Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “There don’t nobody see these ‘ere things unless they’s effectually called,” said Miss Roxy, “and the Cap’n’s time ain’t come.”

  “It’s gettin’ to be t’ward the eleventh hour,” said Mrs. Kittridge, “as I was a-tellin’ him this afternoon.”

  “Well,” said Miss Roxy, “you know

  “‘While the lamp holds out to burn,

  The vilest sinner may return.’”

  “Yes, I know that,” said Mrs. Kittridge, rising and taking up the candle. “Don’t you think, Aunt Roxy, we may as well give a look in there at the corpse?”

  It was past midnight as they went together into the keeping-room. All was so still that the clash of the rising tide and the ticking of the clock assumed that solemn and mournful distinctness which even tones less impressive take on in the night-watches. Miss Roxy went mechanically through with certain arrangements of the white drapery around the cold sleeper, and uncovering the face and bust for a moment, looked critically at the still, unconscious countenance.

  “Not one thing to let us know who or what she is,” she said; “that boy, if he lives, would give a good deal to know, some day.”

  “What is it one’s duty to do about this bracelet?” said Mrs. Kittridge, taking from a drawer the article in question, which had been found on the beach in the morning.

  “Well, I s’pose it belongs to the child, whatever it’s worth,” said Miss Roxy.

  “Then if the Pennels conclude to take him, I may as well give it to them,” said Mrs. Kittridge, laying it back in the drawer.

  Miss Roxy folded the cloth back over the face, and the two went out into the kitchen. The fire had sunk low — the crickets were chirruping gleefully. Mrs. Kittridge added more wood, and put on the tea-kettle that their watching might be refreshed by the aid of its talkative and inspiring beverage. The two solemn, hard-visaged women drew up to each other by the fire, and insensibly their very voices assumed a tone of drowsy and confidential mystery.

  “If this ‘ere poor woman was hopefully pious, and could see what was goin’ on here,” said Mrs. Kittridge, “it would seem to be a comfort to her that her child has fallen into such good hands. It seems a’most a pity she couldn’t know it.”

  “How do you know she don’t?” said Miss Roxy, brusquely.

  “Why, you know the hymn,” said Mrs. Kittridge, quoting those somewhat saddusaical lines from the popular psalm-book: —

  “‘The living know that they must die,

  But all the dead forgotten lie —

  Their memory and their senses gone,

  Alike unknowing and unknown.’”

  “Well, I don’t know ‘bout that,” said Miss Roxy, flavoring her cup of tea; “hymn-book ain’t Scriptur’, and I’m pretty sure that ar ain’t true always;” and she nodded her head as if she could say more if she chose.

  Now Miss Roxy’s reputation of vast experience in all the facts relating to those last fateful hours, which are the only certain event in every human existence, caused her to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle in such matters, and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of the latent superstition to which each human heart must confess at some hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and asked if she had anything particular on her mind.

  “Well, Mis’ Kittridge,” said Miss Roxy, “I ain’t one of the sort as likes to make a talk of what I’ve seen, but mebbe if I was, I’ve seen some things as remarkable as anybody. I tell you, Mis’ Kittridge, folks don’t tend the sick and dyin’ bed year in and out, at all hours, day and night, and not see some remarkable things; that’s my opinion.”

  “Well, Miss Roxy, did you ever see a sperit?”

  “I won’t say as I have, and I won’t say as I haven’t,” said Miss Roxy; “only as I have seen some remarkable things.”

  There was a pause, in which Mrs. Kittridge stirred her tea, looking intensely curious, while the old kitchen-clock seemed to tick with one of those fits of loud insistence which seem to take clocks at times when all is still, as if they had something that they were getting ready to say pretty soon, if nobody else spoke.

  But Miss Roxy evidently had something to say, and so she began: —

  “Mis’ Kittridge, this ‘ere’s a very particular subject to be talkin’ of. I’ve had opportunities to observe that most haven’t, and I don’t care if I jist say to you, that I’m pretty sure spirits that has left the body do come to their friends sometimes.”

