University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
WHICH GIVES THE HISTORY OF AN ANNIVERSARY, PRESENTS A
TABLEAU, AND DROPS THE CURTAIN.

Three months after Mr. Belcher's escape, the great world
hardly remembered that such a man as he had ever lived.
Other rascals took his place, and absorbed the public attention,
having failed to learn—what even their betters were
slow to apprehend—that every strong, active, bad man is
systematically engaged in creating and shaping the instruments
for his own destruction. Men continued to be dazzled
by their own success, until they could see neither the truth
and right that lay along their way, nor the tragic end that
awaited them.

The execution in satisfaction of the judgment obtained
against Mr. Belcher was promptly issued and levied; claimants
and creditors of various sorts took all that the execution left;
Mrs. Belcher and her children went to their friends in the
country; the Sevenoaks property was bought for Mr. Benedict,
and a thousand lives were adjusted to the new circumstances;
but narrative palls when its details are anticipated.
Let us pass them, regarding them simply as memories coming
up—sometimes faintly, sometimes freshly—from the swiftly
retiring years, and close the book, as we began it, with a
picture.

Sevenoaks looks, in its main features, as it looked when the
reader first saw it. The river rolls through it with the old
song that the dwellers upon its banks have heard through all
these changing years. The workmen and workwomen come

and go in the mill, in their daily round of duty, as they did
when Phipps, and the gray trotters, and the great proprietor
were daily visions of the streets. The little tailoress returns
twice a year with her thrifty husband, to revisit her old
friends; and she brings at last a little one, which she shows
with great pride. Sevenoaks has become a summer thoroughfare
to the woods, where Jim receives the city-folk in
incredible numbers.

We look in upon the village on a certain summer evening,
at five years' remove from the first occupation of the Belcher
mansion by Mr. Benedict. The mist above the falls cools the
air and bathes the trees as it did when Robert Belcher looked
upon it as the incense which rose to his lordly enterprise.
The nestling cottages, the busy shops, the fresh-looking spires,
the distant woods, the more distant mountain, the old Seven
Oaks upon the Western plateau and the beautiful residence
behind them, are the same to-day that they were when we
first looked upon them; but a new life and a new influence
inform them all. Nature holds her unvarying frame, but the
life upon the canvas is what we paint from year to year. The
river sings to vice as it sings to virtue. The birds carol
the same, whether selfishness or love be listening. The
great mountains rejoice in the sun, or drape their brows in
clouds, irrespective of the eyes that regard them.

This one fact remains good in Sevenoaks, and the world
over. The man who holds the financial power and the social
throne of a town, makes that town, in a good degree, what
he is. If he is virtuous, noble, unselfish, good, the elements
beneath him shape themselves, consciously or unconsciously,
to his character. Vice shrinks into disgrace, or flies to more
congenial haunts. The greed for gold which grasps and
over-reaches, becomes ashamed, or changes to neighborly
helpfulness. The discontent that springs up in the shadow
of an unprincipled and boastful worldly success, dies; and
men become happy in the toil that wins a comfortable shelter
and daily bread, when he to whom all look up, looks down

upon them with friendly and sympathetic eyes, and holds his
wealth and power in service of their good.

Paul Benedict is now the proprietor of Sevenoaks; and
from the happy day in which he, with his sister and child,
came to the occupation of the mansion which his old persecutor
had built for himself, the fortunes and character of the town
have mended. Even the poor-house has grown more comfortable
in its apartments and administration, while year by
year its population has decreased. Through these first years,
the quiet man has moved around his mill and his garden, his
mind teeming with suggestions, and filling with new interest in
their work the dull brains that had been worn deep and dry
with routine. All eyes turn upon him with affection. He is
their brother as well as their master.

In the great house, there is a happy woman. She has found
something to love and something to do. These were all she
needed to make her supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in
the best degree, womanly. Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her
young affections to gold at the first, and wasting years in
idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack of affection and
the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she has
found, at last, the secret of her woman's life, and has accepted
it with genuine gratitude. In ministering to her brother
and her brother's child, now a stalwart lad, in watching
with untiring eyes and helping with ready with the unused
proprietor in his new circumstances, and in assisting the poor
around her, she finds her days full of toil and significance,
and her nights brief with grateful sleep. She is the great
lady of the village, holding high consideration from her relationship
to the proprietor, and bestowing importance upon
him by her revelation of his origin and his city associations.

