University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
AN INTERVIEW ON THE ROAD, AND A NEW HOUSEHOLD.

The Indian Summer still held its ground, keeping back the
winter's vanguard of frost and keen nor'westers. Day by
day the smoky air became more densely blue and still, and
the leaves, long since dead, hung upon the trees for want of a
loosening wind. The hickory-nuts fell by their own weight,
patterning here and there in the woods, in single smart raps,
and giving out a vigorous balsamic odor, as their cleft rinds
burst open. Only at night a gathering chill and a low moaning
in the air gave the presage of an approaching change in
the season.

On one of those warm forenoons which almost reproduce
the languor and physical yearning of the opening Spring,
Bute Wilson, mounted on Dick, the old farm-horse, jogged
slowly along the road to Ptolemy, whistling “The Rose that
All are Praising,” a melody which he had learned at the
singing-school. Bute was bound for the village, on a variety
of errands, and carried a basket on his arm. Dick's deliberate
gait seemed to be in harmony with the current of his
thoughts. The horse understood his rider, and knew very
well when to take his ease, and when to summon up the little
life left in his stiff old legs. Horses are better interpreters of
one's moods than the most of one's human friends.

Bute was a very good specimen of the American countryman.
A little over the average height, and compacted of
coarse, hardy fibre, he possessed, in spite of the common
stock from which he had sprung, the air of independent self-respect
which a laboring man can only acquire in a community

where caste is practically ignored. His independence,
however, had not degenerated into impudence: he knew his
deficiencies of nature and education, and did not attempt to
off-set them by a vulgar assertion of equality. He could sit
at Mr. Woodbury's table (using the knife a little too freely)
without embarrassment, and could take his dinner in the
kitchen without being conscious of degradation. His horses,
cattle, and crops occupied the first place in his mind—himself—no,
another person had the second place—and his own
personality gave him the least trouble. He was a general
favorite in the neighborhood, and his position was, perhaps,
more fortunate than he knew, though the knowledge of it
would not have made him happier than he was. He was honestly
respected by those below, and not looked down upon by
those above him. This consideration was won by his thorough
frankness, simplicity, and kindness of heart. His face was too
broad and his nose too thick, to be called handsome; but
there were fewer eyes into which men looked with more satisfaction
than the pair of large blue-gray ones, divided by the
nose aforesaid. His forehead was rather low, but open and
smooth, and his yellow hair, curling a little at the ends, grew
back from the temples with a sturdy set, as if determined that
they should not be hidden. Add to these traits a voice mellow
in spite of its volume—the cattle understood its every inflection—and
it is easy to perceive that Bute was in especial
favor with the opposite sex. From head to foot, Nature had
written upon him: This man is a male.

Bute had climbed the rise beyond Roaring Brook, when his
reveries, whatever they might have been, were interrupted by
the sight of a woman, walking towards Ptolemy, a short distance
in advance of him. Although no other person was near,
to play the spy, he felt the blood creeping up to his ears, as
he looked keenly and questioningly at the little figure, in its
dark-blue merino dress, tripping forward with short, quick
steps. Dick noticed the change in his master, and broke into
a trot down the gentle slope. At the sound of hoofs, the figure

turned, disclosing a bunch of brown ringlets and a saucy little
nose, then drew to one side of the road and stopped.

“Good-morning, Miss Carrie!” cried Bute, as he drew rein,
on approaching: “I thought it was you. Goin' to Ptolemy?
So am I. Git up on the bank, and I'll take ye on behind me.
Dick'll carry double—he's as quiet as a lamb. Here, I'll jerk
off my coat for you to set on.” And he had his right arm out
of the sleeve before he had finished speaking.

“Ah!” cried the lady, affecting a mild scream; “No, indeed,
Mr. Wilson! I am so afraid of horses. Besides, I don't
think it would look right.”

It suddenly occurred to Bute's mind, that, in order to ride
as he had proposed, she would be obliged to clasp him with
both arms. Heaving a sigh of regret, he drew on his coat and
jumped off the horse.

“Well, if you won't ride with me, I'll walk with you, any
how. How's your health, Miss Carrie?” offering his hand.

“Very well, I thank you, Mr. Wilson. How's Mrs. Babb?
And I hear that Mr. Woodbury has come to live with you.”

