"Yes," he said, gravely, "I have made myself my brother's keeper."
"And very literally of a soul," the Doctor continued. "The body was
merely thrown in as an inconsiderable part of the bargain. We were on
the road from Omocqua to Tenpinville, where we meant to dine. Harry
was a little ahead. I was walking slowly, looking along the side of
the road for what I might find, when I heard, in front of us and
coming towards us, a tramping and a shuffling and a clanking that I
knew well enough for the sound of a slave-coffle on the move. I did
not lift my head; I am not curious of such sights. But presently I
heard Harry calling, and in an imperative tone that he has sometimes,
though, perhaps, you would not think it. I looked up, upon that, and
saw him supporting in his arms a miserable stripling, who was falling,
fainting, out of the coffle. Harry was hailing the slave-trader, who
brought up the rear of the train on horseback. I foresaw vexation, and
made haste. The cavalier got there first, though. By the time I came
up, he had dismounted, and Harry and he were in treaty, or at least in
debate. It was a picture! The poor wretch they were parleying over was
lying with his wasted, lead-colored face on Harry's shoulder, but was
still held by the leg to his next man, who was scowling at him as if
he thought the boy had fainted only to make the shackles bite sharper
into the sore flesh of his comrade. Harry held his prize in a way
which showed he did not mean to part with it. 'Name your price! Name
your own price!' were the first words I heard. It seemed the
slave-dealer was making difficulties. I thought he would jump at the
chance of getting rid of what was only a burden, and plainly could
never be anything else to anybody; but no; he said he could not sell
the boy, and seemed to mean it. Harry is too much used to having his
own way to give it up very easily, but I don't know whether he
would have got it this time, if I had not interfered with my
remonstrances:--
"'What are you going to do with him? Where are you going to take him?
Who's to be his nurse on the road?'
"I meant to bring Harry to his senses. I only brought the slave-dealer
to his.
"'Do you belong in this State?' asked he, growing reasonable as he saw
a reasonable man to deal with.
"'No; in Massachusetts.'
"'Do you mean to take him off there?'
"'Yes!' cried Harry, without giving me a chance to answer.
"'How soon?'
"'In a few weeks.'
"'And what will you do with him in the mean while?'
"Harry seemed now to remember that I was a party concerned. He turned
to me with a deprecating and inquiring look, but I was not prepared to
make any suggestion.
"'If you care enough about having the boy to pay part of his price in
trouble,' says the dealer, 'perhaps we may manage it. I bought him
with conditions. If I sell him to you, I make them over to you, too.
If you'll engage to take him as far as Omocqua to-day, and never bring
him, or let him be brought, within twenty miles of Tenpinville in any
direction, you shall have him for fifty dollars; that will give me
back what he's cost me. I don't want to make anything on him. I only
took him to oblige.'
"I knew by experience that there was no use in opposing Harry in
anything he had made up his mind about. I looked grim, but said
nothing. So the bargain was struck; the money was paid; the boy
unfettered. The slave-dealer moved on with his drove, leaving us his
parting words of encouragement,--
"'If he lives, he'll be worth something to you.'
"And there we were in the middle of the road, with a dying boy on our
hands.
"'_If he lives!_' Harry's look answered,--'He will live!'
"For my own part, I hoped it very little, and was not sure that I
ought to hope it at all.
"It was my turn to fume now; for Harry, as soon as he had carried his
point, was as calm as a clock. He had everything planned out. I was to
go back to Quickster and hire some sort of wagon to take our patient
to Omocqua, where Harry had promised to have him before night. I had
permission to stay at Quickster, if I chose, until he came back,--or
to go on to Tenpinville, or even to Harvey's, without him. But I had
heard, since I left Omocqua, of a remarkable cave, not five miles from
there, which had some points of interest for me. I had had half a mind
to propose to Harry to go back and see it before we met with this
adventure. So, as I must humor him at any rate, I thought it as well
to do it with a good grace. I walked off to Quickster, got my wagon,
drove back, and found our godsend asleep, with Harry watching by him
like a miser over his treasure. We lifted him into the wagon without
waking him,--he was no great weight,--and got him safe to the hotel we
had left in the morning.
