Plato says that we all once had wings, and that they still tend to grow out in us, and that our burnings and aspirations for higher things are like the teething pangs of children. We are trying to cut our wings. Let us not despise these teething seasons. Though the wings do not become apparent, they may be starting under many a rough coat, and on many a clumsy pair of shoulders.
But in our little town of Cloudland, after the heavenly breeze had blown over, there were to be found here and there immortal flowers and leaves from the tree of life, which had blown into many a dwelling.
Poor old drunken Culver, who lived under the hill, and was said to beat his wife, had become a changed man, and used to come out to weekly prayer-meetings. Some tough old family quarrels, such as follow the settlement of wills in a poor country, had at last been brought to an end, and brother had shaken hands with brother; the long root of bitterness had been pulled up and burned on the altar of love. It is true that nobody had become an angel. Poor sharp-tongued Miss Krissy Pike still went on reporting the wasteful excesses she had seen in the minister’s swill-barrel. And some that were crabbed and cross-grained before were so still, and some, perhaps, were a little more snarly than usual, on account of the late over-excitement.
A revival of religion merely makes manifest for a time what religion there is in a community, but it does not exalt men above their nature or above their times. It is neither revelation nor inspiration; it is impulse. It give no new faculties, and it goes at last into that general average of influences which go to make up the progress of a generation.
One terrestrial result of the revival in our academy was that about half a dozen of the boys fell desperately in love with Tina. I have always fancied Tina to be one of that species of womankind that used to be sought out for priestesses to the Delphic oracle. She had a flame-like, impulsive, ethereal temperament, a capacity for sudden inspirations, in which she was carried out of herself, and spoke winged words that made one wonder whence they came. Her religious zeal had impelled her to be the adviser of every one who came near her, and her sayings were quoted, and some of our shaggy, rough-coated mountain boys thought that they had never had an idea of the beauty of holiness before. Poor boys! they were so sacredly simple about it. And Tina came to me with wide brown eyes that sparkled like a cairngorm-stone, and told me that she believed she had found what her peculiar calling was; it was to influence young men in religion! She cited, with enthusiasm, the wonderful results she had been able to produce, the sceptical doubts she had removed, the conceptions of heavenly things that she had been able to pour into their souls.
The divine priestess and I had a grand quarrel one day, because I insisted upon it that these religious ministrations on the part of a beautiful young girl to those of the opposite sex would assuredly end in declarations of love and hopes of marriage.
Girls like Tina are often censured as flirts, – most unjustly so, too. Their unawakened nature gives them no power of perceiving what must be the full extent of their influence over the opposite sex. Tina was warmly social; she was enthusiastic and self-confident, and had precisely that spirit which should fit a woman to be priestess or prophetess, to inspire and to lead. She had a magnetic fervor of nature, an attractive force that warmed in her cheeks and sparkled in her eyes, and seemed to make summer around her. She excited the higher faculties, – poetry, ideality, blissful dreams seemed to be her atmosphere, – and she had a power of quick sympathy, of genuine, spontaneous outburst, that gave to her looks and words almost the value of a caress, so that she was an unconscious deceiver, and seemed always to say more for the individual than she really meant. All men are lovers of sunshine and spring gales, but they are no one’s in particular; and he who seeks to hold them to one heart finds his mistake. Like all others who have a given faculty, Tina loved its exercise, – she loved to influence, loved to feel her power, alike, over man and woman. But who does not know that the power of the sibyl is doubled by the opposition of sex? That which is only acquiescence in a woman friend becomes devotion in a man. That which is admiration from a woman becomes adoration in a man. And of all kinds of power which can be possessed by man or woman, there is none which I think so absolutely intoxicating as this of personal fascination. You may as well blame a bird for wanting to soar and sing as blame such women for the instinctive pleasure they feel in their peculiar king of empire. Yet, in simple good faith, Tina did not want her friends of the other sex to become lovers. She was willing enough that they should devote themselves, under all sorts of illusive names of brother and friend and what-not, but when they proceeded to ask her for herself there was an instant revulsion, as when some person has unguardedly touched a strong electric circle. The first breath of passion repelled her; the friend that had been so agreeable the hour before was unendurable. Over and over again I had seen her go to the same illusive round, always sure that in this instance it was understood that it was to be friendship, and only friendship, or brotherly or Christian love, till the hour came for the electric revulsion, and the friend was lost.
Tina had not learned the modern way of girls, who count their lovers and offers as an Indian does his scalps, and parade the number of their victims before their acquaintances. Every incident of this kind struck her as a catastrophe; and, as Esther, Harry, and I were always warning her, she would come to us like a guilty child, and seek to extenuate her offence. I think the girl was sincere in the wish she often uttered, that she could be a boy, and be loved as a comrade and friend only. “Why must, why would, they always persist in falling into this tiresome result?” “O Horace!” she would say to me, “if I were only Tom Percival, I should be perfectly happy! but it is so stupid to be a girl!”
In my own secret soul I had no kind of wish that she should be Tom Percival, but I did not tell her so. No, I was too wise for that. I knew that my only chance of keeping my position as father confessor to this elastic young penitent consisted in a judicious suppression of all peculiar claims or hopes on my part, and I was often praised and encouraged for this exemplary conduct, and the question pathetically put to me, “Why could n’t the others do as I did?” O Tina, Tina! did your brown eyes see, and your quick senses divine, that there was something in me which you dreaded to awaken, and feared to meet?
There are some men who have a faculty of making themselves the confidants of women. Perhaps because they have a certain amount of the feminine element in their own composition. They seem to be able to sympathize with them on their feminine side, and are capable of running far in a friendship without running fatally into love.
I think I had this power, and on it I founded my hopes in this regard. I enjoyed, in my way, almost as much celebrity in our little circle for advising and guiding my friends of the other sex as Tina did, and I took care to have on hand such a list of intimates as would prevent my name from being coupled with hers in the school gossip.
In these modern times, when man’s fair sister is asking admission at the doors of classic halls, where man has hitherto reigned in monastic solitude, the query is often raised by our modern sociologists, Can man and woman, with propriety, pursue their studies together? Does the great mystery of sex, with its wide laws of attraction, and its strange, blinding, dazzling influences, furnish a sufficient reason why the two halves of creation, made for each other, should be kept during the whole course of education rigorously apart? This question, like a great many others, was solved without discussion by the good sense of our Puritan ancestors, in throwing the country academies, where young men were fitted for college, open alike to both sexes, and in making the work of education of such dignity in the eyes of the community, that first-rate men were willing to adopt it for life. The consequences were, that, in some lonely mountain town, under some brilliant schoolmaster, young men and women actually were studying together the branches usually pursued in college.
“But,” says the modern objector, “bring young men and young women together in these relations, and there will be flirtations and love affairs.”
Even so, my friend, there will be. But flirtations and love affairs among a nice set of girls and boys, in a pure and simple state of community, where love is never thought of, except as leading to lawful marriage, are certainly not the worst things that can be thought of, – not half so bad as the grossness and coarseness and roughness and rudeness of those wholly male schools in which boys fight their way on alone, with no humanizing influences from the other sex.
