“Come here, my children,” she said, as we hesitated; “how is your grandfather?”
“He is not so well to-day; and grandmamma said –”
“Yes, yes; I know,” she said, with a gentle little wave of the hand; “I desired that you might be sent for some wine; Pompey shall have it ready for you. But tell me, little boys, do you know what day this is?”
“It ‘s Friday, ma’am,” said I, innocently.
“Yes, my child; but do you know what Friday it is?” she said.
“No, ma’am,” said I, faintly.
“Well, my child, it is Good Friday; and do you know why it is called Good Friday?”
“No, ma’am.”
“This is the day when our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died on the cross for our salvation; so we call it Good Friday.”
I must confess that these words struck me with a strange and blank amazement. That there had been in this world a personage called “Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” I had learned from the repetition of his name as the usual ending of prayers at church and in the family; but the real literal fact that he had lived on earth had never presented itself to me in any definite form before; but this solemn and secluded room, this sombre woman shut out from all the ordinary ways of the world, devoting the day to lonely musing, gave to her words a strange reality.
“When did he die?” I said.
“More than a thousand years ago,” she answered.
Insensibly Harry had pressed forward till he stood in the shaft of light, which fell upon his golden curls, and his large blue eyes now had that wide-open, absorbed expression with which he always listened to anything of a religious nature, and, as if speaking involuntarily, he said eagerly, “But he is not dead. He is living; and we pray to him.”
“Why, yes, my son,” said Lady Lothrop, turning and looking with pleased surprise, which became more admiring as she gazed, – “yes, he rose from the dead.”
“I know. Mother told me all about that. Day after to-morrow will be Easter day,” said Harry; “I remember.”
A bright flush of pleased expression passed over Lady Lothrop’s face as she said, “I am glad, my boy, that you at least have been taught. Tell me, boys,” she said at last, graciously, “should you like to go with me in my carriage to Easter Sunday in Boston?”
Had a good fairy offered to take us on the rainbow to the palace of the sunset, the offer could not have seemed more unworldly and dream-like. What Easter Sunday was I had not the faintest idea, but I felt it to be something vague, strange, and remotely suggestive of the supernatural.
Harry, however, stood the thing in the simple, solemn, gentlemanlike way which was habitual with him.
“Thank you, ma’am, I shall be very happy, if grandmamma is willing.”
It will be seen that Harry slid into the adoptive familiarity which made my grandmother his, with the easy good faith of childhood.
“Tell your grandmamma if she is willing I shall call for you in my coach to-morrow,” – and we were graciously dismissed.
We ran home in all haste with our bottle of wine, and burst into the kitchen, communicating our message both at once to Aunt Lois and Aunt Keziah. The two women looked at each other mysteriously; there was a slight flush on Aunt Lois’s keen, spare face.
“Well, if she ‘s a mind to do it, Kezzy, I don’t see how we can refuse.”
“Mother never would consent in the world,” said Aunt Keziah.
“Mother must,” said Aunt Lois, with decision. “We can’t afford to offend Lady Lothrop, with both these boys on our hands. Besides, now father is sick, what a mercy to have ’em both out of the house for a Sunday!”
Aunt Lois spoke this with an intensive earnestness that deepened my already strong convictions that we boys were a daily load upon her life, only endured by a high and protracted exercise of Christian fortitude.
She rose and tapped briskly into the bedroom where my grandmother was sitting reading by my grandfather’s bed. I heard her making some rapid statements in a subdued, imperative tone. There were a few moments of a sort of suppressed, earnest hum of conversation, and soon we heard sundry vehement interjections from my grandmother, – “Good Friday! – Easter! – pish, Lois! – don’t tell me – old cast-off rags of the scarlet woman, – nothing else.
‘Abhor the arrant whore of Rome,
And all her blasphemies;
Drink not of her accursed cup,
Obey not her decrees.’”
