Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Now do tell me, Eva, if you are going to be such a fool, when you were once fairly quit of that girl, to bring her back into your family.”

  “Yes, aunt, I thought it my Christian duty to take care of her, and see that she did not go to utter ruin.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Aunt Maria. “I should say she had gone there now. Do you think it your duty to turn your house into a Magdalen asylum?”

  “No, I do not; but I do think it is our duty to try to help and save this one girl whom we know — who is truly repentant, and who wants to do well.”

  “Repentant!” said Aunt Maria in a scornful tone. “Don’t tell me. I know their tricks, and you’ll just be imposed on and get yourself into trouble. I know the world, and I know all about it.”

  Eva now rose and played her last card. “Aunt Maria,” she said, “you profess to be a Christian and to follow the Saviour who came to seek and save the lost, and I don’t think you do right to treat with such scorn a poor girl that is trying to do better.”

  “It’s pretty well of you, miss, to lecture me in this style! Trying to do better!” said Aunt Maria. “Then what did she go off for, when she was at your house and you were doing all you could for her? It was just that she wanted to go to the bad.”

  “She went off, Aunt Maria,” said Eva, “because she overheard all you said about her, the day you were at my house. She heard you advising me to send her mother away on her account, and saying that she was a disgrace to me. No wonder she ran off.”

  “Well, serves her right for listening! Listeners never hear any good of themselves,” said Aunt Maria.

  “Now, aunty,” said Eva, “nobody has more respect for your good qualities than I have, or more sense of what we all owe you for your kindness to us; but I must tell you fairly that, now I am married, you must not come to my house to dictate about or interfere with my family arrangements. You must understand that Harry and I manage these matters ourselves and will not allow any interference; and I tell you now that Maggie is to be at our house, and under my care, and I request that you will not come there to say or do anything which may hurt her mother’s feelings or hers.”

  “Mighty fine,” said Aunt Maria, rising in wrath, “when it has come to this, that servants are preferred before me!”

  “It has not come to that, Aunt Maria. It has simply come to this: that I am to be sole mistress in my own family, and sole judge of what it is right and proper to do; and when I need your advice I shall ask it; but I don’t want you to offer it unless I do.”

  Having made this concluding speech while she was putting on her bonnet and shawl, Eva now cheerfully wished her aunt good-afternoon, and made the best of her way downstairs.

  “I don’t see, Eva, how you could get up the courage to face your aunt down in that way,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, to whom Eva related the interview.

  “Dear mamma, it’ll do her good. She will be as sweet as a rose after the first week of indignation. Aunt Maria is a sensible woman, after all, and resigns herself to the inevitable. She worries and hectors you, my precious mammy, because you will let her. If you’d show a brave face, she wouldn’t do it; but it isn’t in you, you poor, lovely darling, and so she just preys upon you; but Harry and I are resolved to make her stand and give the countersign when she comes to our camp.”

  And it is a fact that, a week after, Aunt Maria spent a day with Eva in the balmiest state of grace, and made no allusion whatever to the conversation above cited. Nothing operates so healthfully on such moral constitutions as a good dose of certainty.

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  THE PEARL CROSS

  EVERT thoughtful person who exercises the least supervision over what goes on within is conscious of living two distinct lives — the outward and the inward. The external life is positive, visible, definable; easily made the subject of conversation. The inner life is shy, retiring, most difficult to be expressed in words, often inexplicable, even to the subject of it, yet no less a positive reality than the outward.

  We have not succeeded in the picture of our Eva unless we have shown her to have one of those sensitive moral organizations, whose nature it is to reflect deeply, to feel intensely, and to aspire after a high moral ideal. If we do not mistake the age we live in, the perplexities and anxieties of such natures form a very large item in our modern life.