Miss Caroline Dilworth was too well satisfied at meeting with
Bute, to decline his proffered company. She was on her way
from the house of a neighboring farmer, where she had been
spending a fortnight as seamstress, to the cottage of the widow
Thurston, who lived on the edge of the village. The old
lady's health was declining, and Miss Dilworth occasionally
rendered a friendly assistance to the daughter. They were
both always glad to see the lively, chattering creature, in spite
of her manifold weaknesses and affectations. She was tewenty-five
years of age, at least, but assumed all the timidity and inexperience
of a girl of sixteen, always wearing her hair in a
mesh of natural ringlets which hung about her neck, and talking
with a soft childish drawl, unless—which rarely happened—she
was so very much in earnest as to forget herself. Her
nose was piquantly retroussé, her mouth small and cherry-red,
and her complexion fair (for she took great care of it); but
her eyes inclined to pale-green rather than blue, and she had

an affected habit of dropping the lids. Perhaps this was to
conceal the unpleasant redness of their edges, for they were
oftentimes so inflamed as to oblige her to suspend her occupation.
Her ambition was, to become a teacher—a post for
which she was not at all qualified. Hannah Thurston, however,
had kindly offered to assist her in preparing herself for
the coveted career.

What it was that attracted Bute Wilson to Miss Dilworth,
he was unable to tell. Had the case been reversed, we should
not wonder at it. Only this much was certain; her society
was a torment to him, her absence a pain. He would have cut
off his little finger for the privilege of just once lifting her in
his strong arms, and planting a kiss square upon the provoking
mouth, which, as if conscious of its surplus of sweetness,
could say so many bitter things to him. Bute had never
spoken to her of the feeling which she inspired in him. Why
should he? She knew just how he felt, and he knew that she
knew it. She played with him as he had many a time played
with a big trout at the end of his line. Over and over again
he had been on the point of giving her up, out of sheer worriment
and exhaustion of soul, when a sudden look from those
downcast eyes, a soft word, half whispered in a voice whose
deliberate sweetness tingled through him, from heart to fingerends,
bound him faster than ever. Miss Dilworth little suspected
how many rocks she had sledged to pieces, how many
extra swaths she had mowed in June, and shocks of corn she
had husked in October, through Bute Wilson's arm. If Mr.
Woodbury were a cunning employer, he would take measures
to prolong this condition of suspense.

On the present occasion, the affected little minx was unusually
gracious towards her victim. She had a keen curiosity
to gratify. “Now, Bute,” said she, as they started together
towards Ptolemy, Bute leading Dick by the bridle; “I want
you to tell me all about this Mr. Woodbury. What kind of a
man is he?”

“He's only been with us three or four days. To be sure, I

knowed him as a boy, but that's long ago, and I may have to
learn him over ag'in. It won't be a hard thing to do, though:
he's a gentleman, if there ever was one. He's a man that'll
always do what's right, if he knows how.”

“I mean, Bute, how he looks. Tall or short? Is he handsome?
Isn't he burnt very black, or is it worn off?”

“Not so many questions at once, Miss Carrie. He a'n't
blacker 'n I'd be now, if I was complected like him. Tall, you
might call him—nigh two inches more'n I am, and a reg'lar
pictur' of a man, though a bit thinner than he'd ought to be.
But I dunno whether you'd call him handsome: women has
sich queer notions. Now, there's that Seth Wattles, that you
think sich a beauty—”

“Bute Wilson! You know I don't think any such thing!
It's Seth's mind that I admire. There's such a thing as moral
and intellectual beauty, but that you don't understand.”

“No, hang it!—nor don't want to, if he's got it! I believe
in a man's doin' what he purtends to do—keepin' his mind on
his work, whatever it is. If Seth Wattles lays out to be a
tailor, let him be one: if he wants to be a moral and intellectual
beauty, he may try that, for all I keer—but he can't do
both to once't. I wish he'd make better trowsus, or give up
his business.”

Miss Dilworth knew her own weakness, and carefully avoided
entering into a discussion. She was vexed that one of the
phrases she had caught from Hannah Thurston, and which she
had frequently used with much effect, had rattled harmlessly
against the hard mail of Bute's common sense. At another
time she would have taken—or have seemed to take—offence,
at his rough speech; but she had not yet heard enough of Mr.
Woodbury.

“Well, never mind Seth,” she said, “you've not finished telling
me about your new master.”

