Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “And the good old boots nevertheless,” said she, “are worth forty pairs of slippers. They can stamp through wet and mud and rain, and come out afterward good as new; and lift the slippers over impossible places. Dear old patient long-suffering boots, let the slippers respect them! But come, Harry, this is the last evening now, and do you know I’ve some anxiety about our little programme to-morrow? You were not bred in the Church, and you never were married before, and so you ought to be well up in your part beforehand.”

  “I confess,” said I, “I feel ignorant and a bit nervous.”

  “Now, I’ve been a bridesmaid no end of times, and seen all the possibles that may happen under those interesting circumstances, and men are so awkward — their great feet are always sure to step somewhere where they shouldn’t, and then they thumb and fumble about the ring, and their gloves always stick to their hands, and it’s uncomfortable generally. Now don’t, I beg you, disgrace me by any such enormities.”

  “This is what the slippers say to the boots,” said I. “Exactly. And here is where the boots do well to take a lesson of the slippers. They are ‘on their native heath,’ here.”

  “Well, then,” said I, “get down the Prayer-Book and teach me my proprieties. I will learn my lesson thoroughly.”

  “Well, now, we have the thing all arranged for tomorrow; the carriages are to be here at ten; ceremony at eleven. The procession will form at the church door; first, Jim Fellows and Alice, then you and mamma, then papa and me, and when we meet at the altar be sure to mind where you step, and don’t tread on my veil or any of my tulle clouds, because, though, it may look like vapor, you can’t very well set your foot through it; and be sure you have a well-disciplined glove that you can slip off without a fuss; and have the ring just where you can lay your hand on it. And now let’s read over the service and responses and all that.”

  We went through them creditably till Eva, putting her finger on one word, looked me straight in the eye.

  “Obey) Harry, isn’t that a droll word between you and me? I can’t conceive of it. Now up to this time you have always obeyed me.”

  “And ‘turn about is fair play,’ the proverb says,” said I; “you see, Eva, since Adam took the apple from Eve men have obeyed women nem con. — there was no need of putting the ‘obey’ into their part. The only puzzle is how to constrain the subtle, imponderable, ethereal essence of womanhood under some law; so the obey is our helpless attempt.”

  “But now, really and truly, Harry, I want to talk seriously about this. The girls are so foolish! Jane Seymour said she said ‘be gay’ instead of ‘obey’ — and Maria Rivington said she didn’t say it at all. But really and truly, that is God’s altar — and it is a religious service, and if I go there at all, I must understand what I mean, and say it from my heart.”

  “My dear, if you have any hesitancy you know that you can leave it out. In various modern wedding services it is often omitted. We could easily avoid it.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Harry! Marry out of the Church! What are you thinking of? Not I, indeed! I shouldn’t think myself really married.”

  “Well, then, my princess, it is your own affair. If you choose to promise to obey me, I can only be grateful for the honor; if it gives any power, it is of your giving, not my seeking.”

  “But what does a woman promise when she promises at the altar to obey?”

  “Well, evidently, she promises to obey her husband in every case where he commands and a higher duty to God does not forbid.”

  “But does this mean that all through life in every case where there arises a difference of opinion or taste between a husband and wife she is to give up to him?”

  “If,” said I, “she has been so unwise as to make this promise to a man without common sense or gentlemanly honor, who chooses to have his own will prevail in all cases of differences of taste, I don’t see but she must.”

  “But between people like you and me, Harry?”

  “Between people like you and me, darling, I can’t see that the word can make any earthly difference. There can be no obeying where there never is any commanding, and as to commanding you I should as soon think of commanding the sun and moon.”

  “Well; but you know we shall not always think alike or want the same thing.”

  “Then we will talk matters over, and the one that gives the best reasons shall prevail. You and I will be like any other two dear friends who agree to carry on any enterprise together: we shall discuss matters, and sometimes one and sometimes the other will prevail.”

