 | CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT “OUR FOLKS” SAID AT OLDTOWN. Oldtown folks |  |
26. CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT “OUR FOLKS” SAID AT OLDTOWN.
WE children returned to Oldtown, crowned with victory,
as it were. Then, as now, even in the simple and severe
Puritanical village, there was much incense burnt upon the
altar of gentility, — a deity somewhat corresponding to the unknown
god whose altar Paul found at Athens, and probably more
universally worshipped in all the circles of this lower world than
any other idol on record.
Now we had been taken notice of, put forward, and patronized,
in undeniably genteel society. We had been to Boston and
come back in a coach; and what well-regulated mind does not
see that that was something to inspire respect?
Aunt Lois was evidently dying to ask us all manner of questions,
but was restrained by a sort of decent pride. To exhibit
any undue eagerness would be to concede that she was ignorant
of good society, and that the ways and doings of upper classes
were not perfectly familiar to her. That, my dear reader, is
what no good democratic American woman can for a moment
concede. Aunt Lois therefore, for once in her life, looked complacently
on Sam Lawson, who continued to occupy his usual
roost in the chimney-corner, and who, embarrassed with no similar
delicate scruples, put us through our catechism with the usual
Yankee thoroughness.
“Well, chillen, I suppose them Kitterys has everythin' in
real grander, don't they? I 've heerd tell that they hes Turkey
carpets on th' floors. You know Josh Kittery, he was in the
Injy trade. Turkey carpets is that kind, you know, that lies
all up thick like a mat. They had that kind, did n't they?”
We eagerly assured him that they did.
“Want to know, now,” said Sam, who always moralized as he
went along. “Wal, wal, some folks does seem to receive their
'em was solid silver, wa' n't they? Yeh did n't ask them, did
yeh?”
“O no,” said I; “you know we were told we must n't ask
questions.”
“Jes so; very right, — little boys should n't ask questions.
But I 've heerd a good 'eal about the Kittery silver. Jake Marshall,
he knew a fellah that had talked with one of their servants,
that helped bury it in the cellar in war-times, and he said theh
was porringers an' spoons an' tankards, say nothing of table-spoons,
an' silver forks, an' sich. That 'ere would ha' been a haul
for Congress, if they could ha' got hold on 't in war-time, would n't
it? S'pose yeh was sot up all so grand, and hed servants to wait
on yeh, behind yer chairs, did n't yeh?”
“Yes,” we assured him, “we did.”
“Wal, wal; yeh must n't be carried away by these 'ere glories:
they 's transitory, arter all: ye must jest come right daown to plain
livin'. How many servants d' yeh say they kep'?”
“Why, there were two men and two women, besides Lady
Widgery's maid and Mrs. Margery.”
“And all used to come in to prayers every night,” said Harry.
“Hes prayers reg'lar, does they?” said Sam. “Well, now,
that 'ere beats all! Did n't know as these gran' families wus so
pious as that comes to. Who prayed?”
“Old Madam Kittery,” said I. “She used to read prayers out
of a large book.”
“O yis; these 'ere gran' Tory families is 'Piscopal, pretty
much all on 'em. But now readin' prayers out of a book, that
'ere don' strike me as just the right kind o' thing. For my part,
I like prayers that come right out of the heart better. But then,
lordy massy, folks hes theh different ways; an' I ain't so set as
Polly is. Why, I b'lieve, if that 'ere woman had her way, theh
would n't nobody be 'lowed to do nothin', except just to suit her.
Yeh did n't notice, did yeh, what the Kittery coat of arms was?”
Yes, we had noticed it; and Harry gave a full description
of an embroidered set of armorial bearings which had been one
of the ornaments of the parlor.
“So you say,” said Sam, “'t was a lion upon his hind legs, —
that 'ere is what they call `the lion rampant,' — and then there
was a key and a scroll. Wal! coats of arms is curus, and I don't
wonder folks kind o' hangs onter um; but then, the Kitterys bein'
Tories, they nat'ally has more interest in sech thin's. Do you
know where Mis' Kittery keeps her silver nights?”