"Harry, when he was making his purchase, had his wits sufficiently
about him to require the means of proving his title in case of
question. The dealer promised to set all right at Omocqua. I had
doubts whether we should meet him again; but Harry had none, and was
right. The man arrived the next morning with his convoy, found us out,
and gave Harry a regular bill of sale. Being now twenty miles from
Tenpinville, he was somewhat more communicative than he had been in
the morning. It appeared the sick boy was a great musical genius. He
could sing anything he had ever heard, and many things that never had
been heard before he sang them. He played upon the piano without any
instruction except what he had got by listening under the windows.
Indeed, he could make any instrument that was put into his hands,
after a little feeling about, do whatever he wanted of it. But he had
accidentally received a blow on the chest that had spoiled his voice,
and had so injured his health besides, that his master, a
tender-hearted man, couldn't bear to see him about. The family,
tender-hearted too, couldn't bear to see him sold. So the master, to
spare pain all round, decided that the boy should disappear silently,
and that it should be understood in the house and neighborhood that he
had been enticed away by an amateur from the North, who hoped to cure
him and make a fortune out of his talent.
"'How came the master's sensibility to take such a different turn from
that of the rest of the family?' I asked,--and drew out that the boy,
being a genius, had some of the ways of one, and was at times
excessively provoking. He had silent fits, when he would sit dreaming,
moving his lips, but making no sound. There was no use in trying to
rouse him. You might have shaken him to pieces without his soul's
giving the least sign of being in his body. Not only this, but,
sometimes, when he did sing, he wouldn't sing well, though perhaps it
was just when he was most wanted. There were people he never would
sing before, if he could help it; and when he was obliged to, he did
himself no credit. Some of his caprices of this kind were
insupportable. His master was only too indulgent; but one day, it
seems, the provocation was too much for him. In a moment of anger, he
flung the unlucky boy down the door-steps, or over a bank, or out of
the open window, I forget which. Either the push on the chest or the
shock of the fall did a harm that was not meant. The master was a good
man, and was so accounted. He reproached himself, whenever he saw the
ailing boy, and felt as if others reproached him. Better out of sight
and out of mind.
"So Harry became the owner, or, as he says, the keeper, of a fragment
of humanity distinguished from the mass by the name of Orphy: Orphy
for Orpheus, I suppose; though Harry is modest for him, and calls him
Orfano. He has splendid visions for his protégé, nevertheless. He sees
in him the very type and representative of the African. I shouldn't
wonder if he were looking forward to the rehabilitation of the race
through him. He is to be a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Bach, or, perhaps,
something beyond either. The world is to listen and be converted."
"I wish you could have brought him here," I said.
"Your house is within the twenty miles, and so is Harvey's, or we
should have taken him on there with us. But he is well off where he
is. Harry, by the aid of our innkeeper,--a Northern man, by the
way,--installed him in a comfortable home at Omocqua. We are to take
him up there on our return. We expect to be there again on the
eighteenth of next month."
"So soon?" I exclaimed; for, with the Doctor's words the pang of
parting fell on me prematurely.
"We mean to stay with you, if you want us so long, until the fifth. We
have a few excursions to make yet; but we shall guide ourselves so as
to reach Omocqua at the appointed time."
"Meet us there," cried Harry. "Meet us there in fifteen days from the
time we leave you. Let us keep the nineteenth of April there
together."
My mother, who had not hitherto taken any part in the conversation,
spoke now to express her warm approbation of the plan. This was all
that was wanting. The project was ratified. My happiness was freed
again from the alloy of insecurity which had begun to mingle with it.
The Doctor divined my feeling, and smiling pleasantly,--"Our
leave-taking will not be so hard; it will be _au revoir_, not
_adieu_."
Harry was the first to leave the breakfast-table. He had made
acquaintance with Karl and Fritz that morning, and had promised to
help them on a drag they were getting up for hauling brush. He was to
join us again in two hours, and we were to have a walk to Ludlow's
Woods.
"He has been to the post-office this morning!" cried the Doctor, as
soon as Harry was out of hearing. It was evident that my mother's
unacceptable suggestion still rested on his mind. "He has been to the
post-office: that was it! You remember he asked you last night how far
to the nearest one? The first thing he does, when he arrives in a
place, is to inquire about the means of forwarding letters."
"How he must be missed in his home!" my mother said.
"Ah, indeed! He is an only son. But, contrary to the custom of only
sons, he thinks as much of his home as his home does of him. He has
not failed to write a single day of the thirty-five we have been
travelling together. His letters cannot have been received regularly
of late; but that is no fault of ours."