  The clock ticked with still more empressement, and Mrs. Kittridge glared through the horn bows of her glasses with eyes of eager curiosity.

  “Now, you remember Cap’n Titcomb’s wife, that died fifteen years ago when her husband had gone to Archangel; and you remember that he took her son John out with him — and of all her boys, John was the one she was particular sot on.”

  “Yes, and John died at Archangel; I remember that.”

  “Jes’ so,” said Miss Roxy, laying her hand on Mrs. Kittridge’s; “he died at Archangel the very day his mother died, and jist the hour, for the Cap’n had it down in his log-book.”

  “You don’t say so!”

  “Yes, I do. Well, now,” said Miss Roxy, sinking her voice, “this ‘ere was remarkable. Mis’ Titcomb was one of the fearful sort, tho’ one of the best women that ever lived. Our minister used to call her ‘Mis’ Muchafraid’ — you know, in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ — but he was satisfied with her evidences, and told her so; she used to say she was ‘afraid of the dark valley,’ and she told our minister so when he went out, that ar last day he called; and his last words, as he stood with his hand on the knob of the door, was ‘Mis’ Titcomb, the Lord will find ways to bring you thro’ the dark valley.’ Well, she sunk away about three o’clock in the morning. I remember the time, ‘cause the Cap’n’s chronometer watch that he left with her lay on the stand for her to take her drops by. I heard her kind o’ restless, and I went up, and I saw she was struck with death, and she looked sort o’ anxious and distressed.

  “‘Oh, Aunt Roxy,’ says she, ‘it’s so dark, who will go with me?’ and in a minute her whole face brightened up, and says she, ‘John is going with me,’ and she jist gave the least little sigh and never breathed no more — she jist died as easy as a bird. I told our minister of it next morning, and he asked if I’d made a note of the hour, and I told him I had, and says he, ‘You did right, Aunt Roxy.’”

  “What did he seem to think of it?”

  “Well, he didn’t seem inclined to speak freely. ‘Miss Roxy,’ says he, ‘all natur’s in the Lord’s hands, and there’s no saying why he uses this or that; them that’s strong enough to go by faith, he lets ‘em, but there’s no saying what he won’t do for the weak ones.’”

  “Wa’n’t the Cap’n overcome when you told him?” said Mrs. Kittridge.

  “Indeed he was; he was jist as white as a sheet.”

  Miss Roxy now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across it, and inquired, —

  “Mis’ Kittridge, do you remember that ar Mr. Wadkins that come to Brunswick twenty years ago, in President Averill’s days?”

  “Yes, I remember the pale, thin, long-nosed gentleman that used to sit in President Averill’s pew at church. Nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. The college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw. Nobody knew who he was but the President, ‘cause he could speak all the foreign tongues — one about as well as another; but the President he knew his story, and said he was a good man, and he used to stay to the sacrament regular, I remember.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Roxy, “he used to live in a room all alone, and keep himself. Folks said he was quite a gentleman, too, and fond of reading.”

  “I heard Cap’n Atkins tell,” said Mrs. Kittridge, “how they came to take him up on the shores of Holland. You see, when he was somewhere in a port in Denmark, some men come to him and offered him a pretty good sum of money if he’d be at such a pla
ce on the coast of Holland on such a day, and take whoever should come. So the Cap’n he went, and sure enough on that day there come a troop of men on horseback down to the beach with this man, and they all bid him good-by, and seemed to make much of him, but he never told ’em nothin’ on board ship, only he seemed kind o’ sad and pinin’.”

  “Well,” said Miss Roxy; “Ruey and I we took care o’ that man in his last sickness, and we watched with him the night he died, and there was something quite remarkable.”

  “Do tell now,” said Mrs. Kittridge.

  “Well, you see,” said Miss Roxy, “he’d been low and poorly all day, kind o’ tossin’ and restless, and a little light-headed, and the Doctor said he thought he wouldn’t last till morning, and so Ruey and I we set up with him, and between twelve and one Ruey said she thought she’d jist lop down a few minutes on the old sofa at the foot of the bed, and I made me a cup of tea like as I’m a-doin’ now, and set with my back to him.”