“No, really,” said I; “we were sent to bed early, and did n't
see.”
Now this inquiry, from anybody less innocent than Sam Lawson,
might have been thought a dangerous exhibition of burglarious
proclivities; but from him it was received only as an indication
of that everlasting thirst for general information which was his
leading characteristic.
When the rigor of his cross-examination had somewhat abated,
he stooped over the fire to meditate further inquiries. I seized
the opportunity to propound to my grandmother a query which
had been the result of my singular experiences for a day or two
past. So, after an interval in which all had sat silently looking
into the great coals of the fire, I suddenly broke out with the
inquiry, “Grandmother, what is The True Church?”
I remember the expression on my grandfather's calm, benign
face as I uttered this query. It was an expression of
shrewd amusement, such as befits the face of an elder when a
younger has propounded a well-worn problem; but my grandmother
had her answer at the tip of her tongue, and replied, “It
is the whole number of the elect, my son.”
I had in my head a confused remembrance of Ellery Davenport's
tirade on election, and of the elect who did or did not
have clean shirts; so I pursued my inquiry by asking, “Who
are the elect?”
“All good people,” replied my grandfather. “In every
nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted
of Him.”
“Well, how came you to ask that question?” said my grandmother,
turning on me.
“Why,” said I, “because Miss Deborah Kittery said that the
war destroyed the true Church in this country.”
“O, pshaw!” said my grandmother; “that 's some of her
Episcopal nonsense. I really should like to ask her, now, if she
thinks there ain't any one going to heaven but Episcopalians.”
“O no, she does n't think so,” said I, rather eagerly. “She
said a great many good people would be saved out of the Church,
but they would be saved by uncovenanted mercies.”
“Uncovenanted fiddlesticks!” said my grandmother, her very
cap-border bristling with contempt and defiance. “Now, Lois,
you just see what comes of sending children into Tory Episcopal
families, — coming home and talking nonsense like that!”
“Mercy, mother! what odds does it make?” said Aunt Lois.
“The children have got to learn to hear all sorts of things said, —
may as well hear them at one time as another. Besides, it
all goes into one ear and out at the other.”
My grandmother was better pleased with the account that I
hastened to give her of my visit to the graves of the saints and
martyrs, in my recent pilgrimage. Her broad face glowed with
delight, as she told over again to our listening ears the stories of
the faith and self-denial of those who had fled from an oppressive
king and church, that they might plant a new region where life
should be simpler, easier, and more natural. And she got out
her “Cotton Mather,” and, notwithstanding Aunt Lois's reminder
that she had often read it before, read to us again, in a trembling
yet audible voice, that wonderful document, in which the reasons
for the first planting of New England are set forth. Some of
these reasons I remember from often hearing them in my childhood.
They speak thus quaintly of the old countries of Europe:
—
“Thirdly. The land grows weary of her inhabitants, insomuch
that man, which is the most precious of all creatures, is here
more vile than the earth he treads upon, — children, neighbors,
and friends, especially the poor, which, if things were right,
would be the greatest earthly blessings.
“Fourthly. We are grown to that intemperance in all excess
of riot, as no mean estate will suffice a man to keep sail with his
equals, and he that fails in it must live in scorn and contempt:
hence it comes to pass that all arts and trades are carried in that
for a good, upright man to maintain his constant charge,
and live comfortably in them.
“Fifthly. The schools of learning and religion are so corrupted
as (besides the insupportable charge of education) most children
of the best, wittiest, and of the fairest hopes are perverted, corrupted,
and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples
and licentious behaviours in these seminaries.
“Sixthly. The whole earth is the Lord's garden, and he hath
given it to the sons of Adam to be tilled and improved by them.
Why then should we stand starving here for places of habitation,
and in the mean time suffer whole countries as profitable for the
use of man to lie waste without any improvement?”