There was, to be sure, a great crop of love affairs, always green and vigorous, in our academy, and vows of eternal constancy interchanged between boys and girls who afterwards forgot and outgrew them, without breaking their hearts on either side; but for my own part, I think love-making over one’s Latin and Greek much better than the fisting and cuffing and fagging of English schools, or than many another thing to which poor, blindly fermenting boyhood runs when separated from home, mother, and sister, and confined to an atmosphere and surroundings sharply and purely male. It is certain that the companionship of the girl improves the boy, but more doubt has been expressed whether the delicacy of womanhood is not impaired by an early experience of the flatteries and gallantries of the other sex. But, after all, it is no worse for a girl to coquette and flirt in her Latin and mathematical class than to do it in the German or the polka. The studies and drill of the school have a certain repressive influence, wholly wanting in the ball-room and under the gas-light of fashionable parties. In a good school, the standard of attraction is, to some extent, intellectual. The girl is valued for something besides her person; her disposition and character are thoroughly tested, the powers of her mind go for something, and, what is more, she is known in her every-day clothes. On the whole, I do not think a better way can be found to bring the two sexes together, without that false glamour which obscures their knowledge of each other, than to put them side by side in the daily drill of a good literary institution.
Certainly, of all the days that I look back upon, this academy life in Cloudland was the most perfectly happy. It was happier than college life, because of the constant intertwining and companionship with woman, which gave a domestic and family charm to it. It was happy because we were in the first flush of belief in ourselves, and in life.
O that first belief! those incredible first visions! when all things look possible, and one believes in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and sees enchanted palaces in the sunset clouds!
What faith we had in one another, and how wonderful we were in one another’s eyes! Our little clique of four was a sort of holy of holies in our view. We believed that we had secrets of happiness and progress known only to ourselves. We had full faith in one another’s destiny; we were all remarkable people, and destined to do great things.
At the close of the revival, we four, with many others, joined Mr. Avery’s church, – a step which in New England, at this time, meant a conviction of some spiritual experience gained, of some familiar communion with the Great Invisible. Had I found it then? Had I laid hold of that invisible hand, and felt its warmth and reality? Had I heard the beatings of a warm heart under the cold exterior of the regular laws of nature, and found a living God? I thought so. That hand and heart were the hand and heart of Jesus, – the brother, the friend, and the interpreting God for poor, blind, and helpless man.
As we stood together before the pulpit, with about fifty others, on that Sunday most joyful to Mr. Avery’s heart, we made our religious profession with ardent sincerity. The dear man found in that day the reward of all his sorrows, and the fruit of all his labors. He rejoiced in us as first fruits of the millennium, which, having already dawned in his good honest heart, he thought could not be far off from the earth.
Ah! those days of young religion were vaguely and ignorantly beautiful, like all the rest of our outlook on life. We were sincere, and meant to be very good and true and pure, and we knew so little of the world we were living in! The village of Cloudland, without a pauper, with scarcely an ignorant person it, with no temptation, no dissipation, no vice, – what could we know there of the appalling questions of real life? We were hid there together, as in the hollow of God’s hand; and a very sweet and lovely hiding-place it was.
Harry had already chosen his profession; he was to be a clergyman, and study with Mr. Avery when his college course was finished. In those days the young aspirants for the pulpit were not gathered into seminaries, but distributed through the country, studying, writing, and learning the pastoral work by sharing the labors of older pastors. Life looked, therefore, very bright to Harry, for life was, at that age, to live with Esther. Worldly care there was none. Mr. Avery was rich on two hundred and fifty dollars, and there were other places in the mountains where birds sung and flowers grew, where Esther could manage another parsonage, as now her father’s. She lived in the world of taste and intellect and thought. Her love of the beautiful was fed by the cheap delights of nature, and there was no onerous burden of care in looking forward to marriage, such as now besets a young man when he meditates taking to himself some costly piece of modern luxury, – some exotic bird, who must be fed on incense and odors, and for whom any number of gilded cages and costly surroundings may be necessary. Marriage, in the days of which I speak, was a very simple and natural affair, and Harry and Esther enjoyed the full pleasure of talking over and arranging what their future home should be; and Tina, quite as interested as they, drew wonderful pictures of it, and tinted them with every hue of the rainbow.
Mr. Avery talked with me many times to induce me to choose the same profession. He was an enthusiast for it; it was to him a calling that eclipsed all others, and he could wish the man he loved no greater blessedness than to make him a minister.
But I felt within myself a shrinking doubt of my own ability to be the moral guide of others, and my life-long habit of half-sceptical contemplation made it so impossible to believe the New England theology with the perfect, undoubting faith that Mr. Avery had, that I dared not undertake. I did not disbelieve. I would not for the world controvert; but I could not believe with his undoubting enthusiasm. His sword and spear, so effective in his hands, would tremble in mine. I knew that Harry would do something. He had a natural call, a divine impulse, that led him from childhood to sacred ministries; and though he did not more than I accept the system of new-school theology as complete truth, yet I could see that it would furnish to his own devotional nature a stock from which vigorous grafts would shoot forth.
Shall I say, also, that my future was swayed unconsciously by a sort of instinctive perception of what yet might be desired by Tina. Something a little more of this world I seemed to want to lay at her feet. I felt, somehow, that there was in her an aptitude for the perfume and brightness and gayeties of this lower world. And as there must be, not only clergymen, but lawyers, and as men will pay more for getting their own will than for saving their souls, I dreamed of myself, in the future, as a lawyer, – of course a rising one; of course I should win laurels at the bar, and win them by honorable means. I would do it; and Tina should be mistress of a fine, antique house in Boston, like the Kittery’s, with fair, large gardens and pleasant prospects, and she should glitter and burn and twinkle like a gem, in the very front ranks of society. Yes, I was ambitious, but it was for her.
One thing troubled me; every once in a while, in the letters from Miss Mehitable, came one from Ellery Davenport, written in a free, gay, dashing, cavalier style, and addressing Tina with a kind of patronizing freedom that made me ineffably angry. I wanted to shoot him. Such are the risings of the ancient Adam in us, even after we have joined the Church. Tina always laughed at me because I scolded and frowned at these letters, and, I thought, seemed to take rather a perverse pleasure in them. I have often speculated on that trait wherein lovely woman slightly resembles a cat; she cannot, for the life of her, resist the temptation to play with her mouse a little, and rouse it with gentle pats of her velvet paw, just to see what it will do.
I was, of course, understood to be under solemn bond and promise to love Tina only as a brother; but was it not a brother’s duty to watch over his sister? With what satisfaction did I remember all Miss Debby Kittery’s philippics against Ellery Davenport! Did I not believe every word of them heartily? I hated the French language with all my soul, and Ellery Davenport’s proficiency in it; and Tina could not make me more angry than by speaking with admiration of his graceful fluency in French, and expressing rather wilful determinations that, when she got away from Mr. Rossiter’s dictation, she would study it. Mr. Davenport had said that, when he came back to America, he would give her French lessons. He was always kind and polite, and she did n’t doubt that he ‘d give me lessons, too, if I ‘d take them. “French is the language of modern civilization,” said Tina, with the decision of a professor. But she made me promise that I would n’t say a word to her about it before Mr. Rossiter.