If she had intended to prick Bute with this word, she utterly
failed. He quietly resumed the description: “Every man
that I like is handsome to me; but I think any woman would

admire to see Mr. Max. He's got big brown eyes, like them
o' the doe Master Harry used to have, and a straight nose, like
one o' the plaster heads in the libery. He wears a beard on
his upper lip, but no whiskers, and his hair is brown, and sort
o' curlin'. He's a man that knows what he's about, and can
make up his mind in five minutes, and looks you straight in
the face when he talks; and if he'd a hard thing to say (though
he's said nothin' o' the kind to me), he'd say it without flinchin',
a little worse to your face than what he'd say behind y'r back.
But what I like best in him, is, that he knows how to mind his
own business, without botherin' himself about other folks's.
You wouldn't ketch him a pitchin' into me because I chaw
tobacco, like Seth Wattles did, with all his moral and intellectual
beauty.”

“Oh, but, Bute, you know it's so unhealthy. I do wish
you'd give it up.”

“Unhealthy! Stuff and nonsense—look at me!” And, indeed
Bute, stopping, straightening himself, throwing out his
breast, and striking it with a hard fist until it rang like a muffled
drum, presented a picture of lusty, virile strength, which
few men in the neighborhood of Ptolemy could have matched.
“Unhealthy!” he continued; “I s'pose you'd call Seth
healthy, with his tallow face, and breast-bone caved in. Why,
the woman that marries him can use his ribs for a wash-board,
when she's lost her'n. Then there was Absalom Merryfield,
you know, killed himself out and out, he was so keerful o' his
health. I'd ruther have no health at all, a darned sight, than
worry my life out, thinkin' on it. Not that I couldn't give
up chawin' tobacco, or any thing else, if there was a good
reason for it. What is it to you, Carrie, whether I chaw or
not?”

Miss Dilworth very well understood Bute's meaning, but
let it go without notice, as he knew she would. The truth is,
she was not insensible to his many good qualities, but she was
ambitious of higher game. She had not attended all the meetings
held in Ptolemy, in favor of Temperance, Anti-Slavery

and Women's Rights, without imbibing as much conceit as
the basis of her small mind could support. The expressions
which, from frequent repetition, she had caught and retained,
were put to such constant use, that she at last fancied them
half original, and sighed for a more important sphere than
that of a sempstress, or even a teacher. She knew she could
never become a speaker—she was sure of that—but might she
not be selected by some orator of Reform, as a kindred soul,
to support him with her sympathy and appreciation? Thus
far, however, her drooping lids had been lifted and her curls
elaborately tangled, in vain. The eloquent disciples, not
understanding these mute appeals, passed by on the other side.

She drew the conversation back to Mr. Woodbury, and
kept it to that theme until she had ascertained all that Bute
knew, or was willing to tell; for the latter had such a strong
sense of propriety about matters of this kind, as might have
inspired doubts of his being a native-born American. By this
time they had reached the bridge over East Atauga Creek,
whence it was but a short distance to the village.

“There is Friend Thurston's cottage, at last,” said Miss
Dilworth. “Have you seen Miss Hannah lately? But, of
course, she can't visit Lakeside now.”

“I'm sorry for it,” Bute remarked. “She's a fine woman,
in spite of her notions. But why can't she?”

“It would not be proper.”

“Wouldn't it be proper for a man to visit us?”

“To be sure. How queer you talk, Bute!”

“Well—she says a woman should be allowed to do whatever
a man does. If Women's Rights is worth talkin' about,
it's worth carryin' out. But I guess Miss Hannah's more of a
woman than she knows on. I like to hear her talk, mighty
well, and she says a good many things that I can't answer,
but they're ag'in nature, for all that. If she was married and
had a family growin' up 'round her, she wouldn't want to be a
lawyer or a preacher. Here we are, at the gate. Good-by,
Miss Carrie!”

“Good-by, Bute!” said Miss Dilworth, mechanically,
pausing at the gate to see him spring into the saddle and trot
rapidly down the street. She was confounded, and a little
angry, at the nonchalance with which he treated her oracle.
“I wish it had been Hannah Thurston, instead of me,” she
said to herself, with a spiteful toss of her head—“she has
an answer ready for everybody.”

The plot of ground in front of the cottage already wore
its winter livery. The roses were converted into little obelisks
of straw, the flower-beds were warmly covered, and only
the clumps of arbor-vitæ and the solitary balsam-fir were allowed
to display their hardy green. Miss Dilworth passed
around the house to the kitchen entrance, for she knew the
fondness of the inmates for warmth and sunshine, and the
sitting-room which they habitually occupied looked southward,
over the vegetable garden, to the meadows of the eastern
valley. Every thing was scrupulously neat and ordered.
The tops of vegetables left for seed and the dead stalks of
summer flowers had been carefully removed from the garden.
The walks had been swept by a broom, and the wood-shed,
elsewhere more or less chaotic in its appearance, was here
visited by the same implement. Its scattered chips seemed
to have arranged themselves into harmonious forms, like the
atoms of sand under the influence of musical tones.

