Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (116 page)

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Page 674
blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity,' Hab. ii. 12,to 'the bloody city,' Ezek. xxiv. 6,what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans, especially the inhabitants of this State and this town, who have had a distinguished share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!''
He went over the recent history of the country, expatiated on the national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free and independent and have natural and inalienable rights to liberty, and asked with what face a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands of their fellow-men in abject slavery. He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath of Heaven,the increase of public and private debts, the spirit of murmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people, divisions and contentions and bitter party alienations, the jealous irritation of England constantly endeavoring to hamper our trade, the Indians making war on the frontiers, the Algerines taking captive our ships and making slaves of our citizens,all evident tokens of the displeasure and impending judgment of an offended Justice.
The sermon rolled over the heads of the gay audience, deep and dark as a thunder-cloud, which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviest gloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concern spread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, which held them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of God's almighty justice.
It is said that a little child once described his appearance in the pulpit by saying, "I saw God there, and I was afraid."
Something of the same effect was produced on his audience now; and it was not till after sermon, prayer, and benediction were all over, that the respectables of Newport began gradually to unstiffen themselves from the spell, and to look into each other's eyes for comfort, and to reassure themselves that after all they were the first families, and going on the way the world had always gone, and that the Doctor, of course, was a radical and a fanatic.
When the audience streamed out, crowding the broad aisle, Mary descended from the singers, and stood with her psalm-

 

Page 675
book in hand, waiting at the door to be joined by her mother and the Doctor. She overheard many hard words from people who, an evening or two before, had smiled so graciously upon them. It was therefore with no little determination of manner that she advanced and took the Doctor's arm, as if anxious to associate herself with his well-earned unpopularity,and just at this moment she caught the eye and smile of Colonel Burr, as he bowed gracefully, yet not without a suggestion of something sarcastic in his eye.

 

Page 676
XVI.
The Garret-Boudoir
We suppose the heroine of a novel, among other privileges and immunities, has a prescriptive right to her own private boudoir, where, as a French writer has it, "she appears like a lovely picture in its frame."
Well, our little Mary is not without this luxury, and to its sacred precincts we will give you this morning a ticket of admission. Know, then, that the garret of this gambrel-roofed cottage had a projecting window on the seaward side, which opened into an immensely large old apple-tree, and was a look-out as leafy and secluded as a robin's nest.
Garrets are delicious places in any case, for people of thoughtful, imaginative temperament. Who has not loved a garret in the twilight days of childhood, with its endless stores of quaint, cast-off, suggestive antiquity,old wormeaten chests,rickety chairs,boxes and casks full of odd comminglings, out of which, with tiny, childish hands, we fished wonderful hoards of fairy treasure? What peep-holes, and hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats we made to ourselves,where we sat rejoicing in our security, and bidding defiance to the vague, distant cry which summoned us to school, or to some unsavory every-day task! How deliciously the rain came pattering on the roof over our head, or the red twilight streamed in at the window, while we sat snugly ensconced over the delicious pages of some romance, which careful aunts had packed away at the bottom of all things, to be sure we should never read it! If you have anything, beloved friends, which you wish your Charley or your Susie to be sure and read, pack it mysteriously away at the bottom of a trunk of stimulating rubbish, in the darkest corner of your garret;in that case, if the book be at all readable, one that by any possible chance can make its way into a young mind, you may be sure that it will not only be read, but remembered to the longest day they have to live.

 

Page 677
Mrs. Katy Scudder's garret was not an exception to the general rule. Those quaint little people who touch with so airy a grace all the lights and shadows of great beams, bare rafters, and unplastered walls, had not failed in their work there. Was there not there a grand easy-chair of stamped-leather, minus two of its hinder legs, which had genealogical associations through the Wilcoxes with the Vernons and through the Vernons quite across the water with Old England? and was there not a dusky picture, in an old tarnished frame, of a woman of whose tragic end strange stories were whispered,one of the sufferers in the time when witches were unceremoniously helped out of the world, instead of being, as now-a-days, helped to make their fortune in it by table-turning?
Yes, there were all these things, and many more which we will not stay to recount, but bring you to the boudoir which Mary has constructed for herself around the dormer-window which looks into the whispering old apple-tree.
The inclosure was formed by blankets and bed-spreads, which, by reason of their antiquity, had been pensioned off to an undisturbed old age in the garret,not
common
blankets or bed-spreads, either,bought, as you buy yours, out of a shop,spun or woven by machinery,without individuality or history. Every one of these curtains had its story. The one on the right, nearest the window, and already falling into holes, is a Chinese linen, and even now displays unfaded, quaint patterns of sleepy-looking Chinamen, in conical hats, standing on the leaves of most singular herbage, and with hands forever raised in act to strike bells, which never are struck and never will be till the end of time. These, Mrs. Katy Scudder had often instructed Mary, were brought from the Indies by her great-great-grandfather, and were her grandmother's wedding-curtains,the grandmother who had blue eyes like hers and was just about her height.
The next spread was spun and woven by Mrs. Katy's beloved Aunt Eunice,a mythical personage, of whom Mary gathered vague accounts that she was disappointed in love, and that this very article was part of a bridal outfit, prepared in vain, against the return of one from sea, who never came back,and she heard of how she sat wearily and patiently at

 