“Now, Horace dear, you know,” she said, “that French to him is just like a red rag to a bull; he ‘d begin to roar and lash his sides the minute you said the words, and Mr. Rossiter and I are capital friends now. You ‘ve no idea, Horace, how good he is to me. He takes such an interest in the development of my mind. He writes me a letter or note almost every week about it, and I take his advice, you know, and I would n’t want to hurt his feelings about French, or anything else. What do you suppose he hates the French so for? I should think he was a genuine Englishman, that had been kept awake nights during all the French wars.”
“Well, Tina,” I said, “you know there is a great deal of corrupt and dangerous literature in the French language.”
“What nonsense, Horace! just as if there was n’t in the English language, too, and I none the worse for it. And I ‘m sure there are no ends of bad things in the classical dictionary, and in the mythology. He ‘d better talk about the French language! No, you may depend upon it, Horace, I shall learn French as soon as I leave school.”
It will be inferred from this that my young lady had a considerable share of that quality which Milton represents to have been the ruin of our first mother; namely, a determination to go her own way and see for herself, and have little confidential interviews with the serpent, notwithstanding all that could be urged to the contrary by sober old Adam.
“Of course, Adam,” said Eve, “I can take care of myself, and don’t want you always lumbering after me with your advice. You thing the serpent will injure me, do you? That just shows how little you know about me. The serpent, Adam, is a very agreeable fellow, and helps one to pass away one’s time; but he don’t take me in. O no! there ‘s no danger of his ever getting around me! So, my dear Adam, go your own way in the garden, and let me manage for myself.”
Whether in the celestial regions there will be saints and angels who develop this particular form of self-will, I know not; but in this world of what Mr. Avery called “imperfect sanctification,” religion does n’t prevent the fair angels of the other sex from developing this quality in pretty energetic forms. In fact, I found that, if I was going to guide my Ariadne at all, I must let out my line fast, and let her feel free and unwatched.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MINISTER’S WOOD-SPELL.
IT was in the winter of this next year that the minister’s “wood-spell” was announced.
“What is a wood-spell?” you say. Well, the pastor was settled on the understanding of receiving two hundred dollars a year and his wood; and there was a certain day set apart in the winter, generally in the time of the best sleighing, when every parishioner brought the minister a sled-load of wood; and thus, in the course of time, built him up a mighty wood-pile.
It was one of the great seasons of preparation in the minister’s family, and Tina, Harry, and I had been busy for two or three days beforehand, in helping Esther create the wood-spell cake, which was to be made in quantities large enough to give ample slices to every parishioner. Two days beforehand, the fire was besieged with a row of earthen pots, in which the spicy compound was rising to the necessary lightness, and Harry and I split incredible amounts of oven-wood, and in the evening we sat together stoning raisins round the great kitchen fire, with Mr. Avery in the midst of us, telling us stories and arguing with us, and entering into the hilarity of the thing like a boy. He was so happy in Esther, and delighted to draw the shy color into her cheeks, by some sly joke or allusion, when Harry’s head of golden curls came into close proximity with her smooth black satin tresses.
The cake came out victorious, and we all claimed the merit of it; and a mighty cheese was bought, and every shelf of the closet, and all the dressers of the kitchen, were crowded with the abundance.
We had a jewel of a morning, – one of those sharp, clear sunny winter days, when the sleds squeak over the flinty snow and the little icicles tingle along on the glittering crust as they fell from the trees, and the breath of the slow-pacing oxen steams up like a rosy cloud in the morning sun, and then falls back condensed in little icicles on every hair.
We were all astir early, full of life and vigor. There was a holiday in the academy. Mr. Rossiter had been invited over to the minister’s to chat and tell stories with the farmers, and give them high entertainment. Miss Nervy Randall, more withered and wild in her attire than usual, but eminently serviceable, stood prepared to cut cake and cheese without end, and dispense it with wholesome nods and messages of comfort. The minister himself heated two little old andirons red-hot in the fire, and therewith from time to time stirred up a mighty bowl of flip, which was to flow in abundance to every comer. Not then had the temperance reformation dawned on America, though ten years later Mr. Avery would as soon have been caught in a gambling-saloon as stirring and dispensing a bowl of flip to his parishioners.
Mr. Avery had recently preached a highly popular sermon on agriculture, in which he set forth the dignity of the farmer’s life, from the text, “For the king himself is served of the field”; and there had been a rustle of professional enthusiasm in all the mountain farms around, and it was resolved, by a sort of general consent, that the minister’s wood-pile this year should be of the best; none of your old make-shifts, – loads made out with crooked sticks and snapping chestnut logs, most noisy, and destructive to good wives’ aprons. Good straight shagbark-hickory was voted none too good for the minister. Also the axe was fifed up on many a proud oak and beech and maple. What destruction of glory and beauty there was in those mountain regions! How ruthlessly man destroys in a few hours that which centuries cannot bring again!
What an idea of riches in those glorious woodland regions! We read legends of millionnaires who fed their fires with cinnamon and rolled up thousand-dollar bills into lamp-lighters, in the very wantonness of profusion. But what was that compared to the prodigality which fed our great roaring winter fires on the thousand-leafed oaks, whose conception had been ages ago, – who were children of the light and of the day, – every fragment and fibre of them made of most celestial influences, of sunshine and rain-drops, and night-dews and clouds, slowly working for centuries until they had wrought the wondrous shape into a gigantic miracle of beauty? And then snuffling old Heber Atwood with his two hard-fisted boys, cut one down in a forenoon and made logs of it for the minister’s wood-pile. If this is n’t making light of serious things, we don’t know what is. But think of your wealth, O ye farmers! – think what beauty and glory every year perish to serve your cooking-stoves and chimney-corners.
To tell the truth, very little of such sentiment was in Mr. Avery’s mind or in any of ours. We lived in a woodland region, and we were blasé with the glory of trees. We did admire the splendid elms that hung their cathedral arches over the one central street of Cloudland Village, and on this particular morning they were all aflame like Aladdin’s palace, hanging with emeralds and rubies and crystals, flashing and glittering and dancing in the sunlight. And when the first sled came squeaking up the village street, we did not look upon it as the funereal hearse bearing the honored corpse of a hundred summers, but we boys clapped our hands and shouted, “Hurrah for old Heber!” as his load of magnificent oak, well-breaded with gray moss, came scrunching into the yard. Mr. Avery hastened to draw the hot flip-iron from the fire and stir the foaming bowl. Esther began cutting the first loaf of cake, and Mr. Rossiter walked out and cracked a joke on Heber’s shoulder, whereat all the cast-iron lineaments of his hard features relaxed. Heber had not the remotest idea at this moment that he was to be branded as a tree-murderer. On the contrary, if there was anything for which he valued himself, and with his heart was at this moment swelling with victorious pride, it was his power of cutting down trees. Man he regarded in a physical point of view as principally made to cut down trees, and trees as the natural enemies of man. When he stood under a magnificent oak, and heard the airy rustle of its thousand leaves, to his ear it was always a rustle of defiance, as if the old oak had challenged him to single combat; and Heber would feel of his axe and say, “Next winter, old boy, we ‘ll see, – we ‘ll see!” And at this moment he and his two tall, slab-sided, big-handed boys came into the kitchen with an uplifted air, in which triumph was but just repressed by suitable modesty. They came prepared to be complimented, and they were complimented accordingly.