The special summer evening to which we allude is one
which has long been looked forward to by all the people in
whom our story has made the reader sympathetically interested.
It is an anniversary—the fifth since the new family
took up their residence in the grand house. Mr. and Mrs.

Balfour with their boy are there. Sam Yates is there—now
the agent of the mill—a trusty, prosperous man; and by a
process of which we have had no opportunity to note the details,
he has transformed Miss Snow into Mrs. Yates. The
matter was concluded some years ago, and they seem quite
wonted to each other. The Rev. Mr. Snow, grown thinner
and grayer, and a great deal happier, is there with his wife
and his two unmarried daughters. He finds it easier to “take
things as they air,” than formerly, and, by his old bridge,
holds them against all comers. And who is this, and who are
these? Jim Fenton, very much smoothed exteriorly, but
jolly, acute, outspoken, peculiar as ever. He walks around
the garden with a boy on his shoulder. The “little feller”
that originally appeared in Mr. Benedict's plans of the new
hotel is now in his hands—veritable flesh and blood; and
“the little woman,” sitting with Mrs. Snow, while Mrs. Dillingham
directs the arrangement of the banquet that is being
spread in the pagoda, watches the pair, and exclaims: “Look
at them! now isn't it ridiculous?”

The warm sun hides himself behind the western hill,
though still an hour above his setting. The roar of the falling
river rises to their ears, the sound of the factory bell echoes
among the hills, and the crowd of grimy workmen and workwomen
pours forth, darkening the one street that leads from
the mill, and dissipating itself among the waiting cottages.
All is tranquillity and beauty, while the party gather to
their out-door feast.

It is hardly a merry company, though a very happy one.
It is the latest issue of a tragedy in which all have borne more
or less important parts. The most thoughtless of them cannot
but feel that a more powerful hand than their own has
shaped their lives and determined their destinies.

The boys are called in, and the company gather to their
banquet, amid conversation and laughter.

Mr. Balfour turns to Jim and says: “How does this compare
with Number Nine, Jim? Isn't this better than the woods?”

Jim has been surveying the preparations with a critical and
professional eye, for professional purposes. The hotel-keeper
keeps himself constantly open to suggestions, and the table
before him suggests so much, that his own establishment seems
very humble and imperfect.

“I ben thinkin' about it,” Jim responds. “When a man
has got all he wants, he's brung up standin' at the end of his
road. If thar ain't comfort then, then there ain't no comfort.
When he's got more nor he wants, then he's got by comfort,
and runnin' away from it. I hearn the women talk about
churnin' by, so that the butter never comes, an' a man as
has more money nor he wants churns by his comfort, an'
spends his life swashin' with his dasher, and wonderin' where
his butter is. Old Belcher's butter never come, but he worked
away till his churn blowed up, an' he went up with it.”

“So you think our good friend Mr. Benedict has got so
much that he has left comfort behind,” says Mr. Balfour with
a laugh.

“I should be afeard he had, if he could reelize it was all
his'n, but he can't. He hain't got no more comfort here, no
way, nor he used to have in the woods.” Then Jim leans
over to Mr. Balfour's ear, and says: “It's the woman as does
it. It's purty to look at, but it's too pertickler for comfort.”

Mr. Balfour sees that he and Jim are observed, and so speaks
louder. “There is one thing,” he says: “that I have
learned in the course of this business. It does not lie very
deep, but it is at least worth speaking of. I have learned how
infinitely more interesting and picturesque vulgar poverty is
than vulgar riches. One can find more poetry in a log cabin
than in all that wealth ever crowded into Palgrave's Folly.
If poor men and poor women, honest and patient workers,
could only apprehend the poetical aspects of their own lives
and conditions, instead of imagining that wealth holds a
monopoly of the poetry of life, they would see that they have
the best of it, and are really enviable people.”

Jim knows, of course, that his old cabin in the woods is in

Mr. Balfour's mind, and feels himself called upon to say
something in response. “If so be as ye're 'ludin' at me,”
says he, “I'm much obleeged to ye, but I perfer a hotel to a
log cabin, pertickler with a little woman and a little feller in
it, Paul B., by name.”

