Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 416

by Harriet Beecher Stowe


  Under these circumstances, could you look over Nettie’s shoulder into the looking-glass, you would feel the force of what we have been saying: that the image she saw there was the best worth looking at of any thing in the room. It isn’t saying much, to be sure. Nettie Sylva was a tall, lithe, handsome girl, and looked as if she had been got up by Mother Nature in a more generous mood of mind than she generally is in when she makes our pure, delicate, spare, lady-like New-England girls. She was like a tropical flower; every thing about her was bright and rich and abundant. She had lovely golden brown hair, and ever so much of it. Her cheeks had the high bloom and color of the pomegranate. She had great, rich, velvet dark eyes with long lashes; her waist was round as an apple, and she had a beautiful fulness of form, not a common attribute of American beauty. Nettie was of very good taste, and rather liked her own looks. It was said there was a tinge of Italian blood in her veins, through some grandmother on the maternal side; but Nettie was enough of a Yankee for all that to have a pretty good sense of what things were worth, and what could be done with them practically. Consequently the store of charms which she saw reflected in the looking-glass were something that she very well knew the use of, although the use she made of them just about these days, was one that will certainly not meet the approbation of the reflecting mind. On the present occasion the principal use that she was making of them was to plague and tease Horace Vanzandt, as she had previously plagued and teased many other of the leading beaux of the village. Horace, however, was most particularly attractive game. He was handsome, lively, spirited, hot-tempered, and forgiving, so that it was the easiest thing in the world both to put him into a passion and to get him out of it; and these two exercises considerably varied the dulness of the village life. For Greyford was a dull village, it is to be confessed. Nobody was very rich there, and nobody was very poor. The girls were all educated at the high school, and knew and read and had heard about all sorts of scenes that they could not afford to see, and splendid doings in the world that they never could take any part in, and read serial stories every week out of three or four newspapers, by means of which they lived among duchesses and countesses, and had all sorts of thrilling adventures in the spirit, while their bodies were tied down to the routine of a narrow, economical family life. The young men at Greyford, as a matter of course, were put to work early, and hadn’t half the time to read and study and get themselves up in poetry and romances that the girls had, and consequently there was none of them that appeared to the girls the ideal hero; but still they were accepted as the best there was. There were approved ways and means of seeing each other. There was the singing-school once a week, where, by the by, Nettie had the richest voice and led the treble. There were apple-cuttings and croquet-parties; but, best and liveliest of all, there were the sleigh-rides which came in the winter, when the young fellows were to a good degree released from farm-work, and free to bask in the charms of female society.

  It had been given out and agreed among the young fellows of the village, that, as soon as there was snow enough, there should be a grand sleigh-ride over to the hotel in North Denmark, where a dancing-room had been engaged, and provision made for a regular frolic.

  The point in discussion in Nettie’s mind as she stood nodding at her image in the glass was this: Would Horace Vanzandt come to invite her to this sleigh-ride? She knew, in her own guilty conscience, that she had sent him off horridly angry the Sunday evening before, and whether he had gotten over it or not was the point in discussion in her own mind; and, by way of estimating the balance of probabilities, she took a good look at herself. She rather thought he would come back, and at this moment she heard the click of the gate. In a moment she turned, and was seated in the demurest manner at her work-basket, making a little ruffled apron with pockets, in which she was so much absorbed that Horace was obliged to rap three or four times on the door till he could rouse the ear of the little inattentive bound-girl in the back-kitchen. There had been times when Miss Nettie under such circumstances would go and open the door herself, and say, “Oh! is it you? I thought,”-&c., &c., &c. But this morning she felt diplomatic; and, on the whole, she concluded that he must be made to come all the way. Horace, in fact, had come resolved to beg pardon for being insulted on Sunday evening. He had flown into a passion and made himself ridiculous. Of course this had put him in the wrong; but now here was the snow coming, and he wanted Nettie for his partner. He knew that she would tease and provoke him the whole evening. Why, then, would no one else but Nettie do for him, when there was Jane Burgess, the nicest, sweetest, most reasonable girl that ever was heard of, who never did or said an unkind thing to anybody; and Rachel Holley, with cheeks and forehead like the pink and the white of sweet-peas and the prettiest and most winning of voices? Both these had graciously entreated him; and yet he could form no idea of anybody that he wanted except this vexatious Nettie, who neither would take him nor let him alone, and kept him always in a state of fermentation. Well, why does a young fellow like to drive a lively, high-spirited filly, that prances and curvets, snorts, and pulls on the bit, and comes within an inch of dashing his brains out every once in a while? We leave that to the consciousness of individuals and to the metaphysicians. All is, Horace has stood long enough on the doorstep, and we must get him in.

  CHAPTER II.

  HORACE determined to open the matter cheerfully, and ignore the fact that there had been any quarrel; and so began briskly, “Well, Miss Sylva, we are in luck; the snow has come.”

  “I don’t like snow,” said Nettie, contradictiously; but she smiled as she said it, and, lifting her great, beautiful eyes, fixed them on Horace not unkindly.

  “But don’t you see, Miss Nettie, our sleigh-ride is to come off now?”