“Now, mother, how absurd!” I heard Aunt Lois say. “Who’s talking about Rome? I ‘m sure, if Dr. Lothrop can allow it, we can. It ‘s all nonsense to talk so. We don’t want to offend our minister’s wife; we must do the things that make for peace”; and then the humming went on for a few moments more and more earnestly, till finally we heard grandmother break out: –
“Well, well, have it your own way, Lois, – you always did and always will, I suppose. Glad the boys ‘ll have a holiday, anyhow. She means well, I dare say, – thinks she ‘s doing right.”
I must say that this was a favorite formula with which my grandmother generally let herself down from the high platform of her own sharply defined opinions to the level of Christian charity with her neighbors.
“Who is the whore of Rome?” said Harry to me, confidentially, when we had gone to our room to make ready for our jaunt the next day.
“Don’t you know?” said I. “Why, it ‘s the one that burnt John Rogers, in the Catechism. I can show it to you”; and, forthwith producing from my small stock of books my New England Primer, I called his attention to the picture of Mr. John Rogers in gown and bands, standing in the midst of a brisk and voluminous coil of fire and smoke, over which an executioner, with a supernatural broadaxe upon his shoulders, seemed to preside with grim satisfaction. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and nine children at her side, who stood in a row, each head being just a step lower than the preceding, so that they made a regular flight of stairs. The artist had represented the mother and all the children with a sort of round bundle on each of their heads, of about the same size as the head itself, – a thing which I always interpreted as a further device of the enemy in putting stones on their heads to crush them down; and I pointed it out to Harry as an aggravating feature of the martyrdom.
“Did the whore of Rome do that?” said Harry, after a few moments’ reflection.
“Yes, she did, and it tells about it in the poetry which he wrote here to his children the night before his execution,” and forthwith I proceeded to read to Harry that whole poetical production, delighted to find a gap in his education which I was competent to fill. We were both wrought up into a highly Protestant state by reading this.
“Horace,” said Harry, timidly, “she would n’t like such things, would she? she is such a good woman.”
“What, Lady Lothrop? of course she ‘s a good woman; else she would n’t be our minister’s wife.”
“What was grandma talking about?” said Harry.
“O, I don’t know; grandmother talks about a great many things,” said I. “At any rate, we shall see Boston, and I ‘ve always wanted to see Boston. Only think, Harry, we shall go in a coach!”
This projected tour to Boston was a glorification of us children in the eyes of the whole family. To go, on the humblest of terms, to Boston, – but to be taken thither in Lady Lothrop’s coach, to be trotted in magnificently behind her fat pair of carriage-horses, – that was a good fortune second only to translation.
Boston lay at an easy three hours’ ride from Oldtown, and Lady Lothrop had signified to my grandmother that we were to be called for soon after dinner. We were to spend the night and the Sunday following at the house of Lady Lothrop’s mother, who still kept the old family mansion at the north end, and Lady Lothrop was graciously pleased to add that she would keep the children over Easter Monday, to show them Boston. Faithful old soul, she never omitted the opportunity of reminding the gainsaying community among whom her lot was cast of the solemn d
ays of her church and for one I have remembered Easter Sunday and Monday to this day.
Our good fortune received its crowning stroke in our eyes when, running over to Miss Mehitable’s with the news, we found that Lady Lothrop had considerately included Tina in the invitation.
“Well, she must like children better than I do,” was Aunt Lois’s comment upon the fact, when we announced it. “Now, boys, mind and behave yourselves like young gentlemen,” she added, “for you are going to one of the oldest families of Boston, among real genteel people.”
“They ‘re Tories, Lois,” put in Aunt Keziah, apprehensively.
“Well, what of that? that thing ‘s over and gone now,” said Aunt Lois, “and nobody lays it up against the Kitterys, and everybody knows they were in the very first circles in Boston before the war, and connected with the highest people in England, so it was quite natural they should be Tories.”
“I should n’t wonder if Lady Widgery should be there,” said Aunt Keziah, musingly, as she twitched her yarn; “she always used to come to Boston about this time o’ the year.”
“Very likely she will,” said my mother. “What relation is she to Lady Lothrop?”
