear such things than you.”

  In short, my mother was in that positive state of mind which is expressed by the colloquial phrase of being on her high horse. I — as the male part of creation always must in such cases — became very meek and retiring, and promised to close my eyes and ears, and not dream, or think, or want to know, anything which it was not agreeable to Mary and my mother that I should. I would not look towards the doorbell, nor utter a word about the McPhersons, who, by the bye, decided to take the house in our neighborhood.

  But though I was as exemplary as one of the saints, it did no good. Mary, for some reasons known to herself, became fidgety, nervous, restless, and had frequent headaches and long crying spells in her own private apartment, after the manner of women when something is the matter with them.

  My mother was, as she always is with every creature in her employ, maternal and sympathetic, and tried her very best to get into her confidence.

  Mary only confessed to feeling a little unwell, and hinted obscurely that perhaps she should be obliged to leave the place. But it was quite evident that her leaving was connected with the near advent of the McPhersons in the next block; for I observed that she always showed some little irrepressible signs of nervousness whenever that subject was incidentally alluded to. Finally, on the day that their furniture began to arrive, and to provide abundant material for gossip and comment to the other members of the kitchen cabinet, Mary’s mind appeared suddenly made up. She came into my mother’s room looking as a certain sort of women do when they have made a resolution which they mean to stand by, — very pale, very quiet, and very decided. She asked to see my mother alone, and in that interview she simply expressed gratitude for all her kindness to her, but said that circumstances would oblige her to go to New York.