Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Nothing has thus far been said of two concernments wherewith it might seem that Jeff should have had something to do during this illness of his; namely, his own family, and Jane Burgess. Reason enough: Jeff had no family; and it was this solitary position of his in the world which caused the simple, hearty, genuine, old-fashioned New England kindness of Deacon Tarbox’s family to make all the more impression upon him. Both his parents had died long ago; he had indeed been brought up in great measure by some excellent people, who had been friends of his father and mother, and who treated him with helpful kindness, and shrewdly managed his little inheritance. But they were not letter-writing persons; and, in fact, neither were Deacon nor Mrs. Tarbox. The news of Jeff’s illness went to Greyford in Nettie’s letters to her father, therefore, but as the young man was in the best possible hands, neither letters nor visits were made necessary, and none came. As for Jane Burgess, she was also far less of a letter-writer than Nettie or Rachel. Besides, she was enveloped-as all of us are in this world-in webs of circumstance; things had been happening to her in Boston, for an account of which the reader is referred to the next chapter.

  After Jeff Fleming had removed to his own room at the Dove-cot again, had resumed his usual employment at the store, and was rapidly laying hold once more upon all the avocations of his busy life, it was natural that he should still feel far more as if Deacon Tarbox’s house was his home, than as if he was a stranger there; so he was at the house even more frequently than before his illness, with or without any excuse.

  One pleasant evening, when the Deacon and his wife had gone out to an evening meeting at the South Church, Jeff and Nettie sat chatting alone in the “keeping-room.”

  “Nettie,” said Jeff, “I always used to be afraid of you. I thought you were a sharp-tempered girl, and you certainly used to snap like a pea in a hot skillet sometimes. Have you grown quiet? I don’t inquire whether you have grown sweet-tempered, for I have found out that you always were that.”

  “I think I have grown quiet,” said Nettie, blushing. “I love Aunt Helen; and I believe it would make anybody quiet, and good too, to live with her. But I am able to snap, as you call it, on occasion.”

  “No, please. At least, Nettie, I don’t mean to give you any occasion to snap me. I like you ever so much better as you are. It is like finding a sweet heart inside of-no; nobody can fancy you with a rough outside.”

  “Nor a sweetheart, either,” said Nettie, twisting his words.

  Jeff answered, this time with something very much like a blush on his part,-

  “It would not be right to fancy you a sweetheart, Nettie. Nothing less respectful than a strong love and a deep longing should be offered to you; a fancy for you would be an impertinence. You are too good.”

  “Well, Jeff,” replied the young lady, “I don’t know why you should say all the pretty things. Thank you very much for so many compliments; and you shall have one for yourself. Aunt Helen was saying to-day that she never in her life saw a man before that was perfectly good-natured and patient in sickness. So that you are angel number four, you see.”

  “Ah, Nettie!” he said, with a good deal of emotion, “unless you have lived all your life with strangers, you don’t know how such good deeds as yours and Aunt Helen’s make a person good. I imagine you people would make Judas Iscariot into the best creature in the world. I couldn’t have been cross with you or her by me, any more than water could freeze in the fire. It wasn’t I that was sweet-tempered; it was you.”

  “Aren’t you going to allow any thing at all for uncle?” said Nettie, who, so differently from most handsome young women, heartily liked to be praised, and was no more inclined to resent Jeff’s pretty speeches than a house-cat is to resent stroking.

  “Yes, indeed. Haven’t I always reckoned him one of the angels of this house? But it’s queer-I can’t be near as fond of him as I can of Aunt Helen and you. He isn’t so pretty. He isn’t so nice to kiss.”

  “You don’t know, sir. I like to kiss him.”

  “Well, Nettie, you may kiss him for me, then,-I wish”-

  “What?”

  “I mean, won’t you give me a little music?”

  “Certainly.” And she opened the piano and sat down; looking up at him as he took his usual place behind her left shoulder, with a smile that was sunshine itself. “What shall it be?”

  “I don’t know, Nettie.”

  “Well, then, take my last piano solo, to begin with.”

  She played a “Hungarian March.” At least, that was the name printed on it, and it was written on the square-built “four-four” basis which is called “march time;” but nevertheless it was a wild, sweet, strange melody too, such as might be imagined to have arisen in the heart of some gypsy musician uttering the nameless yearnings of his mystic Oriental soul, amid the rich influences of sunny vineyards and glorious rivers in the noble land of Hungary.

  “O Nettie!” said Jeff; “once more, please.” Music which is very beautiful calls upon those who are sensitive to it, with a voice that is almost a sharp pain. It searches the depths of pure emotion, very far below the shallow ripples of criticising judgement or even of conscious observation. Jeff Fleming’s voice was unsteady, but the trifling words were full of pleading,-if pleading had been necessary. In truth, the very lovely music was breaking the ice in another realm than that of the wintry river; and Nettie, who felt the music, perhaps, even more than he, without knowing it, felt that there was more pleading in the request than merely for a few measures of music. She shivered slightly, but only answered,-

  “Yes, certainly.” Could she have had a double meaning? Could she have felt-not perceived-any unspoken wishes from her companion? And she played the piece again, the delicate, firm fingering, the unusually quiet movements of her shapely smooth fingers upon the keys, adding that curious magic to the music which depends upon the appearance of producing much effect with little motion. This time, neither of them said a word; but each knew that the other was greatly moved.