"His parents must be very anxious, when he is so far from them," said
my mother.
"He knows how to take care of himself,--and of me too," the Doctor
added, laughing. "I thought that on this journey I was to have charge
of him, but it turned out quite the other way. He assumed the business
department from the first. I acquiesced, thinking he would learn
something, but expecting to be obliged to come to his aid from time to
time. I think it wrong for a man to submit to imposition. I never do.
But Harry, open-hearted and lavish,--I thought anybody could take him
in. I did not find that anybody wanted to."
"I can understand," said my mother, "that, with his trusting
disposition and his force of character together, he should always find
people do what he expects of them."
"You are right,--you are quite right."--The Doctor seldom contradicted
my mother, and very considerately when he did.--"It is not your
generous men that tempt others to overreach, but your uncertain ones.
It seems he carries about with him something of the nature of a
divining-rod, that makes men's hearts reveal what of gold they have in
them. I have known a churlish-looking fellow, who has come to his door
on purpose to warn us thirsty wayfarers off from it, soften when his
eye met Harry's, urge us in as if he were afraid of losing us, do his
best for us, and then try to refuse our money when we went away. Well,
if son of mine could bring but one talent into the world with him, let
it be that for being loved; it is worth all others put together."
"How many does it not include?" asked my mother.
"Truly, there is perhaps more justice in the world than appears on the
outside."
I found this the place to put in a little apology for Tabitha, who had
persisted in treating Harry with marked distinction, although I had
tried to remind her of the elder guest's claims to precedence by
redoubling my attentions to him.
"Oh, I'm used to it, I'm used to it," cried the Doctor, cutting short
my apologies very good-humoredly. "Wherever we go, people treat him as
if he had done them some great service, or was going to do them one.
But I find my account in his good reception. I reap the practical
advantages. And then I am something of a fool about Harry myself; so I
can hardly blame the rest of the world. Think of his drawing me into
complicity in that affair of the negro Orpheus! I made a pretence to
myself that I wanted to see a foolish cave at Egerton, just to excuse
my weakness in humoring his whims; but, in truth, by the time we were
well on the road to Omocqua, I was feeling as if the welfare of the
world depended on our getting that poor wretch safely housed there.
Well, we shall see what will come of it! I remember, when Harry was a
little boy, saying to him once, after seeing him bestow a great deal
of labor in accomplishing a work not very important in older eyes,
'Well, Harry, now what have you done, after all?' 'I have done what I
meant to do,' said the child. I am so used now to seeing Harry do what
he means to do, that even in this case I can't help looking for some
result,--though, probably, it will be one not so important in my view
as in his, nor worth all that may be spent in arriving at it. I want
to see him once fairly engaged in some steady career to which he will
give himself heart and soul, as he does give himself to what he
undertakes; then he'll have no time nor thought for these little
extravagances."
"Does Harry intend to take a profession?"
"The law, I hope. He will study it in any case. This makes part of a
plan he formed for himself years ago. He considers the study of law as
a branch of the study of history, and a necessary preparation for the
writing of history,--his dream at present. But when he once takes hold
of the law, I hope he will stick to it."
"Harry has very little the look of a student."
"Yet he has already learned
"'To scorn delights and live laborious days.'
"But he has measure in everything,--and it is something to say of a
boy of his ardent temper. He observes the balance between physical and
mental exercise. He follows the counsel Languet gave to Sir Philip
Sidney,--to 'take care of his health, and not be like one who, on a
long journey, attends to himself, but not to the horse that is to
carry him.'"
"Do his parents wish him to follow the law?" my mother asked.
"They wish whatever he does. It seems they hold their boy something
sacred, and do not dare to interfere with him. But I wish it. The law
is the threshold of public life. I want to see him in his place."
The Doctor sat smiling to himself for a little while, nodded his head
once or twice, and then, fixing his clear, cool blue eyes on my face,
said, in an emphatic voice,--"That boy will make his mark. Depend upon
it, he will make his mark in one way or another!" A shadow fell over
the eyes; the voice was lowered:--"I have only one fear for him. It is
that he may throw himself away on some fanaticism."
"How long have you known Harry Dudley?" I asked, when the pause had
lasted so long that I thought the Doctor would not begin again without
being prompted.
