Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Come, now, Anne, confess that wasn’t all Dulcimer’s work!” said Clayton.

  “Well, to tell the truth,” said Anne, “’twas got up between him and Lettice, who has a natural turn for versifying, quite extraordinary. If I chose to encourage and push her on, she might turn out a second Phillis Wheatley.”

  Dulcimer and his coadjutors now came round, bearing trays with lemonade, cake, sliced pineapples, and some other fruits.

  “Well, on my word,” said Russel, “this is quite prettily got up!”

  “Oh, I think,” said Clayton, “the African race evidently are made to excel in that department which lies between the sensuous and the intellectual — what we call the elegant arts. These require rich and abundant animal nature, such as they possess; and if ever they become highly civilized, they will excel in music, dancing, and elocution.”

  “I have often noticed,” said Anne, “in my scholars, how readily they seize upon anything which pertains to the department of music and language. The negroes are sometimes laughed at for mispronouncing words, which they will do in a very droll manner; but it’s only because they are so taken with the sounds of words that they will try to pronounce beyond the sphere of their understanding, like bright children.”

  “Some of these voices here are perfectly splendid,” said Russel.

  “Yes,” said Anne, “we have one or two girls on the place who have that rich contralto voice which, I think, is oftener to be found among them than among whites.”

  “The Ethiopian race is a slow-growing plant, like the aloe,” said Clayton; “but I hope, some of these days, they’ll come into flower; and I think, if they ever do, the blossoming will be gorgeous.”

  “That will do for a poet’s expectation,” said Russel.

  The performance now gave place to a regular dancing-party, which went on with great animation, yet decorum.

  “Religious people,” said Clayton, “who have instructed the negroes, I think have wasted a great deal of their energy in persuading them to give up dancing and singing songs. I try to regulate the propensity. There is no use in trying to make the negroes into Anglo-Saxons any more than making a grapevine into a pear-tree. I train the grapevine.”

  “Behold,” said Russel, “the successful champion of negro rights!”

  “Not so very successful,” said Clayton. “I suppose you’ve heard my case has been appealed; so that my victory isn’t so certain, after all.”

  “Oh,” said Nina, “yes, it must be! I’m sure no person of common sense would decide any other way; and your own father is one of the judges, too.”

  “That will only make him the more careful not to be influenced in my favor,” said Clayton.

  The dancing now broke up, and the servants dispersed in an orderly manner, and the company returned to the veranda, which lay pleasantly checkered with the light of the moon falling through trailing vines. The air was full of those occasional pulsations of fragrance which rise in the evening from flowers.

  “Oh, how delightful,” said Nina, “this fragrance of the honeysuckles! I have a perfect passion for perfumes! They seem to me like spirits in the air.”

  “Yes,” said Clayton, “Lord Bacon says, ‘that the breath of flowers comes and goes in the air, like the warbling of music.’”

  “Did Lord Bacon say that?” said Nina in a tone of surprise.

  “Yes; why not?” said Clayton.

  “Oh, I thought he was one of those musty old philosophers who never thought of anything pretty!”

  “Well,” said Clayton, “then to-morrow let me read you his essay on gardens, and you’ll find musty old philosophers often do think of pretty things.”

  “It was Lord Bacon,” said Anne, “who always wanted musicians playing in the next room while he was composing.”

  “He did?” said Nina. “Why, how delightful of him! I think I should like to hear some of his essays.”

  “There are some minds,” said Clayton, “large enough to take in everything. Such men can talk as prettily of a ring on a lady’s finger as they can wisely on the courses of the planets. Nothing escapes them.”

  “That’s the kind of man you ought to have for a lover, Anne,” said Nina, laughing; “you have weight enough to risk it. I’m such a little whisk of thistledown that it would annihilate me. Such a ponderous weight of wisdom attached to me would drag me under water, and drown me. I should let go my line, I think, if I felt such a fish bite.”

  “You are tolerably safe in our times,” said Clayton. “Nature only sends such men once in a century or two. They are the road-makers for the rest of the world. They are quarry-masters, that quarry out marble enough for a generation to work up.”

  “Well,” said Nina, “I shouldn’t want to be a quarry-master’s wife. I should be afraid that some of his blocks would fall on me.”