“That's all right, Jim,” says Mr. Balfour, “but I don't
call that vulgar wealth which is won slowly, by honest industry.
A man who has more money than he has brains, and
makes his surroundings the advertisement of his possessions,
rather than the expression of his culture, is a vulgar man, or
a man of vulgar wealth.”

“Did ye ever think,” says Jim, “that riches rots or keeps
accordin' to their natur?—rots or keeps,” he goes on, “accordin'
to what goes into 'em when a man is gitten' 'em
together? Blood isn't a purty thing to mix with money, an'
I perfer mine dry. A golden sweetin' grows quick an' makes
a big show, but ye can't keep it through the winter.”

“That's true, Jim,” responds Mr. Balfour. “Wealth takes
into itself the qualities by which it is won. Gathered by
crime or fraud, and gathered in haste, it becomes a curse to
those who hold it, and falls into ruin by its own corruptions.
Acquired by honest toil, manly frugality, patient endurance,
and patient waiting, it is full of good, and holds together by
a force within itself.”

“Poor Mrs. Belcher!” exclaims Mrs. Dillingham, as the
reflection comes to her that that amiable lady was once the
mistress of the beautiful establishment over which she has
been called upon to preside.

“They say she is living nicely,” sayd Mr. Snow, “and
that somebody sends her money, though she does not know
where it comes from. It is supposed that her husband saved
something, and keeps himself out of sight, while he looks
after his family.”

Mr. Benedict and Mrs. Dillingham exchange significant
glances. Jim is a witness of the act, and knows what it
means. He leans over to Mr. Benedict, and says: “When

I seen sheet-lightnin', I know there's a shower where it comes
from. Ye can't fool me about ma'am Belcher's money.”

“You will not tell anybody, Jim,” says Mr. Benedict, in
a low tone.

“Nobody but the little woman,” responds Jim; and then,
seeing that his “little feller,” in the distance, is draining
a cup with more than becoming leisure, he shouts down the
table: “Paul B! Paul B! Ye can't git that mug on to yer
head with the brim in yer mouth. It isn't yer size, an' it
doesn't look purty on ye.”

“I should like to know where the old rascal is,” says Mrs.
Snow, going back to the suggestion that Mr. Belcher was
supplying his family with money.

“Well, I can tell ye,” replies Jim. “I've been a keepin'
it in for this very meetin'.”

“Oh Jim!” exclaim half a dozen voices, which means:
“we are dying to hear all about it.”

“Well,” says Jim, “there was a feller as come to my
hotel a month ago, and says he: `Jim, did ye ever know
what had become of old Belcher?' `No,' says I, `I only
knowed he cut a big stick, an' slid.' `Well,' says he, `I seen
'im a month ago, with whiskers enough on 'is ugly face to set
up a barberry-bush.' Says I, `Where did ye seen 'im?'
`Where do ye guess', says he?' `Swoppin' a blind hoss',
says I, `fur a decent one, an' gettin' boot.' `No,' says he,
`guess agin.' `Preachin' at a camp-meetin',' says I, `an'
passin' round a hat arter it.' `No,' says he, `I seen 'im
jest where he belonged. He was tendin' a little bar, on a
S'n' Lor'nce steamboat. He was settin' on a big stool in
the middle of 'is bottles, where he could reach 'em all without
droppin' from his roost, an' when his customers was out he
was a peekin' into a little lookin'-glass, as stood aside of 'im,
an' a combin' out his baird.' `That settles it,' says I, `you've
seen 'im, an no mistake.' `Then,' says he, `I called 'im
`General,' an' he looked kind a skeered, an' says 'e to me,
`Mum's the word! Crooked Valley an' Air Line is played

out, an' I'm workin' up a corner in Salt River,'—laughin',
an' offerin' to treat.'

“I wonder how he came in such a place as that,” says
Mrs. Snow.

“That's the funniest part on't,” responds Jim. “He
found an old friend on the boat, as was much of a gentleman,
—an old friend as was dressed within an inch of his life, an'
sold the tickets.”

“Phipps!” “Phipps!” shout half a dozen voices, and
a boisterous laugh goes around the group.