"All his life. Our families are connected;--not so nearly by blood;
but they have run down side by side for four or five generations. His
father and I pass for cousins. We were in college together. He was my
Senior, but I was more with him than with any of my own classmates
until he was graduated. He married very soon after, and then his house
was like a brother's to me. I went abroad after I left college, and
was gone three years. When I came back, we took things up just where
we left them. Dudley went to Europe himself afterwards with his
family, but I was backwards and forwards, so that I have never lost
sight of them. I have nobody nearer to me."
"I was surprised to learn, from what you said last evening, that
Harry had passed a good deal of time in Europe."
The Doctor turned upon me briskly. Perhaps my tone may have implied
that I was sorry to learn it.
"He has lost nothing by that. He has lost nothing by it, but that
fixed stamp of place and time that most men wear. Though I don't know
whether he would have had it at any rate: he was always himself. You
have seen some shallow fellow who has been spoiled for living at home
by a few years of sauntering and lounging about Europe. But rely on
it, he who comes back a coxcomb went out one. Never fear! Harry is as
good an American as if he had not been away,--and better. Living
abroad, he has had the simplicity to study the history of his own
country as carefully as if it had been a foreign one, not aware that
it is with us no necessary part of a polite education. As for its
institutions, he has an enthusiasm for them that I could almost envy
him while it lasts, though I know he has got to be cured of it."
"How long was he abroad?"
"More than seven years."
"Was he with his parents all the time?"
"They were near him. His home was always within reach. But he was for
several years at a large school in Paris, and again at one in
Germany. At sixteen he had done with school and took his education
into his own hands. He lived at home, but his parents did not meddle
with him, except to aid him to carry out his plans. It was a course
that would not answer with every young man, perhaps; but I don't know
that any other would have done with him. He is one to cut out his own
path. He chose not only his own studies, but, to a great extent, his
own acquaintances; took journeys when he pleased and as he pleased.
Wherever he was, with whomever, he always held his own walk straight
and firm. You would not think that boy had seen so much of the world?"
"I could have thought he had been carefully guarded from it, and
shielded almost from the very knowledge of wrong."
"He has never been kept out of danger of any kind; but it seems there
was none anywhere for him. He is now, as you say, just as much a
simple, innocent boy as if he were nothing more."
"His wings are grown, and shed off evil as the birds' do rain."
The Doctor started as this voice came from behind his chair. Tabitha,
who had disappeared as soon as her attendance on the table was no
longer needed, had reëntered unobserved, and stood, her basket of
vegetables poised on her head, absorbed in our conversation, until she
forgot herself into joining in it.
SUNDAY, April 7, 1844.
The storm which has been gathering since Friday evening came on last
night. This morning the rain pelts heavily against the windows. This
is not the Easter-Sunday I was looking forward to when I urged Harry
Dudley to stay for it. He would have been glad to stay, I know; but he
did not think it right to ask Dr. Borrow to change his plans again,
and merely for a matter of pleasure. When I addressed the Doctor
himself on the subject, he showed me a paper on which he had planned
out occupation for every day and almost for every hour of the two
weeks that were to pass before our meeting at Omocqua. I had not the
courage to remonstrate.
I am afraid we shall have none of the neighbors here to-day. But the
table is set out with all the prettiest things the house affords,
ready for the collation which is to follow the morning reading. This
is a munificence we allow ourselves at Christmas and Easter. We keep
ceremoniously and heartily the chief holy days, the religious and the
national. In your large cities, where sources of emotion and
instruction are open on every hand, where the actual day is so full
and so animated that it is conscious of wanting nothing outside of
itself, it is not strange, perhaps, that men should become careless of
these commemorations or yield them only a formal regard. Our life must
widen and enrich itself, by stretching its sympathies and claims far
beyond its material limits. We cannot forego our part in the sorrows
and joys of universal humanity.
It was a pleasure to me to find that Harry, who has lived so long in
countries where the public observance of the Christian festivals is
too marked to allow even the indifferent to overlook them, remembers
them from affection as well as by habit. When I came into the parlor,
early last Sunday morning, I saw by the branches over the windows that
he had not forgotten it was Palm-Sunday. He was sitting on the
doorstep trimming some long sprays of a beautiful vine, which he had
brought from the thicket. As soon as I appeared, he called on me to
help him twine them round the engraving of the Transfiguration. You
did right to tell me to bring that engraving down-stairs. It hangs
between the windows. I have made a simple frame for it, which answers
very well; but next winter I am going to carve out quite an elaborate
one, after an Italian pattern which Harry has sketched for me. If I
could think that you would ever see it!