  “Why, wouldn’t you like it, if he were wholly your slave?” said Frank Russel. “It would be like having the genius of the lamp at your feet.”

  “Ah,” said Nina, “if I could keep him my slave; but I’m afraid he’d outwit me at last. Such a man would soon put me up on a shelf for a book read through. I’ve seen some great men, — I mean great for our times, — and they didn’t seem to care half as much for their wives as they did for a newspaper.”

  “Oh,” said Anne, “that’s past praying for, with any husband. The newspaper is the standing rival of the American lady. It must be a warm lover that can be attracted from that, even before he is secure of his prize.”

  “You are severe, Miss Anne,” said Russel.

  “She only speaks the truth. You men are a bad set,” said Nina. “You are a kind of necessary evil, half civilized at best. But if ever I set up an establishment, I shall insist upon taking precedence of the newspaper.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  TIFF’S GARDEN

  WOULD the limits of our story admit of it, we should gladly linger many days in the shady precincts of Magnolia Grove, where Clayton and Nina remained some days longer, and where the hours flew by on flowery feet; but the inevitable time and tide, which wait for no man, wait not for the narrator. We must therefore say, in brief, that when the visit was concluded Clayton accompanied Nina once more to Canema, and returned to the circle of his own duties.

  Nina returned to her own estate, with views somewhat chastened and modified by her acquaintance with Anne. As Clayton supposed, the influence of a real noble purpose in life had proved of more weight than exhortations, and she began to feel within herself positive aspirations for some more noble and worthy life than she had heretofore led. That great, absorbing feeling which determines the whole destiny of woman’s existence is in its own nature an elevating and purifying one. It is such even when placed on an unworthy object, and much more so when the object is a worthy one. Since the first of their friendship, Clayton had never officiously sought to interfere with the growth and development of Nina’s moral nature. He had sufficient sagacity to perceive that, unconsciously to herself, a deeper power of feeling, and a wider range of thought, was opening within her; and he left the development of it to the same quiet forces which swell the rosebud and guide the climbing path of the vine. Simply and absolutely he lived his own life before her, and let hers alone; and the power of his life therefore became absolute.

  A few mornings after her return, she thought that she would go out and inquire after the welfare of our old friend Tiff. It was a hazy, warm, bright summer morning, and all things lay in that dreamy stillness, that trance of voluptuous rest, which precedes the approach of the fiercer heats of the day. Since her absence there had been evident improvement in Tiff’s affairs. The baby, a hearty, handsome little fellow, by dint of good nursing, pork-sucking, and lying outdoors in the tending of breezes and zephyrs, had grown to be a creeping creature, and followed Tiff around, in his garden ministrations, with unintelligible chatterings of delight.

  At the moment when Nina rode up Tiff was busy with his morning work in the garden. His appearance, it is to be c
onfessed, was somewhat peculiar. He usually wore, in compliment to his nursing duties, an apron in front; but as his various avocations pressed hard upon his time, and as his own personal outfit was ever the last to be attended to, Tiff’s nether garments had shown traces of that frailty which is incident to all human things.

  “Bress me,” he said to himself, that morning, as he with difficulty engineered his way into them, “holes here, and holes dar! Don’t want but two holes in my breeches, and I’s got two dozen! Got my foot through de wrong place! Por old Tiff! Laws-a-massy! wish I could get hold of some of dem dar clothes dey were telling ‘bout at de camp-meeting, dey wore forty years in de wilderness!’Mazing handy dem ar times was! Well, anyhow, I’ll tie an apron behind, and another in front. Bress de Lord, I’s got aprons, anyhow! I must make up a par of breeches, some of dese yer days, when de baby’s teeth is all through, and Teddy’s clothes don’t want no mending, and de washing is done, and dese yer weeds stops a-growing in de garden. Bress if I know what de Lord want of so many weeds ‘Pears like dey comes just to plague us; but den, we doesn’t know. Maybe dere’s some good in ‘em. We doesn’t know but a leetle, noway.”