  “But, Harry, this matter puzzles me. Why is there a command in the Bible that wives should always obey? Very many times in domestic affairs, certainly, the woman knows the most and has altogether the best judgment.”

  “It appears to me that it is one of those very general precepts that require to be largely interpreted by common sense. Taking the whole race of man together, for all stages of society and all degrees of development, I suppose it is the safest general direction for the weaker party. In low stages of society where brute force rules, man has woman wholly in his power, and she can win peace and protection only by submission. But where society rises into those higher forms where husbands and wives are intelligent companions and equals, the direction does no harm, because it confers a prerogative that no cultivated man would think of asserting any more than he would think of using his superior physical strength to enforce it.”

  “I suppose,” said Eva, “it is just like the command that children should obey parents. When children are grown up and married and settled, parents never think of it.”

  “Precisely,” said I, “and you and I are the grown-up children of the Christian era — all that talk of obedience is the old calyx of the perfect flower of love—’ when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.’”

  “So, then, it appears you and I shall have a free field of discussion, Harry, and maybe I shall croquet your ball off the ground sometimes, as I did once before, you know.”

  “I dare say you will. There was an incipient spice of matrimonial virulence, my fair Eva, in the way you played that game! In fact, I began to hope I was not indifferent to you from the zeal with which you pursued and routed me on that occasion.”

  “I must confess it did my heart good to set your ball spinning, — and that puts me in mind. I have the greatest piece of news to tell you. If you’ll believe me, Sydney and Sophie are engaged already! She came here this morning with her present, this lovely amethyst cross —— and it seems funny to me, but she is just as dead in love with Sydney as she can be, and do you know he is so delighted with the compliment that he has informed her that he has made the discovery that he never was in love before.”

  “The scamp! what does he mean?” said I.

  “Oh, he said that little witch Eva Van Arsdel had dazzled him — and he had really supposed himself in love, but that she never had ‘excited the profound,’ etc., etc., he feels for Sophie.”

  “So ‘all’s well that ends well,’” said I.

  “And to show his entire pacification toward me,” said Eva, “he has sent me this whole set of mantel bronzes — clock, vases, candlesticks, match-box, and all. Aren’t they superb?”

  “Magnificent!” said I. “What an air they will give our room! On the whole, dear, I think rejected lovers are not so bad an article.”

  “Well, here, I must show you Bolton’s present, which came in this afternoon,” with which she led me to a pair of elegantly carved book-racks enriched with the complete works of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Hawthorne. They were elegantly gotten up in a uniform style of binding.

  “Isn’t that lovely?” said she, “and so thoughtful! For how many happy hours he has provided here!”

  “Good fellow!” said I, feeling the tears start in my eyes. “Eva, if there is a mortal absolutely without selfishness, it is Bolton.”

  “Oh, Harry, why couldn’t he marry and be as happy as we are?”
>
  “Perhaps some day he may,” said I, “but, dear me! who gave that comical bronze inkstand? It’s enough to make one laugh to look at it.”

  “Don’t you know at once? Why, that’s Jim Fellows’s present. Isn’t it just like him?”

  “I might have known it was Jim,” said I, “it’s so decidedly frisky.”

  “Well, really, Harry, do you know that I am in deadly fear that that wicked Jim will catch my eye to-morrow in the ceremony or do something to set me off, and I’m always perfectly hysterical when I ‘m excited, and if I look his way there’ll be no hope for me.”

  “We must trust to Providence,” said I; “if I should say a word of remonstrance it would make it ten times worse. The creature is possessed of a frisky spirit and can’t help it.”

  “Alice was lecturing him about it last night, and the only result was we nearly killed ourselves laughing. After all, Harry, who can help liking Jim? Since our troubles he has been the kindest of mortals; so really delicate and thoughtful in his attentions. It was something I shouldn’t have expected of him. Harry, what do you think? Should you want Alice to like him, supposing you knew that he would like her? Is there stability enough in him?”

