Duffels Part 12

"But if I tell the story out I am afraid you would not," said Hubert.

"Why, isn't it done?"

"I beg your pardon, doctor, for having used a little craft. I had much at stake. I have disguised this story in its details. But it is true, I am the hero----"

The doctor looked quickly towards his daughter. Her head was bent low over her book. Her long hair hung about it like a curtain, shutting out all view of the face. The doctor walked to the other window and looked out. Hubert sat like a mummy. After a minute Dr. Hood spoke.

"Cornelia!"

She lifted a face that was aflame. Tears glistened in her eyes, and I doubt not there was a prayer in her heart.

"You are a brave girl. I had other plans. You have a right to choose for yourself. G.o.d bless you both! But it's a great pity Hu is not a lawyer; he pleads well." So saying he put on his hat and walked out.

This is the conversation that Hubert repeated to me that day sitting in his own little parsonage in Allenville. A minute after his wife came in. She had been prescribing for the minor ailments of some poor neighbors. She took the baby from her crib, and bent over her till that same long hair curtained mother and child from sight.

"I think," said Hubert, "that you folks who write love stories make a great mistake in stopping at marriage. The honeymoon never truly begins until conjugal affection is enriched by this holy partners.h.i.+p of loving hearts in the life of a child. The climax of a love story is not the wedding. It is the baby!"

"What do you call her?" I asked.

"Hope," said the mother.

"Hope Valentine," added the father, with a significant smile.

"And you spell the Hope with an 'a,' I believe," I said.

"You naughty Hu!" said Mrs. Cornelia. "You've been telling. You think that love story is interesting to others because _you_ enjoy it so much!"

_1871._

HULDAH, THE HELP.[2]

A THANKSGIVING LOVE STORY.

I remember a story that Judge Balcom told a few years ago on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. I do not feel sure that it will interest everybody as it did me. Indeed, I am afraid that it will not, and yet I can not help thinking that it is just the sort of a trifle that will go well with turkey, celery, and mince pie.

[2] This is the first story written by me, beyond a few juvenile tales; and it was the first short story to appear in Scribner's Monthly, the present Century Magazine. Mr. Gilder, then a.s.sociated with Dr. Holland in editing that newborn periodical, begged me to write a short story for the second number of the magazine. I told him that something Helps had written suggested that a story might be devised in which the hero should marry a servant. He said it couldn't be done, and I wrote this, on a wager, as it were. But a "help" is not a servant. The popularity of this story encouraged me to continue, but I can not now account for the popularity of the story.

It was in the judge's own mansion on Thirty-fourth Street that I heard it. It does not matter to the reader how I, a stranger, came to be one of that family party. Since I could not enjoy the society of my own family, it was an act of Christian charity that permitted me to share the joy of others. We had eaten dinner and had adjourned to the warm, bright parlor. I have noticed on such occasions that conversation is apt to flag after dinner. Whether it is that digestion absorbs all of one's vitality, or for some other reason, at least so it generally falls out, that people may talk ever so brilliantly at the table, but they will hardly keep it up for the first half-hour afterward. And so it happened that some of the party fell to looking at the books, and some to turning the leaves of the photograph alb.u.m, while others were using the stereoscope. For my own part, I was staring at an engraving in a dark corner of the parlor, where I could not have made out much of its purpose if I had desired, but in reality I was thinking of the joyous company of my own kith and kin, hundreds of miles away, and regretting that I could not be with them.

"What are you thinking about, papa?" asked Irene, the judge's second daughter.

She was a rather haughty-looking girl of sixteen, but, as I had noticed, very much devoted to her parents. At this moment she was running her hand through her father's hair, while he was rousing himself from his revery to answer her question.

"Thinking of the old Thanksgivings, which were so different from anything we have here. They were the genuine thing; these are only counterfeits."

"Come, tell us about them, please." This time it was Annie Balcom, the elder girl, who spoke. And we all gathered round the judge. For I notice that when conversation does revive, after that period of silence that follows dinner, it is very attractive to the whole company, and in whatsoever place it breaks out there is soon a knot of interested listeners.

"I don't just now think of any particular story of New England Thanksgivings that would interest you," said the judge.