  Tiff was sitting on the ground weeding one of his garden-beds, when he was surprised by the apparition of Nina on horseback coming up to the gate. Here was a dilemma, to be sure! No cavalier had a more absolute conception of the nature of politeness, and the claims of beauty, rank, and fashion, than Tiff. Then, to be caught sitting on the ground, with a blue apron on in front and a red one on behind, was an appalling dilemma! However, as our readers may have discovered, Tiff had that essential requisite of good breeding, the moral courage to face an exigency; and wisely considering that a want of cordiality is a greater deficiency than the want of costume, he rose up, without delay, and hastened to the gate to acknowledge the honor.

  “Lord bress yer sweet face, Miss Nina!” he said, while the breezes flapped and fluttered his red and blue sails, “Old Tiff’s ‘mazin’ happy to see you. Miss Fanny’s well, thank ye; and Mas’r Teddy and the baby all doing nicely. Bress de Lord, Miss Nina, be so good as to get down and come in. I’s got some nice berries dat I picked in de swamp, and Miss Fanny’ll be proud to have you take some. You see,” he said, laughing heartily, and regarding his peculiar costume, “I wasn’t looking for any quality long dis yer time o’ day, so I just got on my old clothes.”

  “Why, Uncle Tiff, I think they become you immensely!” said Nina. “Your outfit is really original and picturesque. You ‘re not one of the people that are ashamed of their work, are you, Uncle Tiff? So if you just lead my horse to that stump, I’ll get down.”

  “Laws, no, Miss Nina!” said Tiff, as with alacrity he obeyed her orders. “Spects, if Old Tiff was ‘shamed of work, he’d have a heap to be ‘shamed of; ‘cause it’s pretty much all work with him. ‘T is so!”

  “Tomtit pretended to come with me,” said Nina, as she looked round; “but he lagged behind by the brook to get some of those green grapes, and I suspect it’s the last I shall see of him. So, Tiff, if you please to tie Sylphine in the shade, I’ll go in to see Miss Fanny.”

  And Nina tripped lightly up the walk, now bordered on either side by china asters and marigolds, to where Fanny was standing bashfully in the door waiting for her. In her own native woods this child was one of the boldest, freest, and happiest of romps. There was scarce an eligible tree which she could not climb, or a thicket she had not explored. She was familiar with every flower, every bird, every butterfly, of the vicinity. She knew precisely when every kind of fruit would ripen, and flower would blossom; and was so au fait in the language of birds and squirrels, that she might almost have been considered one of the fraternity. Her only companion and attendant, Old Tiff, had that quaint, fanciful, grotesque nature which is the furthest possible removed from vulgarity; and his frequent lectures on proprieties and conventionalities, his long and prolix narrations of her ancestral glories and distinctions, had succeeded in infusing into her a sort of childish consciousness of dignity, while at the same time it inspired her with a bashful awe of those whom she saw surrounded with the actual insignia and circumstances of position and fortune. After all, Tiff’s method of education, instinctive as it was, was highly philosophical, since a certain degree of selfrespect is the nurse of many virtues, and a shield from many temptations. There is also something, perhaps, in the influence of descent. Fanny certainly inherited from her mother a more delicate organization than generally attends her apparent station in life. She had, also, what perhaps belongs to the sex, a capability of receiving the mysteries and proprieties of dress; and Nina, as she stood on the threshold of the single low room, could not hut he struck with the general air of refinement which characterized both it and its little mistress. There were flowers from the swamps and hedges arranged with care and taste; feathers of birds, strings of eggs of different colors, dried grasses, and various little woodland curiosities, which showed a taste refined by daily intercourse with nature. Fanny herself was arrayed in a very pretty” print dress, which her father had brought home in a recent visit, with a cape of white muslin. Her brown hair was brushed smoothly from her forehead, and her clear blue eyes, and fair, rosy complexion, gave her a pleasing air of intelligence and refinement.

  “Thank you,” said Nina, as Fanny offered her the only chair the establishment afforded; “but I’m going with Tiff out in the garden. I never can bear to be in the house such days as this. You didn’t expect me over so early, Uncle Tiff; but I took a notable turn, this morning, and routed them up to an early breakfast, on purpose that I might have time to get over here before the heat came on. It’s pleasant out here, now the shadow of the woods falls across the garden so. How beautifully those trees wave! Tiff, go on with your work — never mind me.”