  “Jim is a queer fellow,” said I. “On a slight view he looks a mere bundle of comicalities and caprices, and he takes a singular delight in shocking respectable prejudices and making himself out worse than he is, or ever thinks of being. But after all, as young men go, Jim is quite free from bad habits. He does not drink, and he doesn’t even smoke. He is the most faithful, assiduous worker in his line of work among the newspaper men of New York. He is a good son, a kind brother.”

  “But, somehow, he doesn’t seem to me to have real deep firm principle.”

  “Jim is a child of modern New York — an éleve of her school. A good wife and a good home, with good friends, might do much for him, but he will always be one that will act more from kindly impulses than from principle. He will be very apt to go as his friends go.”

  “You know,” she said, “in old times, when Alice was in full career, I never thought of anything serious as possible. It is only since our trouble and his great kindness to us that I have thought of the thing as at all likely.”

  “We may as well leave it to the good powers,” said I; “we can’t do much to help or hinder, only, if they should come together I shall be glad for Jim’s sake, for I love him. And now, my dear Eva, have you any more orders, counsels, or commands for the fateful to-morrow?” said I; “for it waxes late, and you ought to get a beauty sleep to-night.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you I ‘m not going to wear either my new traveling dress or hat, or anything to mark me out as a bride; and look here, Harry, you must try and study the old staid married man’s demeanor. Don’t let’s disgrace ourselves by being discovered at once.”

  “Shall I turn my back on you and read the newspaper? I observe that some married men do that.”

  “Yes, and if you could conjugally wipe your boots on my dress, it would have an extremely old married effect. You can read the paper first, and then pass it to me — that is another delicate little point.”

  “I’m afraid that in your zeal you will drive me to excesses of boorishness that will overshoot the mark,” said I. “You wouldn’t want me to be so negligent of ‘that pretty girl’ that some other gentleman would feel a disposition to befriend her?”

  “Well, dear, but there’s a happy medium. We can appear like two relatives traveling together.”

  “I am afraid,” said I, “after all, we shall be detected; but if we are, we shall be in good company. Our first day’s journey lies in the regular bridal route, and I expect that every third or fourth seat will show an enraptured pair, of whom we can take lessons — after all, dear, you know there is no sin in being just married.”

  “No, only in acting silly about it, as I hope we sha’n’t. I want us to be models of rationality and decorum.”

  Here the clock striking twelve warned me that the last day of Eva Van Arsdel’s life was numbered.

  CHAPTER XLII. BOLTON

  I RETURNED to my room past midnight, excited and wakeful. Seeing a light through the crack of Bolton’s door, I went up and knocked and was bidden to enter. I found him seated under his study-lamp, looking over a portfolio of papers, some of which lay strewed around him open. I observed at a glance that the handwriting was that of Caroline. He looked at me. Our eyes met — a slight flush rose in his cheeks as he said, “I have been looking over a collection of writings belonging to your cousin, the fruits of the solitary years of her secluded life.”

  “And you find them” —

  “A literary treasure,” he said, with emphasis. “Yes,” he added, “what there is here will, I think, give her reputation and established position, and a command of prices which will enable her to fulfill her long-cherished intention of studying in Paris. She will go out with Miss Ida Van Arsdel soon after you are gone. I can assure her the means, and I have already procured her the situation of correspondent to the ‘Chronicle,’ with very liberal terms. So, you see, her way is all plain.”

  “But what shall we do with the ‘Ladies Cabinet’?”

  “Oh, we’ll manage it among us. Caroline will write for it occasionally.”

  “Caroline!” There was a great deal in the manner in which Bolton spoke that name. It was full of suppressed feeling. Some can express as much intensity of devotion by the mere utterance of a name as others by the most ardent protestations.

  I was in the mood that holds every young man on the eve of a happy marriage. I could conceive of no bliss outside of that; and there was in the sound of Bolton’s voice, as he spoke, a vibration of an intense pain which distressed me.