Language like this, often repeated, was not lost upon us. The
idea of self-sacrifice which it constantly inculcated, — the reverence
for self-denial, — the conception of a life which should look,
not mainly to selfish interests, but to the good of the whole
human race, prevented the hardness and roughness of those early
New England days from becoming mere stolid, material toil. It
was toil and manual labor ennobled by a new motive.
Even in those very early times there was some dawning sense
of what the great American nation was yet to be. And every
man, woman, and child was constantly taught, by every fireside,
to feel that he or she was part and parcel of a great new movement
in human progress. The old aristocratic ideas, though still
lingering in involuntary manners and customs, only served to
give a sort of quaintness and grace of Old-World culture to the
roughness of new-fledged democracy.
Our visit to Boston was productive of good to us such as we
little dreamed of. In the course of a day or two Lady Lothrop
called, and had a long private interview with the female portion
of the family; after which, to my great delight, it was announced
to us that Harry and I might begin to study Latin, if
we pleased, and if we proved bright, good boys, means would be
provided for the finishing of our education in college.
I was stunned and overwhelmed by the great intelligence,
and Harry and I ran over to tell it to Tina, who jumped about
years later she quite forgot to practise.
“I 'm glad, because you like it,” she said; “but I should think
it would be horried to study Latin.”
I afterwards learned that I was indebted to my dear old friend
Madam Kittery for the good fortune which had befallen me.
She had been interested in my story, as it appears, to some purpose,
and, being wealthy and without a son, had resolved to console
herself by appropriating to the education of a poor boy a
portion of the wealth which should have gone to her own child.
The searching out of poor boys, and assisting them to a liberal
education, had ever been held to be one of the appropriate works
of the minister in a New England town. The schoolmaster who
taught the district school did not teach Latin; but Lady Lothrop
was graciously pleased to say that, for the present, Dr. Lothrop
would hear our lessons at a certain hour every afternoon; and
the reader may be assured that we studied faithfully in view of
an ordeal like this.
I remember one of our favorite places for study. The brown,
sparkling stream on which my grandfather's mill was placed had
just below the mill-dam a little island, which a boy could easily
reach by wading through the shallow waters over a bed of many-colored
pebbles. The island was overshadowed by thick
bushes, which were all wreathed and matted together by a wild
grape-vine; but within I had hollowed out for myself a green
little arbor, and constructed a rude wigwam of poles and bark,
after the manner of those I had seen among the Indians. It
was one of the charms of this place, that nobody knew of it:
it was utterly secluded; and being cut off from land by the
broad belt of shallow water, and presenting nothing to tempt or
attract anybody to its shores, it was mine, and mine alone.
There I studied, and there I read; there I dreamed and saw
visions.
Never did I find it in my heart to tell to any other boy the
secret of this woodland shelter, this fairy-land, so near to the
real outer world; but Harry, with his refinement, his quietude,
his sympathetic silence, seemed to me as unobjectionable an associate
cheered my lonely, childish sleeping-room.
We moved my father's Latin books into a rough little closet
that we constructed in our wigwam; and there, with the water
dashing behind us, and the afternoon sun shining down through
the green grape-leaves, with bluebirds and bobolinks singing to
us, we studied our lessons. More than that, we spent many pleasant
hours in reading; and I have now a résumé, in our boyish
handwriting, of the greater part of Plutarch's Lives, which we
wrote out during this summer.
As to Tina, of course she insisted upon it that we should occasionally
carry her in a lady-chair over to this island, that she
might inspect our operations and our housekeeping, and we read
some of these sketches to her for her critical approbation; and
if any of them pleased her fancy, she would immediately insist
that we should come over to Miss Mehitable's, and have a
dramatic representation of them up in the garret.
Saturday afternoon, in New England, was considered, from time
immemorial, as the children's perquisite; and hard-hearted must
be that parent or that teacher who would wish to take away from
them its golden hours. Certainly it was not Miss Mehitable, nor
my grandmother, that could be capable of any such cruelty.