  It is said that the Christian religion is losing its hold on society. On the contrary, we believe there never was a time when faith in Christianity was so deep and all-pervading, and when it was working in so many minds as a disturbing force. The main thing which is now perplexing modern society is the effort which is making to reduce the teachings of the New Testament to actual practice in life, and to regulate society by them. There is no skepticism as to the ends sought by Jesus in human life. Nobody doubts that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that to do as we would be done by, applied universally, would bring back the golden age, if ever such ages were.

  But the problem that meets the Christian student, and the practical person who means to live the Christian life, is the problem of redemption and of self-sacrifice. In a world where there is always ruin and misery, where the inexperienced are ensnared and the blind misled, and where fatal and inexorable penalties follow every false step, there must be a band of redeemers, seekers, and savers of the lost. There must be those who sacrifice ease, luxury, and leisure, to labor for the restoration of the foolish and wicked who have sold their birthright and lost their inheritance; and here is just the problem that our age and day present to the thoughtful person who, having professed, in whatever church or creed, to be a Christian, wishes to make a reality of that profession.

  The night that Eva had spent in visiting the worst parts of New York had been to her a new revelation of that phase of paganism which exists in our modern city life, within sound of hundreds of church bells of every denomination. She saw authorized as a regular trade, and protected by law, the selling of that poisoned liquor which brings on insanity worse than death; which engenders idiocy, and the certainty of vicious propensities in the brain of the helpless unborn infant; which is the source of all the poverty, and more than half the crime, that fills almshouses and prisons, and of untold miseries and agonies to thousands of families. She saw woman degraded as the minister of sin and shame; the fallen and guilty Eve, forever plucking and giving to Adam the forbidden fruit whose mortal taste brings death into the world; and her heart had been stirred by the sight of those multitudes of poor ruined wrecks of human beings, men and women, that she had seen crowding in to that midnight supper, and by the earnest pleadings of faith and love that she had heard in the good man’s prayers for them. She recalled his simple faith, his undaunted courage in thus maintaining this forlorn hope in so hopeless a region, and she could not rest satisfied with herself, doing nothing to help.

  In talking with Mr. James on his prospects, he had said that he very much wished to enlarge this Home so as to put there some dormitories for the men who were willing to take the pledge to abandon drinking, where they could find shelter and care until some kind of work could be provided for them. He stated further that he wished to connect with the enterprise a farm in the country where work could be found for both men and women, of a kind which would be remunerative, and which might prove selfsupporting.

  Eva reflected with herself whether she had anything to give or to do for a purpose so sacred. Their income was already subject to a strict economy. The little elegances and adornments of her house were those that are furnished by thought and care rather than by money. Even with the most rigorous self-scrutiny, Eva could not find fault with the home philosophy by which their family life had been made attractive and delightful, because she said and felt that her house had been a ministry to others. It had helped to make others stronger, more cheerful, happier.

  But when she brought Maggie away from the Home, she longed to send back some helpful token to those earnest laborers. On revising her possessions, she remembere
d that, once, in the days when she was a rich and rather self-indulgent daughter of luxury, she had spent the whole of one quarter’s allowance in buying for herself a pearl cross. It cost her not even a sacrifice, for when with a kiss or two she confessed her extravagance to her father, he only pinched her cheek playfully, told her not to do so again, and gave a check for the amount. There it lies, at this moment, in Eva’s hands; and as she turns it abstractedly round and round, and marks the play of light on the beautiful pearls, she thinks earnestly what that cross means, and wonders that she should ever have worn it as a mere bauble.

  Does it not mean that man’s most generous Friend, the highest, the purest, the sweetest nature that ever visited this earth, was agonized, tortured, forsaken, and left to bleed life away, unpitied and unrelieved, for love of us and of all sinning, suffering humanity? Suddenly the words came with overpowering force to her mind: “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves.”