In the kitchen a girl of thirteen—the only servant the
house afforded—was watching the kettles and pans on the
cooking-stove. This operation might have been carried on in
the parlor just as well, so little appearance was there of the
usual “slops” and litter of a kitchen. This was Friend
Thurston's specialty as a housekeeper—her maxim was, that
there should be no part of a house where a visitor might not
be received. Her neighbors always spoke of her kitchen with
an admiration wherein there was a slight mixture of despair.

The sitting-room, beyond, was made cheerful by windows
opening to the south and east; but more so by the homely
simplicity and comfort of its arrangement. Every object

spoke of limited means, but nothing of pinched self-denial.
The motley-colored rag carpet was clean, thick, and warm;
the chintz sofa was relieved by inviting cushions; the old-fashioned
rocking-chair was so stuffed and padded as to remedy
its stiffness; the windows were curtained, and a few brands were
smouldering among white ashes in the grate. A shelf inside
the southern window held some tea-roses in pots, mignionette,
heliotrope, and scarlet verbenas. There were but three pictures—
a head of Milton, an old wood-engraving of the cottage where
George Fox was born, and a tolerable copy of the Madonna
della Seggiola. On a stand in the corner were the favorite
volumes of the old lady, very plainly bound, as was meet, in
calf of a drab color—Job Scott's Works, Woolman's Journal,
and William Penn's “No Cross, No Crown.” A swinging
book-shelf, suspended on the wall, contained a different collection,
which evidently belonged to the daughter. Several
volumes of Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, Shelley, Bettina von
Arnim, De Staël's “Corinne,” the “Record of Woman,”
Milton, George Sands' “Consuelo,” Mrs. Child's “Letters
from New York,” Hugh Miller, and bound numbers of the
“Liberty Bell,” were among them. Had a certain drawer
been opened, one would have found files of The Slavery Annihilator,
Mrs. Swisshelm's Saturday Visitor, and the weekly
edition of the New-York Tribune. A rude vase of birch
bark, on a bracket, was filled with a mass of flowering grasses,
exquisitely arranged with regard to their forms and colors,
from pale green and golden-gray to the loveliest browns and
purples. This object was a work of art, in its way, and shed
a gleam of beauty over the plainness of the apartment.

Friend Gulielma Thurston, leaning back in the rocking-chair,
had suffered her hands, with the knitting they held, to sink
into her lap, and looked out upon the hazy valley. Her thin
face, framed in the close Quaker cap, which barely allowed her
gray hair to appear at the temples, wore a sweet, placid expression,
though the sunken eyes and set lips told of physical
suffering. The spotless book-muslin handkerchief, many-folded,

covered her neck and breast, and a worsted apron was tied
over her drab gown, rather from habit than use. As she basked
in the balmy warmth of the day, her wasted fingers unconsciously
clasped themselves in a manner that expressed patience
and trust. These were the prominent qualities of her nature—
the secret of her cheerfulness and the source of her courage.

Late married, she had lost her first child, and shortly after
the birth of her daughter Hannah, her husband also. The latter
was a stern, silent man, rigid in creed and in discipline, but
with a concealed capacity for passion which she had not understood
while she possessed him. Her mind first matured in
the sorrow of his loss, and she became, from that natural
need which is content with no narrower comfort, a speaker in
the meetings of her sect. The property she inherited at her
husband's death was very small, and she was obliged to labor
beyond her strength, until the bequest of an unmarried brother
relieved her from pressing want. Hannah, to whom she had
managed to give a tolerably thorough education, obtained a
situation as teacher, for which she proved so competent that
a liberal offer from the Trustees of the Young Ladies' Seminary
at Ptolemy induced both mother and daughter to remove
thither. Her earnings, added to the carefully husbanded property,
finally became sufficient to insure them a modest support,
so that, when her mother's failing health obliged Hannah
to give up her place, there was no serious anxiety for the
future to interfere with her filial duty.

The daughter was seated at the eastern window, beside a
small table, which was covered with gorgeously tinted autumn
leaves. She was occupied in arranging them in wreaths and
groups, on sheets of card-board, which were designed to form
an album, and to wear, as binding, the embroidery of fern-leaves,
upon which we first found her engaged. Such an
album, contributed by her to the Anti-Slavery Fair, the previous
year, had enriched the treasury of the Society by the sum
of ten dollars, and the managers had begged a second donation
of the same kind.