"Tell them about Huldah's mince pie," said Mrs. Balcom, as she looked up from a copy of Whittier she had been reading.

I can not pretend to give the story which follows exactly in the judge's words, for it is three years since I heard it, but as nearly as I can remember it was as follows:

There was a young lawyer named John Harlow practicing law here in New York twenty odd years ago. His father lived not very far from my father. John had been graduated with honors, had studied law, and had the good fortune to enter immediately into a partners.h.i.+p with his law preceptor, ex-Gov. Blank. So eagerly had he pursued his studies that for two years he had not seen his country home. I think one reason why he had not cared to visit it was that his mother was dead, and his only sister was married and living in Boston. Take the "women folks" out of a house, and it never seems much like home to a young man.

But now, as Thanksgiving day drew near, he resolved to give himself a brief release from the bondage of books. He told his partner that he wanted to go home for a week. He said he wanted to see his father and the boys, and his sister, who was coming home at that time, but that he specially wanted to ride old Bob to the brook once more, and to milk Cherry again, just to see how it felt to be a farmer's boy.

"John," said the old lawyer, "be sure you fix up a match with some of those country girls. No man is fit for anything till he is well married; and you are now able, with economy, to support a wife. Mind you get one of those country girls. These paste and powder people here aren't fit for a young man who wants a woman."

"Governor," said the young lawyer, laying his boots gracefully up on top of a pile of law books, as if to encourage reflection by giving his head the advantage of the lower end of the inclined plane, "Governor, I don't know anything about city girls. I have given myself to my books.

But I must have a wife that is literary, like myself--one that can understand Emerson, for instance."

The old lawyer laughed. "John," he answered, "the worst mistake you can make is to marry a woman just like yourself in taste. You don't want to marry a woman's head, but her heart."

John defended his theory, and the governor only remarked that he would be cured of that sooner or later, and the sooner the better.

The next morning John had a letter from his sister. Part of it ran about thus:

"I've concluded, old fellow, that if you don't marry you'll dry up and turn to parchment. I'm going to bring home with me the smartest girl I know. She reads Carlyle, and quotes Goethe, and understands Emerson. Of course she don't know what I am up to, but you must prepare to capitulate."

John did not like Amanda's a.s.suming to pick a wife for him, but he did like the prospect of meeting a clever girl, and he opened the letter again to make sure that he had not misunderstood. He read again, "understands Emerson." John was pleased. Why? I think I can divine.

John was vain of his own abilities, and he wanted a woman that could appreciate him. He would have told you that he wanted congenial society. But congenial female society to an ambitious man whose heart is yet untouched is only society that, in some sense, understands his greatness and admires his wisdom.

In the old home they were looking for the son. The family proper consisted of the father, good Deacon Harlow, John's two brothers, ten and twelve years old, and Huldah, the "help." This last was the daughter of a neighboring farmer who was poor and hopelessly rheumatic, and most of the daughter's hard earnings went to eke out the scanty subsistence at home. Aunt Judith, the sister of John's mother, "looked after" the household affairs of her brother-in-law, by coming over once a week and helping Huldah darn and mend and make, and by giving Huldah such advice as her inexperience was supposed to require. But now Deacon Harlow's daughter had left her husband to eat his turkey alone in Boston, and had brought her two children home to receive the paternal blessing. Not that Mrs. Amanda Holmes had the paternal blessing chiefly in view in her trip. She had brought with her a very dear friend, Miss Janet Dunton, the accomplished teacher in the Mount Parna.s.sus Female Seminary. Why Miss Janet Dunton came to the country with her friend she could hardly have told. Not a word had Mrs. Holmes spoken to her on the subject of the matrimonial scheme. She would have resented any allusion to such a project. She would have repelled any insinuation that she had ever dreamed that marriage was desirable under any conceivable circ.u.mstances. It is a way we have of teaching girls to lie. We educate them to catch husbands. Every superadded accomplishment is put on with the distinct understanding that its sole use is to make the goods more marketable. We get up parties, we go to watering places, we buy dresses, we refurnish our houses, to help our girls to a good match.