Harry and I had a walk before breakfast,--the first of the early
morning walks that were afterwards our rule. He is not a great
talker. The sweet modesty of his nature retains its sway even in the
most familiar moments. He is earnest; sometimes impassioned; but never
voluble, never excited, never diffuse. What he has to say is generally
put in the form of simple and concise statement or suggestion; but he
gives, and perhaps for that very reason, a great deal to be thought
and felt in an hour.
The bouquet that Harry brought in that morning was of green of
different shades, only in the centre there were a few delicate
wood-flowers.
"Has Dr. Borrow seen these?" my mother asked, looking at them with
pleasure.
"No," the Doctor answered for himself, laying down on the window-seat
beside him the microscope with which he had been engaged. "No," he
said, with a good-humored smile; "but I know Harry's choice in
flowers. He begins to have a nice tact as to what's what, when it is a
question of helping me; but, for himself, he still likes flowers for
their looks, or sometimes, I think, for their names. His favorites are
the May-flower and the Forget-me-not. They represent for him the New
World and the Old,--that of hope, and that of memory. But he is a
friend of all wild-flowers, especially of spring wild-flowers,--and
more especially of those of New England. He loves the blood-root,
though he ought not, for it is a dissembler; it wears outwardly the
garb of peace and innocence, but, out of sight, wraps itself in the
red robes of tyranny and war."
"No," Harry answered; "red is the color of tyrants only because they
have usurped that with the rest. Red, in the old tradition, is
symbolic of Divine Love, the source of righteous power. White is the
symbol of Divine Wisdom, and is that of peace, because where this
wisdom is there must be harmony."
This talk of New-England wild-flowers, the mention of names once so
familiar, was very pleasant to me. I must have the blood-root, if it
will grow here. I could never see it again without seeing in it a
great deal more than itself. For me, the pure white of the flower will
symbolize the wisdom of God, always manifest; the red of the root, His
love, sometimes latent, yet still there.
The Doctor, having made his protest, put the microscope into its case,
and came to my mother's table to examine. When he spied the little
flowers nestled in the green, he exclaimed,--
"Where did you find these, Harry? You must have gone far for them."
"No; I found them where the old forest used to be, among the stumps."
"Waiting for a new generation of protectors to grow up about them,"
said the Doctor, looking at them kindly; "this generous climate
leaves nothing long despoiled. If Nature is let alone, she will soon
have a forest there again. But, Harry, you must take me to that spot.
We'll see what else there is to find."
"Are these flowers scarce?" Harry asked.
"They are getting to be."
"I should have shown them to you, but they are so pretty I thought
they must be common."
"Well, to do you justice, you don't often make a mistake now.--When we
first set out," continued the Doctor, turning to me, "he was always
asking me to see this beautiful flower or that superb tree; but now he
never calls my attention to anything that is not worth looking at."
"I called you to see one superb tree that you found worth looking at,"
said Harry,--"Brompton's oak at Omocqua. Colvil, when you see that
tree!"
Love of trees is one of the things that Harry and I are alike in.
"Yes, that is one of the finest specimens of the live-oak I have met
with," affirmed the Doctor.
"We will hold our meeting under it on the nineteenth," said Harry.
"Colvil, come on the afternoon of the eighteenth. Be there before
sunset."
"Harry will bespeak fine weather," said the Doctor.
"You know how Omocqua stands?" asked Harry. "It is in a plain, but a
high plain."
"I have heard that it is a beautiful place."
"It is beautiful from a distance," said the Doctor; "and when you are
in it, the distant views are beautiful. The hotel we were at,--the
Jefferson Hotel, Harry?"
"The Jackson, I believe, Doctor."
"No, the Jefferson," decided the Doctor, after a moment's thought. "We
heard the two hotels discussed at Cyclops, and decided for the
oldest."
"They are opposite each other on Union Square," said Harry, waiving
the question.