  “Yes, Miss Nina, it’s mighty pleasant. Why, I was out in dis yer garden at four o’clock dis morning, and ‘peared like dese yer trees was waving like a psalm, so sort o’ still, you know! Kind o’ spreading out der hands like dey’d have prayers; and dere was a mighty handsome star a-looking down. I spects dat ar star is one of de very oldest families up dar.”

  “Most likely,” said Nina cheerily. “They call it Venus, the star of love, Uncle TifF; and I believe that is a very old family.”

  “Love is a mighty good ting, anyhow,” said Tiff.

  “Lord bress you, Miss Nina, it makes everyting go kind o’ easy. Sometimes, when I’m studding upon dese yer tings, I says to myself, ‘pears like de trees in de wood, dey loves each oder. Dey stands kind o’ locking arms so, and dey kind o’ nod der heads, and whispers so!’Pears like de grapevines, and de birds, and all dem ar tings, dey lives comfortable togeder, like dey was peaceable, and liked each oder. Now, folks is apt to get a-stewin’ and a-frettin’ round, and turning up der noses at dis yer ting, and dat ar; but ‘pears like de Lord’s works takes everyting mighty easy. Dey just kind o’ lives along peaceable. I tink it’s mighty ‘structive!”

  “Certainly it is,” said Nina. “Old Mother Nature is an excellent manager, and always goes on making the best of everything.”

  “Dere’s heaps done dat ar way, and no noise,” said Tiff. “Why, Miss Nina, I studies upon dat ar out here in my garden. Why, look at dat ar corn, way up over your head, now! All dat ar growed dis yer summer. No noise ‘bout it—’pears like nobody couldn’t see when ‘t was done. Dey were telling us in camp-meeting how de Lord created de heaven and de earth. Now, Miss Nina, Tiff has his own thoughts, you know; and Tiff says ‘pears like de Lord is creating de heaven and de earth all de time.’Pears like you can see Him a-doing of it right afore your face; and dem growing tings are so curus! Miss Nina, ‘pears for all de world like as if dey was critters!’Pears like each of ’em has der own way, and won’t go no oder! Dese yer beans, dey will come up so curus right top o’ de stalks; dey will turn round de pole one way, and if you was to tie ‘em, you couldn’t make ’em go round t’oder! Dey’s set in der own way — dey is, for all dey’s so still ‘bout it! Laws, Mis
s Nina, dese yer tings makes Tiff laugh — does so!” he said, sitting down, and indulging in one of his fits of merriment.

  “You are quite a philosopher, Tiff,” said Nina.

  “Laws, Miss Nina, I hopes not!” said Tiff solemnly; “‘cause one of de preachers at de camp-meeting used up dem folk terrible, I tell you! Dat ar pretty much all I could make out of de sermon, dat people mustn’t be ‘losophers! Laws, Miss Nina, I hope I ain’t no sich!”

  “Oh, I mean the good kind, Uncle Tiff. But how were you pleased, upon the whole, at the camp-meeting?” said Nina.

  “Well,” said Tiff, “Miss Nina, I hope I got something —— I don’t know fa’rly how much ’tis. But, Miss Nina, it ‘pears like as if you had come out here to instruct us ‘bout dese yer tings. Miss Fanny, she don’t read very well yet, and ‘pears like if you could read us some out of de Bible, and teach us how to be Christians” —

  “Why, Tiff, I scarcely know how myself!” said Nina. “I’ll send Milly to talk to you. She is a real good Christian.”

  “Milly is a very nice woman,” said Tiff, somewhat doubtfully; “but, Miss Nina, ‘pears like I would rather have white teaching; ‘pears like I would rather have you, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “Oh no, Uncle Tiff! If you want to hear me read, I’ll read to you now,” said Nina. “Have you got a Bible, here? Stay; I’ll sit down. I’ll take the chair and sit down in the shade, and then you needn’t stop your work.”

  Tiff hurried into the house to call Fanny; produced a copy of a Testament, which, with much coaxing, he had persuaded Cripps to bring on his last visit; and while Fanny sat at her feet making larkspur rings, Nina turned over the pages, to think what to read. When she saw Tiff’s earnest and eager attention, her heart smote her to think that the book so valuable in his eyes was to her almost an unread volume.