  “Well?” said Mrs. Kittridge, eagerly.

  “Well, you see he kept a-tossin’ and throwin’ off the clothes, and I kept a-gettin’ up to straighten ‘em; and once he threw out his arms, and something bright fell out on to the pillow, and I went and looked, and it was a likeness that he wore by a ribbon round his neck. It was a woman — a real handsome one — and she had on a low-necked black dress, of the cut they used to call Marie Louise, and she had a string of pearls round her neck, and her hair curled with pearls in it, and very wide blue eyes. Well, you see, I didn’t look but a minute before he seemed to wake up, and he caught at it and hid it in his clothes. Well, I went and sat down, and I grew kind o’ sleepy over the fire; but pretty soon I heard him speak out very clear, and kind o’ surprised, in a tongue I didn’t understand, and I looked round.”

  Miss Roxy here made a pause, and put another lump of sugar into her tea.

  “Well?” said Mrs. Kittridge, ready to burst with curiosity.

  “Well, now, I don’t like to tell about these ‘ere things, and you mustn’t never speak about it; but as sure as you live, Polly Kittridge, I see that ar very woman standin’ at the back of the bed, right in the partin’ of the curtains, jist as she looked in the pictur’ — blue eyes and curly hair and pearls on her neck, and black dress.”

  “What did you do?” said Mrs. Kittridge.

  “Do? Why, I jist held my breath and looked, and in a minute it kind o’ faded away, and I got up and went to the bed, but the man was gone. He lay there with the pleasantest smile on his face that ever you see; and I woke up Ruey, and told her about it.”

  Mrs. Kittridge drew a long breath. “What do you think it was?”

  “Well,” said Miss Roxy, “I know what I think, but I don’t think best to tell. I told Doctor Meritts, and he said there were more things in heaven and earth than folks knew about — and so I think.”

  Meanwhile, on this same evening, the little Mara frisked like a household fairy round the hearth of Zephaniah Pennel.

  The boy was a strong-limbed, merry-hearted little urchin, and did full justice to the abundant hospitalities of Mrs. Pennel’s tea-table; and after supper little Mara employed herself in bringing apronful after apronful of her choicest treasures, and laying them down at his feet. His great black eyes flashed with pleasure, and he gamboled about the hearth with his new playmate in perfect forgetfulness, apparently, of all the past night of fear and anguish.

  When the great family Bible was brought out for prayers, and little Mara composed herself on a low stool by her grandmother’s side, he, however, did not conduct himself as a babe of grace. He resisted all Miss Ruey’s efforts to make him sit down beside her, and stood staring with his great, black, irreverent eyes during the Bible-reading, and laughed out in the most inappropriate manner when the psalm-singing began, and seemed disposed to mingle incoherent remarks of his own even in the prayers.

  “This is a pretty self-willed youngster,” said Miss Ruey, as they rose from the exercises, “and I shouldn’t think he’d been used to religious privileges.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Zephaniah Pennel; “but who can say but what this providence is a message of the Lord to us — such as Pharaoh’s daughter sent about Moses, ‘Take this child, and bring him up for me’?”

  “I’d like to take him, if I thought I was capable,” said Mrs. Pennel, timidly. “It seems a real providence to give Mara some company; the poor child pines so for want of it.”

  “Well, then, Mary, if you say so, we will bring him up with our little Mara,” said Zephaniah, drawing the child toward him. “May the Lord bless him!” he added, laying his great brown hands on the shining black curls of the child.

  CHAPTER IX

  MOSES

  Sunday morning rose clear and bright on Harpswell Bay. The whole sea was a waveless, blue looking-glass, streaked with bands of white, and flecked with sailing cloud-shadows from the skies above. Orr’s Island, with its blue-black spruces, its silver firs, its golden larches, its scarlet sumachs, lay on the bosom of the deep like a great many-colored gem on an enchanted mirror. A vague, dreamlike sense of rest and Sabbath stillness seemed to brood in the air. The very spruce-trees seemed to know that it was Sunday, and to point solemnly upward with their dusky fingers; and the small tide-waves that chased each other up on the shelly beach, or broke against projecting rocks, seemed to do it with a chastened decorum, as if each blue-haired wave whispered to his brother, “Be still — be still.”