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her work, this poor Aunt Eunice, month after month, starting every time she heard the gate shut, every time she heard the tramp of a horse's hoof, every time she heard the news of a sail in sight,her color, meanwhile, fading and fading as life and hope bled away at an inward wound,till at last she found comfort and reunion beyond the veil.
Next to this was a bed-quilt pieced in tiny blocks, none of them bigger than a sixpence, containing, as Mrs. Katy said, pieces of the gowns of all her grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and female relatives for years back,and mated to it was one of the blankets which had served Mrs. Scudder's uncle in his bivouac at Valley Forge, when the American soldiers went on the snows with bleeding feet, and had scarce anything for daily bread except a morning message of patriotism and hope from George Washington.
Such were the memories woven into the tapestry of our little boudoir. Within, fronting the window, stands the large spinning-wheel, one end adorned with a snowy pile of fleecy rolls,and beside it, a reel and a basket of skeins of yarn,and open, with its face down on the beam of the wheel, lay always a book, with which the intervals of work were beguiled.
The dusky picture of which we have spoken hung against the rough wall in one place, and in another appeared an old engraved head of one of the Madonnas of Leonardo da Vinci, a picture which to Mary had a mysterious interest, from the fact of its having been cast on shore after a furious storm, and found like a waif lying in the sea-weed; and Mrs. Marvyn, who had deciphered the signature, had not ceased exploring till she found for her, in an Encyclopædia, a life of that wonderful man, whose greatness enlarges our ideas of what is possible to humanity,and Mary pondering thereon, felt the seaworn picture as a constant vague inspiration.
Here our heroine spun for hours and hours,with intervals, when, crouched on a low seat in the window, she pored over her book, and then, returning again to her work, thought of what she had read to the lulling burr of the sounding wheel.
By chance a robin had built its nest so that from her retreat she could see the five little blue eggs, whenever the patient

 

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brooding mother left them for a moment uncovered. And sometimes, as she sat in dreamy reverie, resting her small, round arms on the window-sill, she fancied that the little feathered watcher gave her familiar nods and winks of a confidential nature,cocking the small head first to one side and then to the other, to get a better view of her gentle human neighbor.
I dare say it seems to you, reader, that we have travelled in our story, over a long space of time, because we have talked so much and introduced so many personages and reflections; but, in fact, it is only Wednesday week since James sailed, and the eggs which were brooded when he went are still unhatched in the nest, and the apple-tree has changed only in having now a majority of white blossoms over the pink buds.
This one week has been a critical one to our Mary;in it, she has made the great discovery, that she loves; and she has made her first step into the gay world; and now she comes back to her retirement to think the whole over by herself. It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely face of the foreign Madame, so brilliant under its powdered hair and flashing gems,the sweet, foreign accents of the voice,the tiny, jewelled fan, with its glancing pictures and sparkling tassels, whence exhaled vague and floating perfumes; then she hears again that manly voice, softened to tones so seductive, and sees those fine eyes with the tears in them, and wonders within herself that
he
could have kissed her hand with such veneration, as if she had been a throned queen.
But here the sound of busy, pattering footsteps is heard on the old, creaking staircase, and soon the bows of Miss Prissy's bonnet part the folds of the boudoir drapery, and her merry, May-day face looks in.
"Well, really, Mary, how do you do, to be sure? You wonder to see me, don't you? but I thought I must just run in, a minute, on my way up to Miss Marvyn's. I promised her at least a half-a-day, thought I didn't see how I was to spare it,for I tell Miss Wilcox I just run and run till it does seem as if

 

Page 680
my feet would drop off; but I thought I must just step in to say, that I, for my part,
do admire
the Doctor more than ever, and I was telling your mother we mus'n't mind too much what people say. I 'most made Miss Wilcox angry, standing up for him; but I put it right to her, and says I, 'Miss Wilcox, you know folks
must
speak what's on their mind,in particular ministers must; and you know, Miss Wilcox,' I says, 'that the Doctor
is
a good man, and lives up to his teaching, if anybody in this world does, and gives away every dollar he can lay hands on to those poor negroes, and works over 'em and teaches 'em as if they were his brothers'; and says I, 'Miss Wilcox, you know I don't spare myself, night nor day, trying to please you and do your work to give satisfaction; but when it comes to my conscience,' says, I, 'Miss Wilcox, you know I always must speak out, and if it was the last word I had to say on my dying bed, I'd say that I think the Doctor is right.' Why! what things he told about the slave-ships, and packing those poor creatures so that they couldn't move nor breathe!why, I declare, every time I turned over and stretched in bed, I thought of it;and says I, 'Miss Wilcox, I do believe that the judgments of God will come down on us, if something a'n't done, and I shall always stand by the Doctor,' says I;and, if you'll believe me, just then I turned round and saw the General; and the General, he just haw-hawed right out, and says he, 'Good for you, Miss Prissy! that's real grit,' says he, 'and I like you better for it.'Laws," added Miss Prissy, reflectively, "I sha'n't lose by it, for Miss Wilcox knows she never can get anybody to do the work for her that I will."
"Do you think," said Mary, "that there are a great many made angry?"
"Why, bless your heart, child, haven't you heard?Why, there never was such a talk in all Newport. Why, you know Mr. Simeon Brown is gone clear off to Dr. Stiles; and Miss Brown, I was making up her plum-colored satin o' Monday, and you ought to 'a' heard her talk. But, I tell you, I fought her. She used to talk to me," said Miss Prissy, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper, "'cause I never could come to it to say that I was willin' to be lost, if it was for the glory of God; and she always told me folks could just bring their

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