  Without speaking, Nettie modulated through a few soft chords, paused a moment, and played another piece, belonging in the same chapter of sentiment with the former, yet sadder. It was so much more melancholy, in fact, that when the last soft cadence ended, and Nettie’s hands lay motionless upon the keys of the final chord, Jeff said, as if speaking to himself,-

  “Why-it is all full of tears.”

  Nettie, with a little start, turned back the open leaf, and pointed to the title. “Les Larmes,” it read.

  She looked up once more, into Jeff’s face, half turning round upon the piano-stool. Jeff could see that her long dark eyelashes were wet.

  “Do you feel it so much too?” he asked.

  “Indeed, yes,” she said; and added, with her sunshiny smile, “But if you can tell so well what the music says, what was the other?”

  The witch! I half believe she knew what she was about. Jeff looked down into her eyes for a moment.

  “May I tell you?”

  She could not quite frame to say yes; she said not a word. Her eyes fell; but Jeff quickly but lightly passed his arms around her, and kissed her beautiful red lips three times.

  “The music said it, Nettie,” he said, as she sprang up, but he caught her hand. “I say it for myself, too, Nettie. I love you. Mayn’t I?”

  It is of course possible that if the old people had staid at home, and the piano had been kept shut, Nettie and Jeff would not have become engaged to each other, at least not that night. As it was, they did.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  IT was Jane’s first visit with her sister Sophy. Also it was her sister’s first winter in Boston. Ned Bardles had made his fortune in Cottonswick, where he lived over a dozen years. Since then he had been a year in St. Louis; afterwards, he and his wife spent six months in Paris. This was very convenient for Mrs. Bardles, because she could pick up all her furniture there for the house Ned had been building on the new land. For the original Bardleses were Boston people.

 
Happily it was a large house, for it was one through which the whole Bardles family swept, from morning till night. Aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, sisters-in-law, and brothers ditto, made it their grand central rendezvous. It might be called the Bardles highway. There were walls to the house; but they shut in and never shut out.

  Not that Ned Bardles showed a special partiality for his own family, but there were so many of them! And only Jane and her aunt on the Burgess side. It was Ned who had suggested that Jane should come and spend the winter with them. Sophy had determined that she would bring his youngest sister, Christine, into society that very winter, and she was to be with them for the grand object of her coming out. Ned had said that he did not think it was fair to have Christine all that time, unless Sophy had as long a visit from her sister. So it was settled they should both be asked; and in the preparations for receiving them, if Sophy selected any thing particularly pretty for the room she was fitting up for Christine, Ned was sure to find the counterpart of it,-perhaps a little bit more costly, for Jane’s.

  Let us explain that Ned Bardles was by no means what would be called a liberal man. He had made every cent of his money himself, and all too carefully, one by one, not to know the value of every coin of it. But he was just beginning to enjoy the charm of spending, and finding out how large his “margin” was. It is not every millionaire that reaches this bit of knowledge, to be sure. But, again, he might not have been so liberal, had Jane been in any way dependent upon him. Happily the Burgess property had cut up well between the two daughters. Jane for the first time began to appreciate this when she came to stay with her brother-in-law. She had before felt the comfortable consciousness of owning property erty,-of the family mansion, that could always be a roof for her old age; but the activity of the Bardles establishment suddenly showed her the outside charm of money, its pleasant chink, and the delight of changing the coin for some equivalent. Jane did not get away from Greyford till the winter was half over, when an old widow friend of her aunt’s had turned up to stay some months, with her two daughters, and there was no special reason why Jane should be needed there.

  Jane Burgess was one of those receptive beings in whom everybody confides. She was never a confidant, because she was never in the habit of telling her own secrets to another; but, if such a villanous word could be allowed, she was a faithful confidee. She could not sit in a railroad-station two minutes, but what some Irish mother had given her all her history. Indeed, she knew the heart’s romance of that stoical creature who keeps the ladies’ room of the station. It was also asserted that a horse-car conductor had one day sat down by her side, to tell her about his wife’s breaking: her leg. She knew the sorrows and joys of everybody in Greyford. Therefore she had not been in her sister’s house more than a week, before she had been consulted by every member of the family, about some little intricacy. This was fortunate for Jane, because the first morning after her arrival, when they were fairly through breakfast, and she stood for a few moments at the bow-window, looking down the broad street, she suddenly felt all the loneliness of a new place. A bit of home-sickness came over her for dear old Greyford, where she had her set of friends who really needed her. “Nobody wants me here,” she said to herself.

  Sophy, to be sure, was full of occupation, not merely with her six children in the nursery, and the six servants who were to oversee them, but with the successive demands of each day: there was evidently plenty to do. At the breakfast-table the plans for the day had been talked over; and the question was, which of all the proposed things could be done, and how every thing could be got into one short day. Sophy had left the table, saying, “Well, it’s no use planning; somebody will be in and change it all. There’s only one thing certain,-we shan’t do what we have settled to do.”