"The hotel we were at," the Doctor began again, "is on the northern
side of the town. From the field behind it, where Harry's tree stands,
the prospect is certainly very grand. Hills, mountains, to the north
and east,--and west, a fine free country, intersected by a river, and
happily varied with low, round, wooded hills, and soft meadows, and
cultivated fields. Harry drew me there almost against my will, but it
needed no force to keep me there. I had my flowers to see to. Harry
brought out my press and my portfolios, and established me in a shed
that runs out from the barn, at right angles with it, fronting west.
He found a bench there that served me for a table, and brought me a
wooden block for a seat. So there I could sit and work,--my plants
and papers sheltered from the wind,--and look up at the view when I
chose. Harry is right. Meet us there on the afternoon of the
eighteenth. I wish it as much as he does; and the sunset will be worth
seeing, if there is one."
"Come on the eighteenth," said Harry,--"and if you arrive before us,
wait for us under that tree; if after, and you do not find me at the
door, look for me there. You go through the house by the main entry,
across the court, through the great barn; the field is in front of
you, and the tree."
"Or, if you like better," said the Doctor, "you can enter by a gate on
a side-street, from which a wagon-road leads straight to my work-shed.
The street runs west of the hotel. In any case, don't fail us on the
nineteenth. We'll hold your celebration under your tree, Harry,--that
is, if Colvil agrees to it."
There was no doubt about that.
After breakfast, I went up into the study to prepare for the morning's
reading. I had intended to choose a sermon suited to Palm-Sunday; but
I happened to take down first a volume of South, and, opening on the
text, "I have called you friends," could not lay it down again. What
lesson fitter to read on that beautiful day, and in that dear company,
than this, which aids us to comprehend the inexhaustible resources of
the Divine Affection,--its forbearance, its constancy, its eager
forgiveness, beforehand even with our prayer for it,--by drawing for
us the portrait of a true, manly friendship?
I have never been able to accept the doctrine that the Great Source of
Love is jealous of His own bounty, and reproaches us for bestowing
again what He has freely bestowed. Yet, though unassenting, I feel
pain when I read in the works of pious men that a devoted regard
yielded to a mortal is an infringement of the Highest Right, and I am
grateful to the teachers who permit us to learn to love the Father
whom we have not seen by loving the brother whom we have seen. In
those seasons which happen to us all, when a shadow seems to pass
between the spirit and its sun, I have brought myself back to a full
and delighted sense of the Supreme Benignity by supposing the
generosity and tenderness of a noble human heart infinitely augmented;
and I have invigorated my trust in the promises of God, the spoken and
the implied, by calling to mind what I have known of the loyalty of
man.
Human ties wind themselves very quickly and very closely round my
heart. I cannot be brought even casually into contact with others so
nearly that I am made aware of their interests and aims, without in
some sort receiving their lives into my own,--sharing, perhaps, in
disappointments, that, in my own person, I should not have
encountered, and rejoicing in successes which would have been none to
me. But friendship is still something very different from
this,--different even from a kind and pleasant intimacy. Nor can we
create it at will. I feel deeply the truth of South's assurance, that
"it is not a human production." "A friend," he says, "is the gift of
God: He only who made hearts can unite them. For it is He who creates
those sympathies and suitablenesses of nature that are the foundation
of all true friendship, and then by His providence brings persons so
affected together."
Last Sunday was one of those days that are remembered for their own
perfection, apart from the associations that may have gathered about
them; and it seems to be one of the properties of these transcendent
seasons to come attended by all harmonious circumstances. Nothing was
wanting to last Sunday. It stands cloudless and faultless in my
memory.
Harry proposed that we should hold our services in the open air. My
mother approved. We took up her couch and carried it out to your
favorite dreaming-ground, setting it down near the old tree that goes,
for your sake, by the name of Keith's Pine. The place is not rough as
when you were here. I have had the stumps cleared away, and your pine
no longer looks so lonely, now that it seems to have been always
alone.
We brought out a bench and all the chairs in the house. We placed the
bench opposite my mother's couch, about thirty feet off. We set the
great arm-chair for the Doctor, near the head of the couch, which we
considered the place of honor. My straight-backed oak chair was put
near the foot, with my mother's little table before it for the books.
The other chairs were arranged in a semicircle on each side, with
liberal spaces. Tabitha assisted at these dispositions, and chose a
place for her own favorite willow chair close to the trunk of the
pine-tree, between it and the couch, where, as she said, she had a
full view of the congregation. I understood very well that the poor
soul had another motive, and was guarding her dignity by selecting a
distinguished and at the same time a secluded station. When she saw
that all was in order, she went back to the house to stay until the
last moment, in order to direct late comers.