“Well, Mr. Atwood,” said the minister, “you must have had pretty hard work on that load; that ‘s no ordinary oak; it took strong hands to roll those logs, and yet I don’t see but two of your boys. Where are they all now?”
“Scattered, scattered!” said Heber, as he sat with a great block of cake in one hand, and sipped his mug of flip, looking, with his grizzly beard and shaggy hair and his iron features, like a cross between a polar bear and a man, – a very shrewd, thoughtful, reflective polar bear, however, quite up to any sort of argument with a man.
“Yes, they ‘re scattered,” he said. “We ‘re putty lonesome now ‘t our house. Nobody there but Pars, Dass, Dill, Noah, and ‘Liakim. I ses to Noah and ‘Liakim this mornin’, ‘Ef we had all our boys to hum, we sh’d haf to take up two loads to the minister, sartin, to make it fair on the wood-spell cake.'”
“Where are your boys now?” said Mr. Avery. “I have n’t seen them at meeting now for a good while.”
“Wal, Sol and Tim ‘s gone up to Umbagog, lumberin’; and Tite, he ‘s sailed to Archangel; and Jeduth, he ‘s gone to th’ West Injies for molasses; and Pete, he ‘s gone to the west. Folks begins to talk now ’bout that ‘ere Western kentry, and so Pete, he must go to Buffalo, and see the great West. He ‘s writ back about Niagry Falls. His letters is most amazin’. The old woman, she can’t feel easy ’bout him no way. She insists ‘pon it them Injuns ‘ll scalp him. The old woman is just as choice of her boys as ef she had n’t got just es many es she has.”
“How many sons have you?” said Harry, with a countenance of innocent wonder.
“Wal,” said Heber, “I ‘ve seen the time when I had fourteen good, straight boys, – all on ’em a turnin’ over a log together.”
“Dear me!” said Tina. “Had n’t you any daughters?”
“Gals?” said Heber, reflectively. “Bless you yis. There ‘s been a gal or two ‘long, in between, here an’ there, – don’t jest remember where they come; but, any way, there ‘s plenty of women-folks ‘t our house.”
“Why!” said Tina, with a toss of her pretty head, “you don’t seem to think much of women.”
“Good in their way,” said Heber, shaking his head; “but Adam was fust formed, and then Eve, you know.” Looking more attentively at Tina as she stood bridling and dimpling before him, like a bird just ready to fly, Heber conceived an indistinct idea that he must say something gallant, so he added, “Give all honor to the women, as weaker vessels, ye know; that ‘s sound doctrine, I s’pose.”
Heber having now warmed and refreshed himself, and endowed his minister with what he conceived to be a tip-top, irreproachable load of wood, proceeded, also, to give him the benefit of a little good advice, prefaced by gracious words of encouragement. “I was tellin’ my old woman this mornin’ that I did n’t grudge a cent of my subscription, ’cause your preachin’ lasts well and pays well. Ses I, ‘ Mr. Avery ain’t the kind of man that strikes twelve the fust time. He ‘s a man that ‘ll wear.’ That ‘s what I said fust, and I ‘ve followed y’ up putty close in yer preachin’; but then I ‘ve jest got one word to say to ye. Ain’t free agency a gettin’ a leetle too top-heavy in yer preachin’? Ain’t it kind o’ overgrowin’ sovereignty? Now, ye see, divine sovereignty hes got to be took care of as well as free agency. That ‘s all, that ‘s all. I thought I ‘d jest drop the thought, ye know, and leave you to think on ‘t. This ‘ere last revival you run along considerable on ‘Whosoever will may come,’ an’ all that. Now p’r’aps, ef you ‘d jest tighten up the ropes a leetle t’other side, and give ’em sovereignty, the hull load would sled easier.”
“Well,” said Mr. Avery, “I ‘m much obliged to you for your suggestions.”
“Now there ‘s my wife’s brother Josh Baldwin,” said Heber, “he was delegate to the last Consociation, and he heerd your openin’ sermon, and ses he to me, ses he, ‘Your minister sartin doos slant a leetle towards th’ Arminians; he don’t quite walk the crack,’ Josh says, ses he. Ses I, ‘Josh, we ain’t none on us perfect; but,’ ses I, ‘Mr. Avery ain’t no Arminian, I can tell you. Yeh can’t judge Mr. Avery by one sermon, ‘ ses I. You hear him preach the year round, and ye ‘ll find that all the doctrines git their place.’ Ye see I stood up for ye, Mr. Avery, but I thought ‘t would n’t do no harm to kind o’ let ye know what folks is sayin’.”
Here the theological discussion was abruptly cut short by Deacon Zachary Chipman’s load, which entered the yard amid the huzzahs of the boys. Heber and his boys were at the door in a minute. “Wal, railly, ef the deacon hain’t come down with his shagbark! Wal, wal, the revival has operated on him some, I guess. Last year the deacon sent a load that I ‘d ha’ been ashamed to had in my back yard, an’ I took the liberty o’ tellin’ on him so. Good, straight-grained shagbark. Wal, wal! I ‘ll go out an’ help him onload it. Ef that ‘ere holds out to the bottom, the deacon ‘s done putty wal, an’ I shall think grace has made some progress.”
The deacon, a mournful, dry, shivery-looking man, with a little round bald head, looking wistfully out of a great red comforter, all furry and white with the sharp frosts of the morning, and, with his small read eyes weeping tears through the sharpness of the air, looked as if he had come as chief mourner at the hearse of his beloved hickory-trees. He had cut down the very darlings of his soul, and come up with his precious load, impelled by a divine impulse like that which made the lowing kine, in the Old Testament story, come slowly bearing the ark of God, while their brute hearts were turning toward the calves that they had left at home. Certainly, if virtue is in proportion to sacrifice, Deacon Chipman’s load of hickory had more of self-sacrifice in it than a dozen loads from old Heber; for Heber was a forest prince in his way of doing things, and, with all his shrewd calculations of money’s worth, had an open-handed generosity of nature that made him take a pride in liberal giving.
The little man shrank mournfully into a corner, and sipped his tumbler of flip and ate his cake and cheese as if he had been at a funeral.
“How are you all at home, deacon?” said Mr. Avery heartily.