Our Saturday afternoons were generally spent as Tina dictated;
and, as she had a decided taste for the drama, one of our
most common employments was the improvising of plays, with
Miss Tina for stage manager. The pleasure we took in these
exercises was inconceivable; they had for us a vividness and
reality past all expression.
I remember our acting, at one time, the Book of Esther, with
Tina, very much be-trinketed and dressed out in an old flowered
brocade that she had rummaged from a trunk in the garret, as
Queen Esther. Harry was Mordecai, and I was Ahasuerus.
The great trouble was to find a Haman; but, as the hanging of
Haman was indispensable to any proper moral effect of the tragedy,
Tina petted and cajoled and coaxed old Bose, the yellow dog of our
establishment, to undertake the part, instructing him volubly that
he must sulk and look cross when Mordecai went by, — a thing
in learning. Bose would always insist upon sitting on his
haunches, in his free-and-easy, jolly manner, and lolling out his
red tongue in a style so decidedly jocular as utterly to spoil the
effect, till Tina, reduced to desperation, ensconced herself under
an old quilted petticoat behind him, and brought out the proper
expression at the right moment by a vigorous pull at his tail.
Bose was a dog of great constitutional equanimity, but there
were some things that transcended even his powers of endurance,
and the snarl that he gave to Mordecai was held to be a
triumphant success; but the thing was, to get him to snarl when
Tina was in front of him, where she could see it; and now
will it be believed that the all-conquering little mischief-maker
actually kissed and flattered and bejuggled old Polly into taking
this part behind the scenes?
No words can more fitly describe the abject state to which that
vehemently moral old soul was reduced.
When it came to the hanging of Haman, the difficulties thickened.
Polly warned us that we must by no means attempt to
hang Bose by the neck, as “the crittur was heavy, and 't was
sartin to be the death of him.” So we compromised by passing
the rope under his fore paws, or, as Tina called it, “under his
arms.” But Bose was rheumatic, and it took all Tina's petting
and caressing, and obliged Polly to go down and hunt out two or
three slices of meat from her larder, to induce him fairly to submit
to the operation; but hang him we did, and he ki-hied with
a vigor that strikingly increased the moral effect. So we soon let
him down again, and plentifully rewarded him with cold meat.
In a similar manner we performed a patriotic drama, entitled
“The Battle of Bunker Hill,” in which a couple of old guns that
we found in the garret produced splendid effects, and salvoes of
artillery were created by the rolling across the garret of two old
cannon-balls; but this was suppressed by order of the authorities,
on account of the vigor of the cannonade. Tina, by the by,
figured in this as the “Genius of Liberty,” with some stars on
her head cut out of gilt paper, and wearing an old flag which
we had pulled out of one of the trunks.
We also acted the history of “Romulus and Remus,” with
Bose for the she-wolf. The difference in age was remedied by a
vigorous effort of the imagination. Of course, operations of this
nature made us pretty familiar with the topography of the old
garret. There was, however, one quarter, fenced off by some
barrels filled with pamphlets, where Polly strictly forbade us
to go.
What was the result of such a prohibition, O reader? Can
you imagine it to be any other than that that part of the garret
became at once the only one that we really cared about investigating?
How we hung about it, and considered it, and peeped
over and around and between the barrels at a pile of pictures,
that stood with their faces to the wall! What were those pictures,
we wondered. When we asked Polly this, she drew on
a mysterious face and said, “Them was things we must n't ask
about.”
We talked it over among ourselves, and Tina assured us that
she dreamed about it nights; but Polly had strictly forbidden us
even to mention that corner of the garret to Miss Mehitable, or
to ask her leave to look at it, alleging, as a reason, that “'t would
bring on her hypos.”
We did n't know what “hypos” were, but we supposed of
course they must be something dreadful; but the very fearfulness
of the consequences that might ensue from our getting
behind those fatal barrels only made them still more attractive.