And then we teach them to abhor the awful wickedness of ever confessing the great desire that nature and education have combined to make the chief longing of their hearts. We train them to lie to us, their trainers; we train them to lie to themselves; to be false with everybody on this subject; to say "no" when they mean "yes"; to deny an engagement when they are dying to boast of it. It is one of the refinements of Christian civilization which we pray the Women's Missionary Society not to communicate to poor ignorant heathens who know no better than to tell the truth about these things.

But, before I digressed into that line of remark, I was saying that Miss Janet Dunton would have resented the most remote suggestion of marriage. She often declared sentimentally that she was wedded to her books, and loved her leisure, and was determined to be an old maid. And all the time this sincere Christian girl was dying to confer herself upon some worthy man of congenial tastes; which meant, in her case, just what it did in John Harlow's--some one who could admire her attainments. But, sensitive as she was to any imputation of a desire to marry, she and Mrs. Holmes understood each other distinctly. There is a freemasonry of women, and these two had made signs. They had talked about in this wise:

_Mrs. Holmes._--My dear Janet, you'll find my brother a bear in manners, I fear. I wish he would marry. I hope you won't break his heart, for I know you wouldn't have him.

_Miss Dunton._--You know my views on that subject, my dear. I love books, and shall marry n.o.body. Besides, your brother's great legal and literary attainments would frighten such a poor little mouse as I am.

And in saying those words they had managed to say that John Harlow was an unsophisticated student, and that they would run him down between them.

Mrs. Holmes and her friend had arrived twenty-four hours ahead of John, and the daughter of the house had already installed herself as temporary mistress by thoughtlessly upsetting, reversing, and turning inside out all the good Huldah's most cherished arrangements. All the plans for the annual festival that wise and practical Huldah had entertained were vetoed, without a thought that this young girl had been for a year and a half in actual authority in the house, and might have some feeling of wrong in having a guest of a week overturn her plans for the next month. But Mrs. Holmes was not one of the kind to think of that. Huldah was hired and paid, and she never dreamed that hired people could have any interests in their work or their home other than their pay and their food. But Huldah was patient, though she confessed that she had a feeling that she had been rudely "trampled all over." I suspect she had a good cry at the end of the first day. I can not affirm it, except from a general knowledge of women.

When John drove up in the buggy that the boys had taken to the depot for him his first care was to shake hands with the deacon, who was glad to see him, but could not forbear expressing a hope that he would "shave that hair off his upper lip." Then John greeted his sister cordially, and was presented to Miss Dunton. Instead of sitting down, he pushed right on into the kitchen, where Huldah, in a calico frock and a clean white ap.r.o.n, was baking biscuit for tea. She had been a schoolmate of his, and he took her hand cordially as she stood there, with the bright western sun half-glorifying her head and face.

"Why, Huldah, how you've grown!" was his first word of greeting. He meant more than he said, for, though she was not handsome, she had grown exceeding comely as she developed into a woman.

"Undignified as ever!" said Amanda, as he returned to the sitting room.

"How?" said John. He looked bewildered. What had he done that was undignified? And Amanda Holmes saw well enough that it would not do to tell him that speaking to Huldah Manners was not consistent with dignity. She saw that her remark had been a mistake, and she got out of it as best she could by turning the conversation. Several times during the supper John addressed his conversation to Huldah, who sat at the table with the family; for in the country in those days it would have been considered a great outrage to make a "help" wait for the second table. John would turn from the literary conversation to inquire of Huldah about his old playmates, some of whom had gone to the West, some of whom had died, and some of whom were settling into the same fixed adherence to their native rocks that had characterized their ancestors.

The next day the ladies could get no good out of John Harlow. He got up early and milked the cow. He cut wood and carried it in for Huldah. He rode old Bob to the brook for water. He did everything that he had been accustomed to do when a boy, finding as much pleasure in forgetting that he was a man as he had once found in hoping to be a man. The two boys enjoyed his society greatly, and his father was delighted to see that he had retained his interest in the farm life, though the deacon evidently felt an unconquerable hostility to what he called "that scrub-brush on the upper lip." I think if John had known how strong his father's feeling was against this much cherished product he would have mowed the crop and grazed the field closely until he got back to the city.