“Just crawlin’, thank you, – just crawlin’. My old woman don’t git out much; her rheumatiz gits a dreadful strong hold on her; and, Mr. Avery, she hopes you ‘ll be round to visit her ‘fore long. Since the revival she ‘s kind o’ fell into darkness, and don’t see no cheerin’ views. She ses sometimes the universe ain’t nothin’ but blackness and darkness to her.”
“Has she a good appetite?” said Mr. Avery.
“Wal, no. She don’t enjoy her vittles much. Some say she ‘s got the jaunders. I try to cosset her up, and git her to take relishin’ things. I tell her ef she ‘d a good sassage for breakfast of a cold mornin’, with a hearty bit o’ mince-pie, and a cup o’ strong coffee, ‘t would kind o’ set her up for the day; but, somehow, she don’t git no nourishment from her food.”
“There, Rossiter,” we heard Mr. Avery whisper aside, “you see what a country minister has to do, – give cheering views to a dyspeptic that breakfasts on sausage and mince-pies.”
And now the loads began coming thick and fast. Sometimes two and three, and sometimes four and five, came stringing along, one after another, in unbroken procession. For every one Mr. Avery had an appreciative word. Its especial points were noticed and commended, and the farmers themselves, shrewdest observers, looked at every load and gave it their verdict. By and by the kitchen was full of a merry, chatting circle, and Mr. Rossiter and Mr. Avery were telling their best stories, and roars of laughter came from the house.
Tina glanced in and out among the old farmers, like a bright tropical bird, carrying the cake and cheese to each one, laughing and telling stories, dispensing smiles to the younger ones, – treacherous smiles, which meant nothing, but made the hearts beat faster under their shaggy coats; and if she saw a red-fisted fellow in a corner, who seemed to be having a bad time, she would go and sit down by him, and be so gracious and warming and winning that his tongue would be loosened, and he would tell her all about his steers and his calves and his last crop of corn and his load of wood, and then wonder all the way home whether he should ever have, in a house of his own, a pretty little woman like that.
By afternoon, the minister’s wood-pile was enormous. It stretched beyond anything before seen in Cloudland; it exceeded all the legends of neighboring wood-piles and wood-spells related by deacons and lay delegates in the late Consociation. And truly, among things picturesque and graceful, among childish remembrances, dear and cheerful, there is nothing that more speaks to my memory than the dear, good old mossy wood-pile. Harry, Tina, Esther, and I ran up and down and in and about the piles of wood that evening with joyous satisfaction. How fresh and spicy and woodsy it smelt! I can smell now the fragrance of the hickory, whose clear, oily bark in burning cast forth perfume quite equal to cinnamon. Then there was the fragrant black birch, sought and prized by us all for the high-flavored bark on the smaller limbs, which was a favorite species of confectionery to us. There were also the logs of white birch, gleaming up in their purity, from which we made sheets of woodland parchment.
It is recorded of one man who stands in a high position at Washington, that all his earlier writing-lessons were performed upon leaves of the white birch bark, the only paper used in the family.
There there were massive trunks of oak, veritable worlds of mossy vegetation in themselves, with tufts of green velvet nestled away in their bark, and sheets of greenness carpeting their sides, and little white, hoary trees of moss, with little white, hoary apples upon them, like miniature orchards.
One of our most interesting amusements was forming landscapes in the snow, in which we had mountains and hills and valleys, and represented streams of water by means of glass, and clothed the sides of our hills with orchards of apple-trees made of this gray moss. It was an incipient practice at landscape-gardening, for which we found rich material in the wood-pile. Esther and Tina had been filling their aprons with these mossy treasures, for which we had all been searching together, and now we all sat chatting in the evening light. The sun was going down. The sleds had ceased to come, the riches of our woodland treasures were all in, the whole air was full of the trembling, rose-colored light that turned all the snow-covered landscape to brightness. All around us not a fence to be seen, – nothing but waning hollows of spotless snow, glowing with the rosy radiance, and fading away in purple and lilac shadows; and the evening stars began to twinkle, one after another, keen and clear through the frosty air, as we all sat together in triumph on the highest perch of the wood-pile. And Harry said to Esther, “One of these days they ‘ll be bringing in our wood,” and Esther’s cheeks reflected the pink of the sky.
“Yes, indeed!” said Tina. “And then I am coming to live with you. I ‘m going to be an old maid, you know, and I shall help Esther as I do now. I never shall want to be married.”
Just at this moment the ring of sleigh-bells was heard coming up the street. Who and what now? A little one-horse sleigh drove swiftly up to the door, the driver sprang out with a lively alacrity, hitched his horse, and came forward toward the house. In the same moment Tina and I recognized Ellery Davenport!
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ELLERY DAVENPORT.
TINA immediately turned and ran into the house, laughing, and up stairs into her chamber, leaving Esther to go seriously forward, – Esther always tranquil and always ready. For myself, I felt such a vindictive hatred at the moment as really alarmed me. What had this good-natured man done, with his frank, merry face and his easy, high-bred air, that I should hate him so? What sort of Christian was I, to feel in this way? Certainly it was a temptation of the Devil, and I would put it down, and act like a reasonable being. So I went forward with Harry, and he shook hands with us.
“Hulloa, fellows!” he said, “you ‘ve made the great leap since I saw you, and changed from boys into men.”
“Good evening, Miss Avery,” he said, as we presented him to her. “May I trench on your hospitality a little? I am a traveller in these arctic regions, and Miss Mehitable charged me to call and see after the health and happiness of our young friends here. I see,” he said, looking at us, “that there need be no inquiries after health; your looks speak for themselves.”
“Why, Percival!” he said, turning to Harry, “what a pair of shoulders you are getting! Genuine Saxon blood runs in your veins plainly enough, and one of these days, when you get to be Sir Harry Percival, you ‘ll do honor to the name.”
The proud, reserved blood flushed into Harry’s face, and his blue eyes, usually so bright and clear, sparkled with displeasure. I was pleased to see that Ellery Davenport had made him angry. Yes, I said to myself, “What want of tact for him to dare to touch on a subject that Harry’s most intimate friends never speak of!”
Esther looked fixedly at him with those clear, piercing hazel eyes, as if she were mentally studying him. I hoped she would not like him, yet why should I hope so?
He saw in a moment that he had made a mistake, and glided off quickly to another subject.
“Where ‘s my fair little enemy, Miss Tina?” he said.
His “fair little enemy” was at this moment attentively studying him through the crack in the window-curtain. Shall I say, too, that the first thing she did, on rushing up to her room, was to look at her hair, and study herself in the glass, wondering how she would look to him now. Well, she had not seen herself for some hours, and self-knowledge is a virtue, we all know. And then our scamper over the wood-pile, in the fresh, evening air must have deranged something, for Tina had one of those rebellious heads of curls that every breeze takes liberties with, and that have to be looked after and watched and restrained. Esther’s satin bands of hair could pass though a whirlwind, and not lose their gloss. It is curious how character runs even to the minutest thing, – the very hairs of our heads are numbered by it, – Esther, always in everything self-poised, thoughtful, reflective; Tina, the child of every wandering influence, tremulously alive to every new excitement, a wind-harp for every air of heaven to breathe upon.