Finally, one rainy Saturday afternoon, when we were tired of
acting plays, and the rain pattered on the roof, and the wind
howled and shook the casings, and there was a generally wild and
disorganized state of affairs out of doors, a sympathetic spirit
of insubordination appeared to awaken in Tina's bosom. “I declare,
I am going inside of those barrels!” she said. “I don't
care if Polly does scold us; I know I can bring her all round
again fast enough. I can do about what I like with Polly.
Now you boys just move this barrel a little bit, and I 'll go in
and see!”
Just at this moment there was one of those chance lulls in the
storm that sometimes occur, and as Tina went in behind the
streamed through the dusky window and lit it up with a watery
light.
Harry and Tina both gave an exclamation of astonishment.
“O Tina! it 's the lady in the closet!”
The discovery seemed really to frighten the child. She
retreated quickly to the outside of the barrels again, and stood
with us, looking at the picture.
It was a pastel of a young girl in a plain, low-necked white
dress, with a haughty, beautiful head, and jet-black curls flowing
down her neck, and deep, melancholy black eyes, that seemed to
fix themselves reproachfully on us.
“O dear me, Harry, what shall we do?” said Tina. “How
she looks at us! This certainly is the very same one that we
saw in the old house.”
“You ought not to have done it, Tina,” said Harry, in a
rather low and frightened voice; “but I 'll go in and turn it
back again.”
Just at this moment we heard what was still more appalling,
— the footsteps of Polly on the garret stairs.
“Well! now I should like to know if there 's any mischief
you would n't be up to, Tina Percival,” she said, coming forward,
reproachfully. “When I give you the run of the whole
garret, and wear my life out a pickin' up and puttin' up after
you, I sh'd think you might let this 'ere corner alone!”
“Oh! but, Polly, you 've no idea how I wanted to see it, and
do pray tell me who it is, and how came it here? Is it anybody
that 's dead?” said Tina, hanging upon Polly caressingly.
“Somebody that 's dead to us, I 'm afraid,” said Polly, solemnly.
“Do tell us, Polly, do! who was she?”
“Well, child, you must n't never tell nobody, nor let a word
about it come out of your lips; but it 's Parson Rossiter's daughter
Emily, and where she 's gone to, the Lord only knows. I
took that 'ere pictur' down myself, and put it up here with Mr.
Theodore's, so 't Miss Mehitable need n't see 'em, 'cause they
always give her the hypos.”
“And don't anybody know where she is,” said Tina, “or
if she 's alive or dead?”
“Nobody,” said Polly, shaking her head solemnly. “All
I hope is, she may never come back here again. You see, children,
what comes o' follerin' the nateral heart; it 's deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. She followed her
nateral heart, and nobody knows where she 's gone to.”
Polly spoke with such sepulchral earnestness that, what with
gloomy weather and the consciousness of having been accessory
to an unlawful action, we all felt, to say the least, extremely
sober.
“Do you think I have got such a heart as that?” said Tina,
after a deep-drawn sigh.
“Sartain, you have,” said the old woman. “We all on us
has. Why, if the Lord should give any on us a sight o' our own
heart just as it is, it would strike us down dead right on the
spot.”
“Mercy on us, Polly! I hope he won't, then,” said Tina.
“But, Polly,” she added, getting her arms round her neck and
playing with her gold beads, “you have n't got such a very bad
heart now; I don't believe a word of it. I 'm sure you are just
as good as can be.”
“Law, Miss Tina, you don't see into me,” said Polly, who,
after all, felt a sort of ameliorating gleam stealing over her.
“You must n't try to wheedle me into thinking better of myself
than I be; that would just lead to carnal security.”
“Well, Polly, don't tell Miss Mehitable, and I 'll try and not
get you into carnal security.”
Polly went behind the barrels, gently wiped the dust from the
picture, and turned the melancholy, beseeching face to the wall
again; but we pondered and talked many days as to what it
might be.
| CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT “OUR FOLKS” SAID AT OLDTOWN. Oldtown folks | |