Harry, at first, sat down on the grass near me; but when Karl and
Fritz came, they looked toward him, evidently divided between their
desire to be near him and their fear of presuming. Discretion
prevailed, and they took their seats on the ground at a little
distance from the bench. Harry perceived their hesitation, and saw
Hans consulting me with his eyes. He was up in a moment, brought a
chair and put it beside mine for the old man, who is getting a little
deaf, and then exchanging a smiling recognition with the boys, took
his own place near them.
Barton, the landlord of the Rapid Run, at Quickster, came that
morning. You cannot have forgotten Quickster, the pretty village with
a water-fall, which charmed you so much,--about five miles from
Tenpinville, to the north. And I hope you remember Barton, the
landlord of the inn that takes its name and its sign from the swift
little river that courses by his door. He never sees me without
inquiring after you. He shows the delights of his neighborhood always
with the same zeal. He guided the Doctor and Harry about it for an
hour or two the day they passed through Quickster, coming from
Omocqua. It was to him the Doctor had recourse, when he went back to
hire a wagon for poor Orphy. I thought at first that Barton had
forgotten the custom of our Sunday morning, and had only meant to pay
me a visit. But it was not so. He had his son with him,--Isaac Davis
Barton,--who is now ten years old, and in whom, he says, he wants to
keep a little of the New-Englander, if he can, and so shall bring him
over to our reading every fair Sunday. I did not know whether I ought
to feel pleased or not. There is no church at Quickster yet; but
there is one at Tenpinville,--two, I think. I have no doubt at all
that I have done well to invite our few neighbors, who have no chance
of hearing a good word in any other way, to listen to a chapter in the
Bible and a sermon here on Sunday. I have had evidence that some of
them have been made happier, and I almost dare to think better, by
coming. But it is another thing when there is an opportunity of
attending regular religious services. I did not think it well to
discourage Barton by telling him my scruples on this first occasion.
It would have been rather ungracious after his ten miles' ride. I like
the little boy very much, and hope we shall be good friends. I shall
feel a better right to advise by and by. Barton had a chair near Dr.
Borrow's; his son sat in front of him on the grass.
Next to Barton came an old man and his wife, who have
established themselves in one of the empty houses on the Shaler
plantation,--whether by permission or as squatters I do not know, and
nobody about here does. But as the man has a smattering of two or
three trades through which he makes himself acceptable, and the woman
some secrets in cookery and other household arts which she imparts
very readily, no umbrage is taken at them. Their name is Franket. They
have simple, honest faces, and bring nothing discordant with them.
The next place in this semicircle was filled by a man who has not a
very good name in the neighborhood. Meeting him one day, I asked him
to join us on Sundays, only because I ask all who live near enough to
come easily. I did it with a little trouble, expecting to see a sneer
on his face; but he thanked me quite civilly, and, though several
weeks passed without his taking any further notice of my invitation,
it seems he had not forgotten it. He is not an ill-looking man, when
you see him fairly. His expression is melancholy rather than morose,
as I used to think it. After this, I shall never take refusal for
granted, when I have anything to offer which I believe worth
accepting. This man's name is Winford. I assigned to him, as a
stranger, one of two remaining chairs; but he declined it, taking his
seat on the ground. The chairs were immediately after occupied by the
wife and daughter of Rufe Hantham, a man tolerated for abilities
convenient rather than useful. He is one of the class of parasites
that spring up about every large plantation. He is a hanger-on of the
Westlake estate, which lies just beyond Shaler's, between that and
Tenpinville. The wife is a poor little woman, whose face wears an
habitual expression of entreaty. It is the daughter who brings her, I
think. This young girl, of fifteen or less, has a look of thought and
determination, as if she held in her mind some clearly formed plan
which she will carry out to the end, towards which her coming here is
possibly one of the first steps. She keeps her eyes fixed on the
ground, but evidently is listening intently,--committing, as it seems,
everything she hears to a memory that never lets go what it has once
taken hold of. They have been twice before. When the reading is over,
the mother looks as if she would like to have a little chat with
somebody; but the daughter holds her in check with hand and eye,--not
unkindly, but effectually. They wait until some one sets the example
of going, and then follow quickly and silently. We have made no
attempt to invade a reserve which seems deliberate.