It would be hard to say what mysterious impulse for good or ill made her turn and run when she saw Ellery Davenport. That turning and running in girls means something; it means that the electric chain had been struck in some way; but how?
Mr. Davenport came into the house, and was received with frank cordiality by Mr. Avery. He was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and the good man regarded him as, in some sort, a son of the Church, and had, no doubt, instantaneous promptings for his conversion. Mr. Avery, though he believed stringently in the doctrine of total depravity, was very innocent in his application of it to individuals. That Ellery Davenport was a sceptic was well known in New England, wherever the reputation of his brilliant talents and person had circulated, and Mr. Avery had often longed for an opportunity to convert him. The dear, good man had no possible idea that anybody could go wrong from any thing but mistaken views, and he was sure, in the case of Ellery Davenport, that his mind must have been perplexed about free agency and decrees, and thus he hailed with delight the Providence which had sent him to his abode. He plunged into an immediate conversation with him about the state of France, whence he had just returned.
Esther, meanwhile, went up stairs to notify Tina of his arrival.
“Mr. Ellery Davenport is below, and had inquired for you.”
Nobody could be more profoundly indifferent to any piece of news.
“Was that Mr. Ellery Davenport? How stupid of him to come here when we are all so tired! I don’t think I can go down; I am too tired.”
Esther, straightforward Esther, took things as stated. Tina, to be sure, had exhibited no symptoms of fatigue up to that moment; but Esther now saw that she had been allowing her to over-exert herself.
“My darling,” she said, “I have been letting you do too much altogether. You are quite right; you should lie down here quietly, and I ‘ll bring you up your tea. Perhaps by and by, in the evening, you might come down and see Mr. Davenport, when you are rested.”
“O nonsense about Mr. Davenport! he does n’t come to see me. He wants to talk to your father, I suppose.”
“But he has inquired for you two or three times,” said Esther, “and he really seems to be a very entertaining, well-informed man; so by and by, if you feel rested, I should think you had better come down.”
Now I, for my part, wondered then and wonder now, and always shall, what all this was for. Tina certainly was not a coquette; she had not learned the art of trading in herself, and using her powers and fascinations as women do who have been in the world, and learnt the precise value of everything that they say and do. She was, at least now, a simple child of nature, yet she acted exactly as an artful coquette might have done.
Ellery Davenport constantly glanced at the door as he talked with Mr. Avery, and shifted uneasily on his chair; evidently he expected her to enter, and when Esther returned without her he was secretly vexed and annoyed. I was glad of it, too, like a fool as I was. It would have been a thousand times better for my hopes had she walked straight out to meet him, cool and friendly, like Esther. There was one comfort; he was a married man; but then that crazy wife of his might die, or might be dead now. Who knew? To be sure, Ellery Davenport never had the air of a married man, – that steady, collected, sensible, restrained air which belongs to the male individual, conscious, wherever he moves, of a home tribunal, to which he is responsible. He had gone loose in society, pitied and petted and caressed by ladies, and everybody said, if his wife should die, Ellery Davenport might marry whom he pleased. Esther knew nothing about him, except a faint general outline of his history. She had no prepossessions for or against, and he laid himself out to please her in conversation, with that easy grace and quick perception of character which were habitual with him. Ellery Davenport had been a thriving young Jacobin, and Mr. Avery and Mr. Rossiter were fierce Federalists.
Mr. Rossiter came in to tea, and both of them bore down exultingly on Ellery Davenport in regard to the disturbances in France.
“Just what I always said!” said Mr. Rossiter. “French democracy is straight from the Devil. It ‘s the child of misrule, and leads to anarchy. See what their revolution is coming to. Well, I may not be orthodox entirely on the question of total depravity, but I always admitted the total depravity of the French nation.”
“O, the French are men of like passions with us!” said Ellery Davenport. “They have been ground down and debased and imbruted till human nature can bear no longer, and now there is a sudden outbreak of the lower classes, – the turning of the worm.”
“Not a worm,” said Mr. Rossiter, “a serpent, and a strong one.”
“Davenport,” said Mr. Avery, “don’t you see that all this is because this revolution is in the hands of atheists?”
“Certainly I do, sir. These fellows have destroyed the faith of the common people, and given them nothing in its place.”
“I am glad to see you recognize that,” said Mr. Avery.
“Recognize, my dear sir! Nobody knows the worth of religion as a political force better than I do. Those French people are just like children, – full of sentiment, full of feeling, full of fire, but without the cold, judging, logical power that is frozen into men here by your New England theology. If I have got to manage a republic, give me Calvinists.”
“You admit, then,” said Mr. Avery, delightedly, “the worth of Calvinism.”
“As a political agent, certainly I do,” said Ellery Davenport. “Men must have strong, positive religious beliefs to give them vigorous self-government; and republics are founded on the self-governing power of the individual.”
“Davenport,” said Mr. Avery, affectionately laying his hand on his shoulder, “I should like to have said that thing myself, I could n’t have put it better.”
“But do you suppose,” said Esther, trembling with eagerness, “that they will behead the Queen?”
“Certainly I do,” said Ellery Davenport, with that air of cheerful composure with which the retailer of the last horror delights to shock the listener. “O certainly! I would n’t give a pin for her chance. You read the account of the trial, I suppose; you saw that it was a foregone conclusion?”
“I did, indeed,” said Esther, “But, O Mr. Davenport! can nothing be done? There is Lafayette; can he do nothing?”
“Lafayette may think himself happy if he keeps his own head on his shoulders,” said Davenport. “The fact is, that there is a wild beast in every human being. In our race it is the lion. In the French race it is the tiger, – hotter, more tropical, more blindly intense in rage and wrath. Religion, government, education, are principally useful in keeping the human dominant over the beast; but when the beast gets above the human in the community, woe be to it.”
“Davenport, you talk like an apostle,” said Mr. Avery.
“You know the devils believe and tremble,” said Ellery.
“Well, I take it,” said Mr. Rossiter, “you ‘ve come home from France disposed to be a good Federalist.”
“Yes, I have,” said Ellery Davenport. “We must all live and learn, you know.”
And so in one evening, Ellery witched himself into the good graces of every one in the simple parsonage; and when Tina at last appeared she found him reigning king of the circle. Mr. Rossiter, having drawn from him the avowal that he was a Federalist, now looked complacently upon him as a hopeful young neophyte. Mr. Avery saw evident marks of grace in his declarations in favor of Calvinism, while yet there was a spicy flavor of the prodigal son about him, – enough to engage him for his conversation. Your wild, wicked, witty prodigal son is to a spiritual huntsman an attractive mark, like some rare kind of eagle, whose ways must be studied, and whose nest must be marked, and in whose free, savage gambols in the blue air and on the mountain-tops he has a kind of hidden sympathy.