  Now, this was just what Jane hated. So she said to herself, as she stood by the window. She had been in the habit of leading a well-ordered life. She had her Monday duties, as well as her Sunday ones; and could sit down Saturday evening, with her work-basket well cleared out, and a feeling that the week and its work had been smoothed off even. What was she going to do in this grand chaos, where there was no especial orbit marked out for herself, but, what was worse, those that had orbits amused themselves by dashing into those of other people? It ended, as we have seen, in her becoming the confessor of all. Her reverie of the first morning had been broken by Christine’s exclamation,-

  “Now, Miss Burgess, do give me your opinion! Shall it be green, or blue? they are equally becoming to me.”

  Before the end of the week Christine was calling her “Jeanie,” a shortening of her name, and an endearment, that nobody had ever ventured on before.

  Sophy had confided to her that she hoped Christine would marry a certain Mr. Archer, a second cousin of the Bardles family, whom she thought every thing of; and she hoped Jane would do all she could to assist her.

  Ned had introduced another young man to Jane with especial pomp and ceremony, afterwards explaining to her that his prospects were admirable, and his family of the best, whom, he had settled, would just do for Christine.

  Meanwhile Christine had confided to Jane her own little passion,-quite another “party.”

  Each of Mr. Bardles’s three married sisters took Jane to drive, in their respective coups, on several afternoons, and each gave her the history of their prosperity, and their plans for the rest of the family. His two married brothers, living one on each side of him, told her almost every day what they were worth.

  She knew which was the favorite chair of the old-bachelor uncle, and could make the deaf old aunt hear. Aunt Maria, who always had something severe to say to her nephews and nieces, managed to hear whatever she was not expected to; just as it is the near-sighted people who pick up the pins, and see the basting-threads. The little crippled nephew, who was lifted out of the carriage, and laid tenderly on the sofa, to spend the day with Aunt Sophy, learned to look wistfully round for Jane who showed him the pictures so gently and kindly.

  All of those who found it so easy to pour their pleasures and their trials into Jane’s ear never thought of asking any reciprocal confidences from her. Their pleasure was in recounting and dwelling upon their own triumphs, and trotting themselves out as heroines and heroes before such a ready listener. The invalid boy, indeed, did look anxiously at times to see if Jane were tired of sitting by him, and would hope that he was not keeping her from anything more pleasant. And Christine had, at first, wanted to get at the romance of Jane’s life; for she was wondering very much whether she was perhaps broken-hearted (how delightfully interesting that would be, if it were so!) at the conduct of Jeffrey Fleming. She had heard they were engaged; and now he was spending the winter in Hartford, and Jane never had any letters from there, she was sure. But she never got any confidences from Jane on the subject. The latter was one of those who not only could keep a secret, but always gave the air of having no secret to keep. And all this was done by merely quietly going on as Jane Burgess, just as she did in Greyford. Only, to Sophy’s astonishment, Jane was greatly admired in society. That is a thing nobody can set down any law for; even Mr. Buckle couldn’t. Sophy thought it was because Jane took to crimping her hair; perhaps it was so.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  JANE is by no means the beauty of this story. It has, perhaps, been sufficiently explained that Rachel Holley is. For Rachel always looked like a beauty, wherever you put her. Whether it was her grace, the pose of her classical head, or the glitter of her golden hair, it would be difficult to say. But, however you took her, she had a way of making a frame about herself, and turning into a real picture, whether it was when she stood in the parlor doorway to bid you good-by, or if she were kneeling at Mrs. Worboise’s feet to put on that lady’s “Arctics,” to go to an evening meeting.

  But Jane was always composed, equal to the occasion, and had the grand fund of reserve on hand that always is impressive.

  There was one person who laid a special claim to Jane’s sympathy, and it was
acknowledged by all the Bardles family. This was Mark Hinsdale. He had been received there kindly, and soon became one of the many expected guests who were allowed to drop in at any time. There was a seat for him at the dinner-table, plans for him for the evening’s concert, theatre, or party, whatever it might be.

  Of course, Mark also had to consult and confide with Jane. Every new plan which took form, as he sat in the library waiting of a rainy day for anybody to come and ask for a “sermon-book,” or for “another book,” would be dashed down on paper, to be sent to her. With his vivid imagination, these plans instantly assumed their full proportions; and, as he wrote, the detail wrought itself out, even to refinement. This would all be posted to Jane, and the next time Mark called he would expect her judgment on the whole. It was sometimes a play, sometimes a novel; always it was to be very successful when it had found a publisher, and always Jane was expected, from having read the brief, to retain a complete knowledge of each character, and of all the names. Here, for instance, is the plan of “Bertie Gwynne.”

  LIBRARY, Monday Morning.

  DEAR JANE,-I have had a most interesting talk with an army officer, who has been for three years surveying on the Plains. He has shot buffalo, and, I dare say, scalped Indians, and knows every thing. He knows all our eastern wilderness just as well. What he says confirms my plan for “Bertie Gwynne.” Just look at this table of contents.

  The detail of the book is so extensive, that I cannot give you the plot, but you can read this.