  “Sleigh-ride?” said Miss Nettie, in a tone of innocent inquiry. “What sleigh-ride?”

  “Why, of course you know: the sleigh-ride that we fellows have been planning for three or four weeks past. We’ve got the room and the fiddler all engaged.”

  Now, Nettie knew all these things perfectly well. The fact was, that she and Jane Burgess and Rachel Holley had discussed them over and over, to the minutest details of possibilities, and they had all settled what they were to wear. But was she to let the enemy know this? Of course not.

  “Oh!” she said, “I can’t be expected to know, as nothing has been said to me.”

  “Why, of course,” said Horace.

  “I don’t think it is of course,” said Nettie. “How should I know any thing, when nothing has been said to me?”

  “Why, yes; it is all arranged. Jeff Fleming is to take Jane Burgess in his new sleigh. He went to New Haven last week, and bought a new string of bells on purpose; and Mark Hinsdale is going with Rachel Holley; and may I have the pleasure, Miss Nettie, of taking you?”

  “Oh! it appears I am Hobson’s choice, then. Thank you. I don’t know that I shall care to go. It will be very cold, and I think sleigh-rides are rather a bore.”

  “Now, Miss Sylva, you really can’t be so cruel.”

  “Cruel! I don’t know what you call cruel. Ah! I see what you mean. I suppose you have tried all the other girls and found them engaged.”

  “I do think you are the most provoking person, Miss Nettie, that ever I did know.”

  Horace Vanzandt was a very handsome young fellow; and when he was angry the blood flushed into his cheek, and the fire snapped from his eyes; and Nettie felt a perilous sort of pleasure in provoking these natural phenomena.

  “Come now, Horace,” she said suddenly, assuming an air of the most sisterly concern. “Why must we always quarrel? not that I care particularly about it, but it really grieves me to see a person that I respect give way to his temper so.”

  “By George! Nettie, it’s your fault,” said Horace. “I never do get so angry with anybody else, but you seem to delight to make me miserable. Now, I came to invite you on Sunday night, but you quarrelled with me and got it all out of my head.”

  “Well, Hor
ace, if you have come just to renew the Sunday night’s quarrel”-

  “I haven’t. I came to make up.”

  “And give me Hobson’s choice in the sleigh-ride,” said Nettie.

  Horace rose up hastily, and flung out of the room. Nettie gave one quick mischievous glance after him, seized a little packet from her work-basket, ran round by another path to the gate, and was there before Horace got there. “You silly boy,” she said. “You never will give me time to give you this. I had it all ready for you on Sunday night.”

  It was a guard-chain of Nettie’s own workmanship which had been promised to Horace months before.

  “I’ve sat up many a night working on this,” she said reproachfully.

  “O Nettie!”

  “Come now, let’s be friends,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. “Really, Horace, I feel absolutely concerned about your violent temper. You must overcome it.” Horace looked at her quizzically as she put the guard-chain round his neck, and then followed her an unresisting captive into the house again, where it pleased Nettie to keep him at her feet reading Tennyson to her till near dinner-time. And this was the way that matters commonly went on between Horace and Nettie.

  Horace Vanzandt was the son of one of the largest farmers in the neighborhood, and the youngest of four brothers who all took respectably to farming. Horace was of a lively turn of mind, and meant to strike out something rather more adventurous and congenial in life. If there was any thing he detested it was following the slow steps of oxen, ploughing, and planting potatoes and harvesting little gains at the end of the year. Horace determined to be an inventor. He had a turn for machinery and a Yankee quickness of hand. He even in boyhood had made a pattern of a water-wheel which turned an imaginary mill in the brook in the back lot. He had devised a churn for his mother, which the knowing ones said might have taken a patent if somebody else hadn’t made one just like it before him. So Horace read and thought, and whittled, and studied models, and used to carry them up to show to Nettie, who sometimes laughed at them, but, after all, rather fed the flame of his hopes and anticipations.

  Nettie sympathized with all her fiery, restless heart in Horace’s contempt of farming, and in his desires to make to himself a fortune in some easier way. She detested the dull reality of life in Greyford, where, as she phrased it, “nobody ever came, and nothing ever happened.”

  Greyford, to be sure, was one of those still, quiet towns which impress travellers who ride through it with the idea that the inhabitants are all either dead or gone on long voyages. The front doors were always tight shut even in the warmest summer weather, and not a human creature was by any accident ever seen about them. All the window-blinds were tight closed, except perhaps one-half of one on one side, far to the back of the house. The reason of this was, that when the Greyford housekeepers had cleaned the paint of the chambers and parlors, in the spring, they wanted to keep them immaculate from flies, and so shut up all the window-blinds till the time for the autumn cleaning. Meanwhile they lived in one or two rooms in the back of the house, and congratulated themselves that the front part was always in order. This particular habit, by the way, though a most efficient preservative of the colors of carpets and conducive to the health and long life of the hair-seat chairs and chintz-covered sofas which lurked within these dark domains, was not acceptable to Master Horace. He used to say that when he had a house of his own he was going to set apart one room in it for a fly-room, and have it warm and bright and airy and sunny, and have just as many flies in it as he wanted. Nettie, when he said this one day in her presence, answered promptly, that if he went on in that contrary spirit he would find not only flies entering into his room, but Beelzebub the god of flies; whereupon Horace rejoined impulsively that he hoped to coax a goddess in there, not a devil. Then he stopped short, a little embarrassed. Nettie, however, with that instinctive readiness of which the shyest and most skittish young ladies have the most, answered with a sniff that he wasn’t likely to catch many goddesses unless he baited his trap with something better than flies.