When Tina appeared, it was with an air unusually shy and quiet. She took all his compliments on her growth and change of appearance with a negligent, matter-of-course air, seated herself in the most distant part of the room, and remained obstinately still and silent. Nevertheless, it was to be observed that she lost not a word that he said, or a motion that he made. Was she in that stage of attraction which begins with repulsion? Or did she feel stirring within her that intense antagonism which woman sometimes feels toward man, when she instinctively divines that he may be the one who shall one day send a herald and call on her to surrender. Woman are so intense, they have such prophetic, fore-reaching, nervous systems, that sometimes they appear to be endowed with a gift of prophecy. Tina certainly was an innocent child at this time, uncalculating, and acting by instinct alone, and she looked upon Ellery Davenport as a married man, who was and ought to be and would be nothing to her; and yet, for the life of her, she could not treat him as she treated other men.
If there was in him something which powerfully attracted there was also something of the reverse pole of the magnet that repelled, and inspired a feeling not amounting to fear by having an undefined savor of dread, as if some invisible spirit about him gave mysterious warning. There was a sense of such hidden, subtile power under his suavities, the grasp of the iron hand was so plain through the velvet glove, that delicate and impressible natures felt it. Ellery Davenport was prompt and energetic and heroic; he had a great deal of impulsive good-nature, as his history in all our affairs shows. He was always willing to reach out the helping hand, and helped to some purpose when he did so; and yet I felt, rather than could prove, in his presence, that he could be very remorseless and persistently cruel.
Ellery Davenport inherited the whole Edwards nature, without its religious discipline, – a nature strong both in intellect and passion. He was an unbelieving Jonathan Edwards. It was this whole nature that I felt in him, and I looked upon the gradual interest which I saw growing in Tina toward him, in the turning of her thoughts upon him, in her flights from him and attraction to him, as one looks on the struggles of a fascinated bird, who flees and returns, and flees and returns, each time drawn nearer and nearer to the diamond eyes.
These impressions which come to certain kinds of natures are so dim and cloudy, it is so much the habit of the counter-current of life to disregard them, and to feel that an impression of which you have no physical, external proof is of necessity an absurdity and a weakness, that they are seldom acted on, – seldom, at least, in New England, where the habit of logic is so formed from childhood in the mind, and the believing of nothing which you cannot prove is so constant a portion of the life education. Yet with regard to myself, as I have stated before, there was always a sphere of impression surrounding individuals, for which often I could give no reasonable account. It was as if there had been an emanation from the mind, like that from the body. From some it was an emanation of moral health and purity and soundness; from others, the sickly effluvium of moral decay, sometimes penetrating through all sorts of outward graces and accomplishments, like the smell of death though the tube-roses and lilies on the coffin.
I could not prove that Ellery Davenport was a wicked man but I had an instinctive abhorrence of him, for which I reproached myself constantly, deeming it only the madness of an unreasonable jealousy.
His stay with us at this time was only for a few hours. The next morning he took Harry alone and communicated to him some intelligence quite important to his future.
“I have been to visit your father,” he said, “and have made him aware what treasures he possesses in his children.”
“His children have no desire that he should be made aware of it,” said Harry, coldly. “He has broken all ties between them and him.”
“Well, well!” said Ellery Davenport, “the fact is Sir Harry had gone into the virtuous stage of an Englishman’s life, where a man is busy taking care of gouty feet, looking after his tenants, and repenting at his leisure of the sins of his youth. But you will find, when you come to enter college next year, that there will be a handsome allowance at your disposal; and, between you and me, I ‘ll just say to you that young Sir Harry is about as puny and feeble a little bit of mortality as I ever saw. To my way of thinking, they ‘ll never raise him; and his life is all that stands between you and the estate. You know that I got your mother’s marriage certificate, and it is safe in Parson Lothrop’s hands. So you see there may be a brilliant future before you and your sister. It is well enough for you to know it early, and keep yourself and her free from entanglements. School friendships and flirtations and all that sort of thing are pretty little spring flowers, – very charming in their way and time; but it is n’t advisable to let them lead us into compromising ourselves for life. If your future home is to be England, of course you will want your marriage to strengthen your position there.”
“My future home will never be England,” said Harry, briefly. “America has nursed me and educated me, and I shall always be, heart and soul, an American. My life must be acted in this country.”
The other suggestion contained in Ellery Davenport’s advice was passed over without a word. Harry was not one that could discuss his private relations with a stranger. He could not but feel obliged to Ellery Davenport for the interest that he had manifested in him, and yet there was something about this easy patronizing manner of giving advice that galled him. He was not yet old enough not to feel vexed at being reminded he was young.
It seemed but a few hours, and Ellery Davenport was gone again; and yet how he had changed everything! The hour that he drove up, how perfectly innocently happy and united we all were! Our thoughts needed not to go beyond the present moment: the moss that we had gathered from the wood-pile, and the landscapes that we were going to make with it, were greater treasures than all those of that unknown world of brightness and cleverness and wealth and station, out of which Ellery Davenport had shot like a comet, to astonish us, and then go back and leave us in obscurity.
Harry communicated the intelligence given him by Ellery Davenport, first to me, then to Tina and Esther and Mr. Avery, but begged that it not be spoken of beyond our little circle. It could and it should make no change, he said. But can expectations of such magnitude be awakened in young minds without change?
On the whole, Ellery Davenport left a trail of brightness behind him, notwithstanding my sinister suspicions. “How open-handed and friendly it was of him,” said Esther, “to come up here, when he had so much on his hands! He told father that he should have to be in Washington next week, to talk with them there about the French affairs.”
“And I hope he may do Tom Jefferson some good!” said Mr. Avery, indignantly, – “teach him what he is doing in encouraging this hideous, atheistical French revolution! Why, it will bring discredit on republics, and put back the cause of liberty in Europe a century! Davenport sees into that as plainly as I do.”
“He ‘s a shrewd fellow,” said Mr. Rossiter. “I heard him talk three or four years ago, when he was over here, and he was about as glib-tongued a Jacobin as you ‘d wish to see; but now my young man has come around handsomely. I told him he ought to tell Jefferson just how the thing is working. I go for government by the respectable classes of society.”
“Davenport evidently is not a regenerated man,” said Mr. Avery, thoughtfully; “but as far as speculative knowledge goes, he is as good a theologian as his grandfather. I had a pretty thorough talk with him, before we went to bed last night, and he laid down the distinctions with a clearness and a precision that were astonishing. He sees right through that point of difference between natural and moral inability, and he put it into a sentence that was as neat and compact and clear as a quartz crystal. I think there was a little rub in his mind on the consistency of the freedom of the will with the divine decrees and I just touched him off with an illustration or two there, and I could see, by the flash of his eye, how quickly he took it. ‘davenport,’ said I to him, ‘you are made for the pulpit; you ought to be in it.’
“‘I know it,’ he said, ‘mr. Avery; but the trouble is, I am not good enough. I think,’ he said, ‘sometimes I should like to have been as good a man as my grandfather; but then, you see, there ‘s the world, the flesh, and the Devil, who all have something to say to that.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘davenport, the world and the flesh last only a little while – ‘
“‘But the Devil and I last forever, I suppose you mean to say,’ said he, getting up with a sort of careless swing; and then he said he must go to bed; but before he went he reached out his hand and smiled on me, and said, ‘Good night, and thank you, Mr. Avery.’ That man has a beautiful smile. It ‘s like a spirit in his face.”