“Why, bless me, don’t you know?” said Aunt Lois. “Why, she was Polly Steadman, and sister to old Ma’am Kittery’s husband’s first wife. She was second wife to Sir Thomas; his first wife was one of the Keatons of Penshurst, in England; she died while Sir Thomas was in the custom-house; she was a poor, sickly thing. Polly was a great beauty in her day. People said he admired her rather too much before his wife died, but I don’t know how that was.”
“I wonder what folks want to say such things for,” quoth my grandmother. “I hate backbiters, for my part.”
“We are n’t backbiting, mother. I only said how the story ran. It was years ago, and poor Sir Thomas is in his grave long ago.”
“Then you might let him rest there,” said my grandmother. “Lady Widgery was a pleasant-spoken woman, I remember.”
“She ‘s quite an invalid now, I heard,” said Aunt Lois. “Our Bill was calling at the Kitterys’ the other day, and Miss Deborah Kittery spoke of expecting Lady Widgery. The Kitterys have been very polite to Bill; they ‘ve invited him there to dinner once or twice this winter. That was one reason why I thought we ought to be careful how we treat Lady Lothrop’s invitation. It ‘s entirely through her influence that Bill gets these attentions.”
“I don’t know about their being the best thing for him,” said my grandmother, doubtfully.
“Mother, how can you talk so? What can be better than for a young man to have the run of good families in Boston?” said Aunt Lois.
“I ‘d rather see him have intimacy with one godly minister of old times,” said my grandmother.
“Well, that ‘s what Bill is n’t likely to do,” quoth Aunt Lois, with a slight shade of impatience. “We must take boys as we find ‘em.”
“I have n’t anything against Tories or Episcopalians,” said my grandmother; “but they ain’t our sort of folks. I dare say they mean as well as they know how.”
“Miss Mehitable visits the Kitterys when she is in Boston,” said Aunt Lois, “and thinks everything of them. She says that Deborah Kittery is a very smart, intelligent woman, – a woman of a very strong mind.”
“I dare say they ‘re well enough,” said my grandmother. “I ‘m sure I wish ’em well with all my heart.”
“Now, Horace,” said Aunt Lois, “be careful you don’t sniff, and be sure and wipe your shoes on the mat when you come in, and never on any account speak a word unless you are spoken to. Little boys should be seen and not heard; and be very careful you never touch anything you see. It is very good of Lady Lothrop to be willing to take all the trouble of having you with her, and you must make her just as little as possible.”
I mentally resolved to reduce myself to a nonentity, to go out of existence, as it were, to be nobody and nowhere, if only I might escape making trouble.
“As to Harry, he is always a good, quiet boy, and never touches things, or forgets to wipe his toes,” said my aunt. “I ‘m sure he will behave himself.”
My mother colored slightly at this undisguised partiality for Harry, but she was too much under Aunt Lois’s discipline to venture a word.
“Lordy massy, Mis’ Badger, how do ye all do?” said Sam Lawson, this moment appearing at the kitchen door. “I saw your winders so bright, I thought I ‘d jest look in and ask after the Deacon. I ben into Miss Mehitable’s, and there ‘s Polly, she telled me about the chillen goin’ to Boston to-morrow. Tiny, she ‘s jest flying round and round like a lightning-bug, most out of her head, she ‘s so tickled; and Polly, she was a i’nin’ up her white aprons to get her up smart. Polly, she says it ‘s all pagan flummery about Easter, but she ‘s glad the chillen are goin’ to have the holiday.” And with this Sam Lawson seated himself on his usual evening roost in the corner, next to black Cæsar, and we both came and stood by his knee.
“Wal, boys, now you ‘re goin’ among real, old-fashioned gentility. Them Kitterys used to hold their heads ‘mazin’ high afore the war, and they ‘ve managed by hook and crook to hold on to most what they got, and now by-gones is by-gones. But I believe they don’t go out much, or go into company. Old Ma’am Kittery, she ‘s kind o’ broke up about her son that was killed at the Delaware.”
“Fighting on the wrong side, poor woman,” said my grandmother. “Well, I s’pose he thought he was doing right.”