  Immediately she resolved that she would give this cross to the sacred work of saving the lost. She resolved to give it secretly — without the knowledge even of her husband. The bauble was something personal to herself that never would be missed or inquired for, and she felt about such an offering that reserve and sacredness which is proper to natures of great moral delicacy. With the feeling she had at this moment, it was as much an expression of personal loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ as was the precious alabaster vase of Mary. It satisfied, moreover, a kind of tender, vague remorse that she had often felt; as if, in her wedded happiness and her quiet home, she were too blessed, and had more than her share of happiness in a world where there were such sufferings and sorrows.

  She had always had a longing to do something towards the world’s work, and, if nothing more, to be a humble helper of the brave and heroic spirits who press on in the front ranks of this fight for the good.

  She did not wish to be thanked or praised, as if the giving up of such a toy for such a cause were a sacrifice worth naming; for, in the mood that she was in, it was no sacrifice — it was a relief to an over-charged feeling, an act of sacramental union between her soul and the Saviour who gave himself wholly for the lost. So she put the velvet case in its box, and left it at Mr. James’s door, with the following little note: —

  MY dear SIR, — Ever since that most sad evening when I went with yon in your work of mercy to those unhappy people, I have been thinking of what I saw, and wishing I could do something to help you. You say that you do not solicit aid except from the dear Father who is ever near to those that are trying to do such work as this; yet, as long as he is ever near to Christian hearts, he will inspire them with desires to help in a cause so wholly Christ-like. I send you this ornament, which was bought in days when I thought little of its sacred meaning. Sell it, and let the avails go towards enlarging your Home for those poor people who find no place for repentance in the world. I would rather you would tell nobody from whom it comes. It is something wholly my own; it is a relief to offer it, to help a little in so good a work, and I certainly shall not forget to pray for your success.

  Yours, very truly, — E. H.

  P. S. — I am very happy to be able to say that poor M. seems indeed a changed creature. She is gentle, quiet, and humble; and is making, in our family, many friends.

  I feel hopeful that there is a future for her, and that the dear Saviour has done for her what no human being could do.

  We have seen the question raised lately in a religious paper, whether the sacrifice of personal ornaments for benevolent objects was not obligatory; and we have seen the right to retain these small personal luxuries defended with earnestness. To us, it seems an unfortunate mode of putting a very sacred subject.

  The Infinite Saviour, in whose hands all the good works of the world are moving, is rich. The treasures of the world are his. He is as able now as he was when on earth to bid us cast in our line and find a piece of silver in the mouth of the first fish. Our gifts are only valuable to him for what they express in us. Had Mary not shed the precious balm upon his head, she would not have been reproved for the omission; yet the exaltation of love which so expressed itself was appreciated and honored by him. It is written, too, that he looked upon and loved the young man who had not yet attained to the generous enthusiasm that is willing to sacrifice all for suffering humanity.

  Religious offerings, to have value in his sight, must be like the gifts of lovers, not extorted by conscience, but by the divine necessity which finds relief in giving. He can wait, as mothers do, till we outgrow our love of toys and come to feel the real sacredness and significance of life. The toy which is dear to childhood will be easily surrendered in the nobler years of maturity.

  But Eva’s was a nature so desirous of sympathy that whatever dwelt on her mind overflowed first or last into the minds of her friends; and, an evening or two after her visit to the mission home, she told the whole story at her fireside to Dr. Campbell, St. John, and Angie, Bolton, Jim, and Alice, who were all dining with her. Eva had two or three objects in this. In the first place, she wanted to touch the nerve of real Christian unity which she felt existed between the heart of St. John and that of every true Christian worker — that same Christian unity that associated the Puritan apostle Eliot with the Roman Catholic missionaries of Canada. She wished him to see in a Methodist minister the same faith, the same moral heroism which he had so warmly responded to in the ritualistic mission of St. George, and which was his moral ideal in his own work.

  She wished to show Dr. Campbell the pure and simple faith in God and prayer by which so effective a work of humanity had already been done for a class so hopeless.

  “It’s all very well,” he said, “and I’m glad, if anybody can do it; but I don’t believe prayer has anything to do with it.”