  “Bolton,” I said imploringly, “why will you sacrifice yourself and her? She loves you — you love her. Why not another marriage — another home?”

  His face quivered a moment, and then settled firmly. He smiled.

  “Hal, my boy,” he said, “you naturally see nothing for man and woman but marriage just now. But it is not every man and woman who love each other who have the right to marry. She does love me,” he added, with a deep, inward breathing. “She is capable of all that magnanimity, all that generous self-sacrifice that make women such angels to us” —

  “Then, oh! why not” — began I eagerly.

  “Because! LOVE her dearly, devotedly, I will not accept such a sacrifice. I will not risk her wrecking her life on me. The pain she feels now in leaving me will soon die out in the enthusiasm of a career. Yes, the day is now come, thank God, when a woman as well as a man can have some other career besides that of the heart. Let her study her profession, expand her mind, broaden her powers — become all that she can be. It will not impede her course to remember that there is in the world one friend who will always love her above all things; and the knowledge that she loves me will save me — if I am salvable.”

  “‘If’! Oh, Bolton, my brother! why do you say ‘if’?”

  “Because the danger is one I cannot comprehend and provide for. It is like that of sudden insanity. The curse may never return — pray God it may not — but if it should, at least I shall wreck no other heart.”

  “Bolton, can you say so if there is one that loves you?”

  “Not as a wife would love. Her whole being and destiny are not intertwined with mine as marriage would unite them. Besides, if there is somewhere hid away in my brain and blood the seed of this fatal mania, shall I risk transmitting them to a helpless child? Shall I expose such a woman to the danger of suffering over again, as a mother, the anguish she must suffer as a wife? — the fears, the anxieties, the disappointment, the wearing, wasting pain? As God is my Judge, I will not make another woman suffer what my mother has.”

  In all my intercourse with Bolton I never heard him speak of his mother before, and he spoke now with intense vehemence; his voice vibrated and quivered with emotion. In a few moments, however, he resumed his habitual selfpossession.

&n
bsp; “No, Hal,” he said cheerily, “build no air-castles for me. I shall do well enough; you and yours will be enough to occupy me. And now show me first what I am to do for you while you are gone. Jim and I will trudge to all impossible places, to look you up that little house with a good many large rooms in it, that all young housekeepers are in search of. I will cut out advertisements and look over nice places and let you know the result; and I’ll see to the proof-sheets of your articles for the ‘Milky Way,’ and write your contributions to the ‘Democracy.’ If you want to be our special correspondent from the Garden of Eden, why you may send us back letters on your trip. You can tell us if the ‘gold of that land’ is still ‘good,’ and if there are there still ‘bdellium and oynx stone,’ as there were in the Bible days.”

  “Thank you,” said I. “I shall send you letters, but hardly of a kind to appear in the ‘Democracy.’”

  “What with your engagements on that sheet, and what I shall have ready to pile in on you by the time you come back, you will have little time for philandering after your return. So take it out now and get all the honey there is in this next moon. For me, I have my domestic joys. Finnette has presented me with a charming batch of kittens. Look here.”

  And sure enough, snugly ensconced in a large, well-padded basket by the fire lay madam asleep, with four downy little minikins snuggled to her. Bolton took the lamp and kneeled down to show them, with the most absorbed intent. Stumpy came and stood by the basket, wagging what was left of his poor tail, and looking as if he had some earnest responsibility in the case.

  As to Finnette, she opened her yellow eyes, sleepily stretched out her claws, purred and rolled over, as if in excess of pride and joy.

  “Who says there isn’t happiness on earth?” said Bolton. “A cat is a happiness-producing machine. Hal, I shall save one of those kittens to set you up with. No family is complete without a cat. I shall take one in training for you. You should have a dog, too; but I can’t spare Stumpy. I don’t believe there is anything like him in the world.”