Had Ellery Davenport been acting the hypocrite with Mr. Avery? Supposing a man is made like an organ, with two or three bands of keys, and ever so many stops, so that he can play all sorts of tunes on himself; is it being a hypocrite with each person to play precisely the tune, and draw out exactly the stop, which he knows will make himself agreeable and further his purposes? Ellery Davenport did understand the New England theology as thoroughly as Mr. Avery. He knew it from turret to foundation-stone. He knew all the evidences of natural and revealed religion, and, when he chose to do so, could make most conclusive arguments upon them. He had a perfect appreciation of devotional religion, and knew precisely what it would do for individuals. He saw into politics with unerring precision, and knew what was in men, and whither things were tending. His unbelief was purely and simply what had been called in New England the natural opposition of the heart to God. He loved his own will, and he hated control, and he determined, per fas aut nefas, to carry his own plans in this world, and attend to the other when he got to it. To have his own way, and to carry his own points, and to do so as he pleased, were the ruling purposes of his life.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
LAST DAYS IN CLOUD-LAND.
THE day was coming now that the idyl of Cloudland must end, and our last term wound up with a grand dramatic entertainment.
It was a time-honored custom in New England academics to act a play once a year as the closing exercise, and we resolved that our performance should surpass all other in scenic effect.
The theme of the play was to be the story of Jephthah’s daughter, from the Old Testament. It had been suggested at first to take Miss Hannah More’s sacred drama upon this subject; but Tina insisted upon it that it would be a great deal better to write an original drama ourselves, each taking a character, and composing one’s own part.
Tina was to be Jephthah’s daughter, and Esther her mother; and a long opening scene between them was gotten up by the two in a private session at their desks in the school-room one night, and, when perfected, was read to Harry and me for our critical judgement. The conversation was conducted in blank verse, with the usual appropriate trimmings and flourishes of that species of literature, and, on the whole, even at this time, I do not see but that it was quite as good as Miss Hannah More’s.
There was some skirmishing between Harry and myself about our parts, Harry being, as I thought, rather too golden-haired and blue-eyed for the grim resolve and fierce agonies of Jephthah. Moreover, the other part was to be that of Tina’s lover, and he was to act very desperate verses indeed, and I represented to Harry privately that here, for obvious reasons, I was calculated to succeed. But Tina overruled me with that easy fluency of good reasons which the young lady always had at command. “Harry would make altogether the best lover,” she said; “he was just cut out for a lover. Then, besides, what does Horace know about it? Harry has been practising for six months, and Horace has n’t even begun to think of such things yet.”
This was one of those stringent declarations that my young lady was always making with regard to me, giving me to understand that her whole confidence in me was built entirely upon my discretion. Well, I was happy enough to let it go so, for Ellery Davenport had gone like an evening meteor, and we had ceased talking and thinking about him. He was out of our horizon entirely. So we spouted blank verse at each other, morning, noon, and night, with the most cheerful courage. Tina and Harry had, both of them, a considerable share of artistic talent, and made themselves very busy in drawing and painting scenery, – a work in which the lady principal, Miss Titcomb, gave every assistance; although, as Tina said, her views of scenery were mostly confined to what was proper for tombstones. “But then,” she added, “let her have the whole planning of my grave, with a great weeping willow over it, – that ‘ll be superb! I believe the weeping willows will be out by that time, and we can have real branches. Won’t that be splendid!”
Then there was the necessity of making our own drama popular, by getting in the greatest possible number of our intimate friends and acquaintances. So Jephthah had to marshal an army on the stage, and there was no end of paper helmets to be made. In fact, every girl in school who could turn her hand to anything was making a paper helmet.
There was to be a procession of Judæan maidens across the stage, bearing the body of Jephthah’s daughter on a bier, after the sacrifice. This took in every leading girl in the school; and as they were all to be dressed in white, with blue ribbons, one may fancy the preparation going on in all the houses far and near. There was also to be a procession of youths, bearing the body of the faithful lover, who, of course, was to die, to keep departed company in the shades.
We had rehearsals every night for a fortnight, and Harry, Tina, and I officiated as stage-managers. It is incredible the trouble we had. Esther acted the part of Judæan matron to perfection, – her long black hair being let down and dressed after a picture in the Biblical Dictionary, which Tina insisted upon must be authentic. Esther, however, rebelled at the nose-jewels. There was no making her understand the Oriental taste of the thing; she absolutely declined the embellishment, and finally it was agreed among us that the nose-jewels should be left to the imagination.
Harry looked magnificent, with the help of a dark mustache, which Tina very adroitly compounded of black ravelled yarn, arranging it with such delicacy that it had quite the effect of hair. The difficulty was that in impassioned moments the mustache was apt to get awry; and once or twice, while on his knees before Tina in tragical attitudes, this occurrence set her off into hysterical giggles, which spoiled the effect of the rehearsal. But at last we contrived a plaster which the most desperate plunges of agony could not possibly disarrange.
As my eyes and hair were black, when I had mounted a towering helmet overshadowed by a crest of bear-skin, fresh from an authentic bear that Heber Atwood had killed only two weeks before, I made a most fateful and portentous Jephthah, and flattered myself secretly on the tragical and gloomy emotions excited in the breasts of divers of my female friends.
I composed for myself a most towering and lofty entrance scene, when I came in glory at the head of my troops. I could not help plagiarizing Miss Hannah More’s first line: –
“On Jordan’s banks proud Ammon’s banners wave.”
Any writer of poems will pity me, when he remembers his own position, if he has ever tried to make a verse on some subject and been stuck and pierced through by some line of another poet, which so sticks in his head and his memory that there is no possibility of his saying the thing any other way. I tried beginning, –
“On Salem’s plains the summer sun is bright”;
but when I looked at my troop of helmets and the very startling banner which we were to display, and reflected that Josh Billings was to give an inspiring blast on a bugle behind the scenes, I perfectly longed to do the glorious and magnificent, and this resounding line stood right in my way.
“Well, dear me, Horace,” said Tina, “take it, and branch off from it, – make a text of it.”
And so I did. How martial and Miltonic I was! I really made myself feel quite serious and solemn with the pomp and glory of my own language; but I contrived to introduce into my resounding verses and most touching description of my daughter, in which I exhausted Oriental images and similes on her charms. Esther and I were to have rather a tender scene, on parting, as she was to be my wife; but then we minded it not a jot. The adroitness with which both these young girls avoided getting into relations that might savor of reality was an eminent instance of feminine tact. And while Harry was playing the impassioned lover at Tina’s feet, Esther looked at him slyly, with just the slightest shade of consciousness, – something as slight as the quivering of an eyelash, or a tremulous flush on her fair cheek. There was fire under that rose-colored snow after all, and that was what gave a subtle charm to the whole thing.