Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation, or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that you were invited, you were expected, and they are doing for you the best they can, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be treated.
If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to feeling at home with them.
Three months after, you go to see them again, when lo! there you are, back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for comfortable converse.
The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front parlour, with Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in Emmy’s letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct, that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten, or the most impudent Scotch terrier. At a glance you perceive, on entering, that nothing but correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation is possible there.
The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, — bent on improvement, laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put forth its head in the neighbourhood, of which they were not the support and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township of —— ; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But when I saw them that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their respective corners on each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle, — she so collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to “entertain strangers,” and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent women, — I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped in some petrifying spring, and was beginning to feel myself slightly crusting over on the exterior.
This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one’s carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man, — if Mrs. Evans ever was a girl, — if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when he was.
I thought of the lock of Emmy’s hair which I had observed in John’s writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her, — of sundry little movements in which, at awkward moments, I had detected my grave and serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls, or retired corners, — and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how came they ever to be married?
I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed, — she, the wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to us, — that little unpunctuated scrap of life’s poetry, full of little exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her little mobile face, — an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness, as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them, and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back, and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get the parlour into a general whirl before the very face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but “the spirits” were too strong for me; I couldn’t do it.
I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat her John in the days of their engagement, — the little ways, half loving, half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over him. Now she called him “Mr. Evans,” with an anxious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off, like many-coloured sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening — my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill-pond, — in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my room.
When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She sat down the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat, laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my knee.
“It does look so like home to see you, Chris! — dear, dear home! — and the dear old folks! There never, never was such a home! — everybody there did just what they wanted to, didn’t they, Chris? — and we love each other, don’t we?”
“Emmy,” said I, suddenly, and very improperly, “you aren’t happy here.”
“Not happy!” she said, with a half-frightened look,—”what makes you say so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should be very unreasonable and wicked if I were not. I am very, very happy, I assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can’t be like our folks at home. That I should not expect, you know, — people’s ways are different, — but then, when you know people are so good, and all that, why, of course you
must be thankful, — be happy. It’s better for me to learn to control my feelings, you know, and not to give way to impulses. They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings, — they always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!”
“And agreeable?” said I.
“Oh, Chris, we musn’t think so much of that. They certainly aren’t pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they never scold, they always are good, and we oughtn’t to think so much of living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our duty, don’t you think so?”
“All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their front parlour is like a tomb. You musn’t let them petrify him.”
Her face clouded over a little.
“John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been brought up differently, — oh, entirely differently from what we were; and when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is very busy, — works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me, but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact obedience. I remember John’s telling me of his running to her once and hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his shoes, and she took off his arms and said, ‘My son, this isn’t the best way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to do what I say.’”
“Dreadful old jade!” said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.
“Now, Chris, I won’t have anything to say to you, if this is the way you are going to talk,” said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam darted into her eyes. “Really, however, I think she carries things too far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how he was brought up.”
“Poor fellow!” said I. “I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there, inside the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round.”
“They are all warm-hearted inside,” said Emily. “Would you think she didn’t love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It’s perfectly dreadful, sometimes, to see how intense she is when anything concerns him; it’s her principle that makes her so cold and quiet.”
“And a devilish one it is!” said I.
“Chris, you are really growing wicked!”
“I use the word seriously, and in good faith,” said I. “Who but the Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key, that, for the greater part of our lives, we get no use of it? Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I’ll venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen islands, knowing as little of each other’s inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of ice, — and all because a cursed principle in the heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to nature.”
“Well,” said Emmy, “sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age; and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been. The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I couldn’t help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes; but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in her dry voice, —
“ ‘Jane, what’s the matter?’
“ ‘Oh, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!’
“I wanted to jump and run to do something for her — you know at our house we feel that a sick person must be waited on; but her mother only said, in the same dry way, —
“ ‘Well, Jane, you’ve probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water and go to bed at once;’ and Jane meekly departed.
“I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it’s curious, in this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me as she went out, with a significant nod, —
“ ‘That’s always my way; if any of the children are sick, I never coddle them; it’s best to teach them to make as light of it as possible.’”
“Dreadful!” said I.
“Yes, it is dreadful,” said Emmy, drawing her breath, as if relieved that she might speak her mind; “it’s dreadful to see these people, who I know love each other, living side by side and never saying a loving, tender word, never doing a little loving thing, — sick ones crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting in being alone, bearing everything alone. But I won’t let them; I will insist on forcing my way into their rooms. I would go and sit with Jane, and pet her, and hold her hand and bathe her head, though I knew it made her horribly uncomfortable at first; but I thought she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian way when she was sick. I will kiss her, too, sometimes; though she takes it just like a cat that isn’t used to being stroked, and calls me a silly girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people’s loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed; but it would all go inward, — drop silently down into that dark, cold, frozen well; they couldn’t speak to each other; they couldn’t comfort each other; they have lost the power of expression; they absolutely can’t.”
“Yes,” said I, “they are like the fakirs who have held up an arm till it has become stiffened, — they cannot now change its position; like the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. Their education has been like those iron suits of armour into which little boys were put in the middle ages, solid, inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year’s growth, till the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, never will be what he might have been.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is!”
“I do think how good he is,” — with indignation,—”and how few know it, too. I think that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the love of woman; and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends to go back to stone.”
“But I shan’t let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a good deal; in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place, — —”
“In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff and shroude
d as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck: don’t you remember him?”
“Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round, while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow that — —”
“That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since on his poor feet.”
“Oh, but I won’t freeze in,” she said, laughing.
“Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized; your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing. While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself.”
“Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping soon.”
“Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to daily inspection.”
“But mamma never interferes, never advises, — unless I ask advice.”
“No, but she influences; she lives, she looks, she is there; and while she is there, and while your home is within a stone’s throw, the old spell will be on your husband, on your children, if you have any; you will feel it in the air; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will rule your house, it will bring up your children.”
“Oh, no! never! never! I never could! I never will! If God should give me a dear little child, I will not let it grow up in these hateful ways!”
“Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, undefined, but real friction of your life-power, from the silent grating of your wishes and feelings on the cold, positive millstone of their opinion; it will be a life-battle with a quiet, invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show himself in fair fight, but who will be around you in the very air you breathe, at your pillow when you lie down and when you rise. There is so much in these friends of yours noble, wise, severely good, — their aims are so high, their efficacy so great, their virtues so many, — that they will act upon you with the force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insensibly constraining you into their moulds. They have stronger wills, stronger natures than yours; and between the two forces of your own nature and theirs you will be always oscillating, so that you will never show what you can do, working either in your own way or yet in theirs: your life will be a failure.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 521