“Ye've guessed right the fust time,” Jim continues, “an'
the gentlemanlest clerk, an' the poplarest man as ever writ
names in a book, an' made change on a counter, with no
end o' rings an' hankercher-pins, an' presents of silver mugs,
an' rampin' resolootions of admirin' passingers. An' there
the two fellers be, a sailin' up an' down the S'n.' Lor'nce,
as happy as two clams in high water, workin' up corners in
their wages, an' playin' into one another's hands like a pair
of pickpockets; and what do ye think old Belcher said about
Phipps?”

“What did he say?” comes from every side.

“Well, I can't tell percisely,” responds Jim. “Fust he
said it was proverdential, as Phipps run away when he did;
an' then he put in somethin' that sounded as if it come from
a book,—somethin' about tunin' the wind to the sheared
ram.”

Jim is very doubtful about his quotation, and actually
blushes scarlet under the fire of laughter that greets him
from every quarter.

“I'm glad if it 'muses ye,” says Jim, “but it wasn't anything
better nor that, considerin' the man as took it to himself.”

“Jim, you'll be obliged to read up,” says “the little
woman,” who still stands by her early resolutions to take her
husband for what he is, and enjoy his peculiarities with her
neighbors.

“I be as I be,” he responds. “I can keep a hotel, an'
make money on it, an' pervide for my own, but when it
comes to books ye can trip me with a feather.”

The little banquet draws to a close, and now two or three
inquire together for Mr. Yates. He has mysteriously disappeared!
The children have already left the table, and
Paul B. is romping with a great show of equine spirit about
the garden paths, astride of a stick. Jim is looking at him in
undisguised admiration. “I do believe,” he exclaims,
“that the little feller thinks he's a hoss, with a neck more
nor three feet long. See 'im bend it over agin the checkrein
he's got in his mind! Hear 'im squeal! Now look out
for his heels!”

At this moment, there rises upon the still evening air a
confused murmur of many voices. All but the children pause
and listen. “What is coming?” “Who is coming?”
“What is it?” break from the lips of the listeners. Only
Mrs. Yates looks intelligent, and she holds her tongue, and
keeps her seat. The sound comes nearer, and breaks into
greater confusion. It is laughter, and merry conversation,
and the jar of tramping feet. Mr. Benedict suspects what it
is, and goes off among his vines, in a state of painful unconcern!
The boys run out to the brow of the hill, and come back
in great excitement, to announce that the whole town is
thronging up toward the house. Then all, as if apprehending
the nature of the visit, gather about their table again, that
being the place where their visitors will expect to find them.

At length, Sam. Yates comes in sight, around the corner
of the mansion, followed closely by all the operatives of the
mill, dressed in their holiday attire. Mrs. Dillingham has
found her brother, and with her hand upon his arm she goes
out to meet his visitors. They have come to crown the feast,
and signalize the anniversary, by bringing their congratulations
to the proprietor, and the beautiful lady who presides
over his house. There is a great deal of awkwardness among
the young men, and tittering and blushing among the young

women, with side play of jest and coquetry, as they form
themselves in a line, preparatory to something formal, which
presently appears.

Mr. Yates, the agent of the mill, who has consented to be
the spokesman of the occasion, stands in front, and faces Mr.
Benedict and Mrs. Dillingham.

“Mr. Benedict,” says he, “this demonstration in your
honor is not one originated by myself, but, in some way, these
good people who serve you learned that you were to have a
formal celebration of this anniversary, and they have asked
me to assist them in expressing the honor in which they hold
you, and the sympathy with which they enter into your rejoicing.
We all know your history. Many of those who
now stand before you, remember your wrongs and your misfortunes;
and there is not one who does not rejoice that you
have received that which your own genius won in the hands
of another. There is not one who does not rejoice that the
evil influence of this house is departed, and that one now
occupies it who thoroughly respects and honors the manhood
and womanhood that labor in his service. We are glad to
acknowledge you as our master, because we know that we can
regard you as our friend. Your predecessor despised poverty—
even the poverty into which he was born—and forgot, in the
first moment of his success, that he had ever been poor, while
your own bitter experiences have made you brotherly. On
behalf of all those who now stand before you, let me thank
you for your sympathy, for your practical efforts to give us a
share in the results of your prosperity, and for the purifying
influences which go out from this dwelling into all our humble
homes. We give you our congratulations on this anniversary,
and hope for happy returns of the day, until, among the
inevitable changes of the future, we all yield our places to
those who are to succeed us.”