Catching a glimpse of Miss Dilworth through the window,
she rose to receive her. In stature, she was somewhat above
the average height of women, though not noticeably tall, and
a little too slender for beauty. Her hands were thin, but
finely formed, and she carried them as if they were a conscious
portion of herself, not an awkward attachment. Her face
would have been a perfect oval, except that the forehead, instead
of being low and softly rounded, was rather squarely
developed in the reflective region, and the cheeks, though not
thin, lacked the proper fulness of outline. Her hair was of a rich,
dark-brown, black in shadow, and the delicate arches of the
eye-brows were drawn with a clear, even pencil, above the
earnest gray eyes, dark and deep under the shadow of their
long lashes. The nose was faultless, and the lips, although no
longer wearing their maidenly ripeness and bloom, were so
pure in outline, so sweetly firm in their closing junction, so
lovely in their varying play of expression, that the life of her
face seemed to dwell in them alone. Her smile had a rare
benignity and beauty. The paleness of her face, being, to
some extent, a feature of her physical temperament, did not
convey the impression of impaired health: a ruddy tint would
not have harmonized with the spiritual and sensitive character
of her countenance. No one would have dreamed of calling
Hannah Thurston a beauty. In society nine men would have
passed her without a thought; but the tenth would have stood
still, and said: “Here is a woman `to sit at a king's right
hand, in thunder-storms,'” and would have carried her face in
his memory forever.

The severest test of a woman is to play an exceptional part
in the world. Her respect, her dignity, her virtue itself, become
doubtful, if not mythical, in the eyes of men. In the
small circle of Ptolemy, Hannah Thurston had subjected herself
to this test, and it was no slight triumph for her, had she
known it, that, while her views were received with either horror
or contempt, while the names of her fellow priestesses or
prophetesses were bandied about in utter disrespect, she was

never personally ridiculed. No tongue dared to whisper an
insinuation against either her sincerity or her purity. This,
however, was partly owing to the circumstances of her life in
the place. She had first achieved popularity as a teacher, and
honor as a daughter. Among other things, it was generally reported
and believed that she had declined an offer of marriage,
advantageous in a worldly point of view, and the act was set
down to her credit as wholly one of duty towards her mother.

In her plain brown dress, with linen collar and cuffs, the
only ornament being a knot of blue ribbon at the throat, she
also, appeared to be a Quakeress; yet, she had long since perceived
that the external forms of the sect had become obsolete,
and no longer considered herself bound by them. Some concession
in dress, however, was still due for her mother's sake,
beyond whose rapidly shortening span of life she could see no
aim in her own, unless it were devoted to righting the wrongs
of her sex. She had had her girlish dreams; but the next
birthday was her thirtieth, and she had already crossed, in resolve,
that deep gulf in a woman's life.

Miss Caroline Dilworth, in her blue dress, came as if dipped
in the Indian Summer, with a beryl gleam in her eyes, as she
darted into the sitting-room. She caught Hannah Thurston
around the waist, and kissed her twice: she was never known
to greet her female friends with less. Then, leaning gently
over the rocking-chair, she took the old woman's hand.

“Take off thy bonnet, child,” said the latter, “and push
thy hair back, so that I can see thy face. I'm glad thee's
come.”

“Oh, Friend Thurston, I was so afraid I couldn't get away
from Parkman's. It's a lonely place, you know, over the hill,
and she's hard of hearing. Ah! I'm out of breath, yet”—and
therewith heaving a sigh of relief, the little creature threw off
her shawl and untied the strings of her bonnet.

Their life had so much in it that was grave and earnest—
their conversation naturally turning to the past rather than
the future—that the Thurstons always felt themselves cheered

by Miss Dilworth's visits. She dropped her affectations in
their presence, and became, for the time, a light-hearted, amiable,
silly woman. She never arrived without a fresh budget
of gossip, generally of slight importance, but made piquant by
her rattling way of telling it.

“How thee does run on!” Friend Thurston would sometimes
say, whereupon the sempstress would only toss her curls
and run on all the more inveterately.

“Oh, I must tell you all about Lakeside and the new owner!”
she exclaimed, as she settled herself into a chair.

Hannah Thurston could probably have told her more about
Mr. Woodbury than she already knew; but it would have
been unkind to cut short the eager narrative, and so Bute's report,
with many additions and variations, was served out to
them in chapters, during the afternoon.