Harvey's plantation is on the other side of Tenpinville, more than
eighteen miles from us; but it had a representative here, in young
Lenox, one of the sons of the overseer. He came for the first time. He
sat in the opposite semicircle, next to Harry, with whom he was
already acquainted. The chairs on that side were occupied by the
Segrufs and Blantys, respectable neighbors, whom you may remember.
Another new-comer was a little boy whom we met in our morning walk,
and who joined himself to us at once with a confidence which was very
pleasant. Harry took a great fancy to him. I asked him to come to us
at ten, hardly hoping he would accept; but he did, eagerly. He does
not belong to our part of the world. He is the son of a carpenter who
has work here for a few months. I was glad to see him come in, and
another little fellow whose father has brought him once or twice, but
who has not been alone before. The father is not often well enough to
come.
There are one or two persons whom I am always glad _not_ to see; and
that morning my wishes were answered in those who came and in those
who stayed away. Of these last is Phil Phinn, who thinks to make up
for the time of mine he uses in the adjustment of his neighborly
differences by devoting an hour of his own, once in two or three
weeks, to the penance of listening to me. I could well spare his
vacant solemnity that day. His absence was of good augury, too, for he
is strict in attendance when an occasion for mediation is imminent.
At ten o'clock precisely we heard the great bell rung by Tabitha, who
until then kept watch at the house. While it was ringing, a family
came in of which I must speak more particularly, because I feel
already that I shall speak of it often. This family has only recently
arrived in the neighborhood. The father, I think, is Southern born;
the mother must be from the North. They brought all their children,
down to the baby, three years old, that listened with all its eyes, as
the rest with all their hearts. They had been here only twice before;
but the perfect unity of this little family, which seemed always
influenced by one feeling, moved by one will, the anxious watchfulness
of the parents, the close dependence of the children, had already
greatly interested me. This man and woman have certainly known more
prosperous, if not better days. The lines of their faces, their whole
bearing, tell of successive reverses, worthily, though not resolutely
borne,--of a down-hill path long trodden by patient, but unresisting
feet. There are no signs of struggle against adverse fortune. But, in
such a struggle, how often do the charm and joy of life perish, torn
and trampled by their very rescuers! These people have maintained
their equanimity, if not their cheerfulness. They have no reproaches
for themselves or each other. The bench was for this family. The
father, the mother with the baby in her lap, the daughter, and the
second son filled it; the eldest sat at his mother's feet, and, when
he was particularly moved or pleased by anything that was read, looked
up to her to see if he was right. A great gravity held the whole
group,--deepest on the elder faces, and gradually shading off into
the undue tranquillity of the infantile look.
When Tabitha came, she brought the little white vase with Harry's
flowers, and put it on the table, where, indeed, it ought to have
been.
I seldom read the whole of a sermon. I like to keep more time for the
Bible. And then I omit those passages which I foresee might provoke
questions which I should not dare to assume the responsibility of
answering. I do not presume to take upon myself the office of
religious teacher. I only strive, in the absence of one, to keep alive
in myself and those near me a constant sense of God's presence and
care, and of the bond which, uniting us to Him, unites us to each
other. This I do by reading the words of those who have had this sense
most strongly and have expressed it most vividly.
Of the sermon I had chosen I read the first paragraph, and then,
turning over nine pages, began with the Privileges of Friendship. I do
not know whether this discourse of South's is to others what it is to
me. Perhaps there is something in it particularly adapted to my
needs,--or perhaps it is because it came to me first at a time when I
was very eager for the assurances it gives; but I never read it
without feeling a new inflow of peace and security. At least some of
those who heard it with me that day felt with me. Harry I was sure of
beforehand. When we broke up, and I went forward to speak to the
strangers on the bench, it seemed to me that their anxieties were
soothed by something softer than patience. An indefinable change had
passed over the whole family. They all seemed lightened of a part of
the habitual burden. I took them up to my mother. She asked them to be
sure and come on Easter Sunday; they accepted in earnest; but with
their poor little wagon and poor old mule they will hardly encounter
the rain and the mud to-day.
I was so intent on my letter, that I forgot the weather, until,
writing the word _rain_, I looked towards the window. It does not
rain, and has apparently held up for some time. And now I hear a
racket in the road, and a stumping, that can come only from the poor
little wagon and the poor old mule.