  But, as we have said a few words about Grey-ford, we will make bold to say a few more; for the fact is, that this ancient town is itself better worth knowing, not merely than the two inexperienced young persons about whom we have been talking, but even than the whole of any one of the generations of hard-working, economical, humdrum New-Englanders, who have slowly followed each other to the old-fashioned dreary burying-ground of the town since its first settlement in the year 1639.

  Greyford is one of the very oldest of the Connecticut towns, and, like all those which were portions of the original New Haven Colony, was settled in good measure by “gentry,” as distinguished from the yeomanry, from whom almost exclusively the Connecticut colony was recruited. Hence its families have yet traditions and heirlooms that knit together with a strong but invisible tie the working-day life that now is, and the faraway days of the knights and gentlemen of Good Queen Bess and her successor Gentle King Jamie. These, however, are but few,-an ancient copy of the Geneva Bible, or a faded and almost invisible embroidered coat-of-arms. But of both the early and the later days of our history, the memorials were more numerous, and the recollections were clear and authentic, and romantic too. The sons of old Greyford, farmers though they were, bravely upheld the cause, and followed the banner of their country, whether it was the blood-red flag of the English king, or the brighter stars and stripes, from the old French War down to the Rebellion; serving always under officers of their own choice, wise and experienced fellow-townsmen of their own. Others had followed the sea, and had brought home with them to ornament the brown old homesteads where they established themselves to end their days, such strange and fantastic articles as sailors delight to gather.

  Now the antique queen’s arms and the old carved powder-horns, the whales’ teeth and the New-Zealand clubs, startle and interest the visitor who finds them in a country farm-house, and set him thinking and questioning. In like manner these manifold experiences of war and seafaring had stored the minds of the dwellers in Greyford with many curious tales, and with travellers’ thoughts and opinions, such as seem strange and uncanny to the dwellers-at-home, but yet are full of stimulus and fascination.

  In such communities there are always such persons as we commonly term “characters.” A retired sea-captain is certain to be a character. Long-forgotten strains of ancestral blood reappear all of a sudden in some curious manifestation in a plain farmer’s son or daughter; and the child grows up perhaps into a genius, but oftener into a specimen of peculiarities-a character. And even the life of the farmers who live and die at home, utterly uneventful as it is, is in itself far from unfavorable to the development of strange and odd traits. There is something in the calmness of the sunny fields, in the stillness of winter snows, in the cool quiet of the green woods, that conjures certain minds into even an unnatural excitement, even by the mystical influence of mere silent solitude.

  The landscape of Greyford, and the character of its surroundings, were so varied and picturesque as to add great power to these natural influences. There were broad tracts of ancient woodland, stretching far away over the hills. There was a river, a clear and lively stream, that ran through the township and entered the sea not very far away. There were broad and level tracts of singularly fertile farming land. Here and there among the wooded hills of the back country were lovely little lakes, all alone in the forest, and plentifully stocked with perch and roach and pickerel, and well-known to many a barefooted boy as the Meccas of his rare half-holidays. At the extreme north-eastern part of the town, one steep mountain, so isolated and so bold in its outline as to seem much loftier than it really was, stood up alone and silent, shrouded to its very summit in thick, tall forest-trees, while the vast, sheer descent scent of its eastern face plunged down in one immense cliff, far below the surface of the earth; for close under it was the largest of all the lakes of the whole region, whose steep shore, the continuation of the mountain precipice, sank into
black waters reputed to be unfathomable. The road that led northward through this wild and striking pass had been scored deep into the living rock, for there was not a foot of level land to hold it.

  Doubtless all these influences had moulded and modified more or less the traits of every personage in this our story; to which, having said all that we wanted to about geography and history, we now return.

  Nettie had a painstaking step-mother, a worthy woman, devoted to the task of keeping her father’s house in the required style. The relations between her and Nettie were diplomatic. Nettie was not fond of housework, and Mrs. Dr. Sylva was; and it occurred to the young lady, that, in this conjunction of circumstances, it was only the fair thing that her mother-in-law, who had the work to do, should arrange the house in her own way; though as we have intimated, it was a way extremely distasteful to Nettie. Still, rather than take hold with her own hands and conduct the housekeeping on another pattern, Nettie was willing ing to let things take their course without remonstrance. She had her own dresses to make and alter according to the patterns in “Harper’s Bazar,” she had several serial stories on hand to read, and she had the afore-named singing-schools, apple-cuttings, croquet-parties, tea-drinkings, and sleigh-rides to attend, and generally a love-affair off or on; for Nettie was one of the sort who scarcely ever made a visit without webbing some silly fly in her net, and having a love-letter of some kind to answer.

 

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