  “Well, I do,” said Bolton energetically. “I wouldn’t think life worth having another minute, if I didn’t think there was a God who would stand by a man whose whole life was devoted to work like this.”

  “Well,” said Dr. Campbell, “it isn’t, after all, an appeal to God; it’s an appeal to human nature. Nobody that has a heart in him can see such a work doing and not want to help it. Your minister takes one and another to see his Home, and says nothing, and, by and by, the money comes in.”

  “But in the beginning,” said Eva, “he had no money, and nothing to show to anybody. He was going to do a work that nobody believed in, among people that everybody thought so hopeless that it was money thrown away to help him. To whom could he go but God? He went and asked Him to help him, and began, and has been helped day by day ever since; and I believe God did help him. What is the use of believing in God at all, if we don’t believe that?” —

  “Well,” said Jim, “I’m not much on theology, but we newspaper fellows get a considerable stock of facts, first and last; and I’ve looked through this sort of thing, and I believe in it. A man don’t go on doing a business of six or seven or eight thousand a year on prayer, unless prayer amounts to something; and I know, first and last, the expenses of that concern can’t be less than that.”

  “Well,” said Harry, “we have a lasting monument in the great orphan house of Halle — a whole city square of solid stone buildings. I have stood in the midst of them, and they were all built by one man, without fortune of his own, who has left us his written record how, day by day, as expenses thickened, he went to God and asked for his supplies, and found them.”

  “But I maintain,” said Dr. Campbell, “that his appeal was to human nature. People found out what he was doing, their sympathies were moved, and they sent him help. The very sight of such a work is an application.”

  “I don’t think that theory accounts for the facts,” said Bolton. “Admitting that there is a God who is near every human heart in its most secret retirement, who knows the most hidden moods, the most obscure springs of action, how can you prove that this God did not inspire the thoughts of sympathy and purposes of help there recorded? For we
have in this Franke’s journal, year after year, records of help coming in when it was wanted, having been asked for of God, and obtained with as much regularity and certainty as if checks had been drawn on a banker.”

  “Well,” said Dr. Campbell, “do you suppose that, if I should now start to build a hospital without money, and pray every week for funds to settle with my workmen, it would come?”

  “No, Doctor, you ‘re not the kind of fellow that such things happen to,” said Jim, “nor am I.”

  “It supposes an exceptional nature,” said Bolton, “an utter renunciation of self, an entire devotion to an unselfish work, and an unshaken faith in God. It is a moral genius, as peculiar and as much a gift as the genius of painting, poetry, or music.”

  “It is an inspiration to do the work of humanity, and it presupposes faith,” said Eva. “You know the Bible says, ‘He that cometh to God must believe that HE IS, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.’”

  The result of that fireside talk was not unfruitful. The next week was a harvest for the Home.

  In blank envelopes, giving no names, came various sums. Fifty dollars, with the added note: “From a believer in human nature.” This was from Dr. Campbell.

  A hundred dollars was found in another envelope, with the note: “To help up the fallen, from one who has been down.” This was from Bolton.

  Mr. St. John sent fifty dollars, with the words: “From a fellow-worker.” And, finally, Jim Fellows sent fifty, with the words: “From one of the boys.”

  None of these consulted with the other; each contribution was a silent and secret offering. Who can prove that the “Father that seeth in secret” did not inspire them?

  CHAPTER XLIX

  THE UNPROTECTED FEMALE

  “THE Squantum and Patuxet Manufacturing Company have concluded not to make any dividends for the current year.” Such was the sum and substance that Miss Dorcas gathered from a very curt letter which she had just received from the Secretary of that concern, at the time of the semiannual dividend. The causes of this arrangement were said to be that the entire income of the concern (which it was cheerfully stated had never been so prosperous) was to be devoted to the erection of a new mill and the purchase of new machinery, which would in the future double the avails of the stock.