  Yes, Sunday it was along all the beautiful shores of Maine — netted in green and azure by its thousand islands, all glorious with their majestic pines, all musical and silvery with the caresses of the sea-waves, that loved to wander and lose themselves in their numberless shelly coves and tiny beaches among their cedar shadows.

  Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a weary endurance, came the shadow of that Puritan Sabbath. It brought with it all the sweetness that belongs to rest, all the sacredness that hallows home, all the memories of patient thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense family feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity which distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a solemn pause in all the sights and sounds of earth. And he whose moral nature was not yet enough developed to fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely instructed by his weariness into the secret of his own spiritual poverty.

  Zephaniah Pennel, in his best Sunday clothes, with his hard visage glowing with a sort of interior tenderness, ministered this morning at his family-altar — one of those thousand priests of God’s ordaining that tend the sacred fire in as many families of New England. He had risen with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and came in with his mind softened and glowing. The trance-like calm of earth and sea found a solemn answer with him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores of the Mediterranean, ages ago: “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind. The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are her house. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all.”

  Ages ago the cedars that the poet saw have rotted into dust, and from their cones have risen generations of others, wide-winged and grand. But the words of that poet have been wafted like seed to our days, and sprung up in flowers of trust and faith in a thousand households.

  “Well, now,” said Miss Ruey, when the morning rite was over, “Mis’ Pennel, I s’pose you and the Cap’n will be wantin’ to go to the meetin’, so don’t you gin yourse’ves a mite of trouble about the children, for I’ll stay at home with ‘em. The little feller was starty and fretful in his sleep last night, and didn’t seem to be quite well.”

  “No wonder, poor dear,” said Mrs. Pennel; “it�
�s a wonder children can forget as they do.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Ruey; “you know them lines in the ‘English Reader,’ —

  ‘Gay hope is theirs by fancy led,

  Least pleasing when possessed;

  The tear forgot as soon as shed,

  The sunshine of the breast.’

  Them lines all’ys seemed to me affectin’.”

  Miss Ruey’s sentiment was here interrupted by a loud cry from the bedroom, and something between a sneeze and a howl.

  “Massy! what is that ar young un up to!” she exclaimed, rushing into the adjoining bedroom.

  There stood the young Master Hopeful of our story, with streaming eyes and much-bedaubed face, having just, after much labor, succeeded in making Miss Ruey’s snuff-box fly open, which he did with such force as to send the contents in a perfect cloud into eyes, nose, and mouth. The scene of struggling and confusion that ensued cannot be described. The washings, and wipings, and sobbings, and exhortings, and the sympathetic sobs of the little Mara, formed a small tempest for the time being that was rather appalling.

  “Well, this ‘ere’s a youngster that’s a-goin’ to make work,” said Miss Ruey, when all things were tolerably restored. “Seems to make himself at home first thing.”

  “Poor little dear,” said Mrs. Pennel, in the excess of loving-kindness, “I hope he will; he’s welcome, I’m sure.”

  “Not to my snuff-box,” said Miss Ruey, who had felt herself attacked in a very tender point.

  “He’s got the notion of lookin’ into things pretty early,” said Captain Pennel, with an indulgent smile.

  “Well, Aunt Ruey,” said Mrs. Pennel, when this disturbance was somewhat abated, “I feel kind o’ sorry to deprive you of your privileges to-day.”

  “Oh! never mind me,” said Miss Ruey, briskly. “I’ve got the big Bible, and I can sing a hymn or two by myself. My voice ain’t quite what it used to be, but then I get a good deal of pleasure out of it.” Aunt Ruey, it must be known, had in her youth been one of the foremost leaders in the “singers’ seats,” and now was in the habit of speaking of herself much as a retired prima donna might, whose past successes were yet in the minds of her generation.