Mr. Benedict's eyes are full of tears. He does not turn,
however, to Mr. Balfour, for help. The consciousness of
power, and, more than this, the consciousness of universal

sympathy, give him self-possession and the power of expression.

“Mr. Yates,” says Mr. Benedict, “when you call me master,
you give me pain. When you speak of me as your
brother, and the brother of all those whom you represent, you
pay me the most grateful compliment that I have ever received.
It is impossible for me to regard myself as anything
but the creature and the instrument of a loving Providence.
It is by no power of my own, no skill of my own, no providence
of my own, that I have been carried through the startling
changes of my life. The power that has placed me
where I am, is the power in which, during all my years of
adversity, I firmly trusted. It was that power which brought
me my friends—friends to whose good will and efficient service
I owe my wealth and my ability to make life profitable
and pleasant to you. Fully believing this, I can in no way
regard myself as my own, or indulge in pride and vain glory.
You are all my brothers and sisters, and the dear Father of
us all has placed the power in my hands to do you good. In
the patient and persistent execution of this stewardship lies
the duty of my life. I thank you all for your good will. I
thank you all for this opportunity to meet you, and to say to
you the words which have for five years been in my heart,
waiting to be spoken. Come to me always with your troubles.
Tell me always what I can do for you, to make your way
easier. Help me to make this village a prosperous, virtuous
and happy one—a model for all its neighbors. And now I
wish to take you all by the hand, in pledge of our mutual
friendship and of our devotion to each other.”

Mr. Benedict steps forward with Mrs. Dillingham, and both
shake hands with Mr. Yates. One after another—some shyly,
some confidently—the operatives come up and repeat the
process, until all have pressed the proprietor's hand, and have
received a pleasant greeting and a cordial word from his
sister, of whom the girls are strangely afraid. There is a
moment of awkward delay, as they start on their homeward

way, and then they gather in a group upon the brow of the
hill, and the evening air resounds with “three cheers” for
Mr. Benedict. The hum of voices begins again, the tramp
of a hundred feet passes down the hill, and our little party are
left to themselves.

They do not linger long. The Snows take their leave.
Mr. and Mrs. Yates retire, with a lingering “good-night,”
but the Balfours and the Fentons are guests of the house.
They go in, and the lamps are lighted, while the “little feller—Paul
B. by name”—is carried on his happy father's
shoulder to his bed up stairs.

Finally, Jim comes down, having seen his pet asleep, and
finds the company talking about Talbot. He and his pretty,
worldly wife, finding themselves somewhat too intimately associated
with the bad fame of Robert Belcher, had retired
to a country seat on the Hudson—a nest which they feathered
well with the profits of the old connection.

And now, as they take leave of each other for the night,
and shake hands in token of their good-will, and their satisfaction
with the pleasures of the evening, Jim says: “Mr.
Benedict, that was a good speech o' yourn. It struck me
favorble an' s'prised me some considable. I'd no idee ye
could spread so afore folks. I shouldn't wonder if ye was
right about Proverdence. It seems kind o' queer that somebody
or somethin' should be takin keer o' you an' me, but
I vow I don't see how it's all ben did, if so be as nobody nor
nothin' has took keer o' me, an' you too. It seems reasomble
that somethin's ben to work all the time that I hain't seed.
The trouble with me is that I can't understand how a bein' as
turns out worlds as if they was nothin' more nor snow-balls
would think o' stoppin' to pay 'tention to sech a feller as Jim
Fenton.”

“You are larger than a sparrow, Jim,” says Mr. Benedict
with a smile.

“That's so.”

“Larger than a hair.”

Jim puts up his hand, brushes down the stiff crop that
crowns his head, and responds with a comical smile, “I don'
know 'bout that.”

Jim pauses as if about to make some further remark, thinks
better of it, and then, putting his big arm around his little
wife, leads her off, up stairs.

The lights of the great house go out one after another, the
cataracts sing the inmates to sleep, the summer moon witches
with the mist, the great, sweet heaven bends over the dreaming
town, and there we leave our friends at rest, to take up the
burden of their lives again upon the happy morrow, beyond
our feeble following, but still under the loving eye and
guiding hand to which we confidently and gratefully commit
them.