“Yes, yes,” said Sam, “there ‘s all sorts o’ folks go to make up a world, and, lordy massy, we must n’t be hard on nobody; can’t ‘spect everybody to be right all round; it ‘s what I tell Polly when she sniffs at Lady Lothrop keepin’ Christmas and Easter and sich. ‘Lordy massy, Polly,’ says I, ‘if she reads her Bible, and ‘s good to the poor, and don’t speak evil o’ nobody, why, let her have her Easter; what ‘s the harm on’t?’ But, lordy massy bless your soul an’ body! there ‘s no kind o’ use talkin’ to Polly. She fumed away there, over her i’nin’ table; she did n’t believe in folks that read their prayers out o’ books; and then she hed it all over about them tew thousan’ ministers that was all turned out o’ the church in one day in old King Charles’s time. Now, raily, Mis’ Badger, I don’t see why Lady Lothrop should be held ‘sponsible for that are, if she is ‘Piscopalian.”
“Well, well,” said my grandmother; “they did turn out the very best men in England, but the Lord took ’em for seed to plant America with. But no wonder we feel it: burnt children dread the fire. I ‘ve nothing against Lady Lothrop, and I don’t wish evil to the Episcopalians nor to the Tories. There ‘s good folks among ’em all, and ‘the Lord knoweth them that are his.’ But I do hope, Horace, that, when you get to Boston, you will go out on to Copps Hill and see the graves of the Saints. There are the men that I want my children to remember. You come here, and let me read you about them in my ‘magnaly’ * here.” And with this my grandmother produced her well-worn copy; and, to say the truth, we were never tired of hearing what there was in it. What legends, wonderful and stirring, of the solemn old forest life, – of fights with the Indians, and thrilling adventures, and captivities, and distresses, – of encounters with panthers and serpents, and other wild beasts, which made our very hair stand on end! Then there were the weird witch-stories, so wonderfully attested; and how Mr. Peter So-and-so did visibly see, when crossing a river, a cat’s head swimming in front of the boat, and the tail of the same following behind; and how worthy people had been badgered and harassed by a sudden friskiness in all their household belongings, in a manner not unknown in our modern days. Of all these fascinating legends my grandmother was a willing communicator, and had, to match them, numbers of corresponding ones from her own personal observation and experience; and sometimes Sam Lawson would chime in with long-winded legends, which, being told by flickering firelight, with the wind rumbling and tumbling down the great chimney, or shrieking and yelling and piping around every corner of the house, like an a
rmy of fiends trying with tooth and claw to get in upon us, had power to send cold chills down our backs in the most charming manner.
For my part, I had not the slightest fear of the supernatural; it was to me only a delightful stimulant, just crisping the surface of my mind with a pleasing horror. I had not any doubt of the stories of apparitions related by Dr. Cotton, because I had seen so many of them myself; and I did not doubt that many of the witnesses who testified in these cases really did see what they said they saw, as plainly as I had seen similar appearances. The consideration of the fact that there really are people in whose lives such phenomena are of frequent occurrence seems to have been entirely left out of the minds of those who have endeavored to explain that dark passage in our history.
In my maturer years I looked upon this peculiarity as something resulting from a physical idiosyncrasy, and I have supposed that such affections may become at times epidemics in communities, as well as any other affection of the brain and nervous system. Whether the things thus discerned have an objective reality or not, has been one of those questions at which, all my life, the interrogation point has stood unerased.
On this evening, however, my grandmother thought fit to edify us by copious extracts from “The Second Part, entituled Sepher-Jearim, i.e. Liber Deum Timentium; or, Dead Abels; – yet speaking and spoken of.”
The lives of several of these “Dead Abels” were her favorite reading, and to-night she designed especially to fortify our minds with their biographies; so she gave us short dips and extracts here and there from several of them, as, for example: “Janus Nov.-Anglicus; or, The Life of Mr. Samuel Higginson”; – “Cadmus Americanus; or, Life of Mr. Charles Chauncey”; – “Cygnea Cantio; or, The Death of Mr. John Avery”; – “Fulgentius; or, The Life of Mr. Richard Mather”; and “Elisha’s Bones; or, Life of Mr. Henry Whitefield.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 267