Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

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Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled down, in the
period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these words in his thin, shallow
whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses. What was the use of losing
his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences
which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a
friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor
before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn too many?

"No doubt, Mr. Peckham," he said, in a grave, calm voice, "there is a
great deal of work to be done in the school; but perhaps we can
distribute the duties a little more evenly after a time. I shall look
over the girls' themes myself, after this week. Perhaps there will be
some other parts of her labor that I can take on myself. We can arrange
a new programme of studies and recitations."

"We can do that," said Mr. Silas Peckham. "But I don't propose
mater'lly alterin' Miss Darley's dooties. I don't think she works to
hurt herself. Some of the Trustees have proposed interdoosin' new
branches of study, and I expect you will be pootty much occoopied with
the dooties that belong to your place. On the Sabbath you will be able
to attend divine service three times, which is expected of our
teachers. I shall continoo myself to give Sabbath Scriptur'-readin's to
the young ladies. That is a solemn dooty I can't make up my mind to
commit to other people. My teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a day of
rest. In it they do no manner of work,--except in cases of necessity or
mercy, such as fillin' out diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at the
end of a term, or when there is an extry number of poopils, or other
Providential call to dispense with the ordinance."

Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by this time,--doubtless
kindled by the thought of the kind consideration Mr. Peckham showed for
his subordinates in allowing them the between-meeting-time on Sundays
except for some special reason. But the morning was wearing away; so he
went to the school-room, taking leave very properly of his respected
principal, who soon took his hat and departed.

Mr. Peckham visited certain "stores" or shops, where he made inquiries
after various articles in the provision-line, and effected a purchase
or two. Two or three barrels of potatoes, which had sprouted in a
promising way, he secured at a bargain. A side of feminine beef was
also obtained at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied with a couple
of barrels of flour, which, being invoiced "slightly damaged", were to
be had at a reasonable price.

After this, Silas Peckham felt in good spirits. He had done a pretty
stroke of business. It came into his head whether he might not follow
it up with a still more brilliant speculation. So he turned his steps
in the direction of Colonel Sprowle's.

It was now eleven o'clock, and the battlefield of last evening was as
we left it. Mr. Peckham's visit was unexpected, perhaps not very well
timed, but the Colonel received him civilly.

"Beautifully lighted,--these rooms last night!" said Mr. Peckham.
"Winter-strained?"

The Colonel nodded.

"How much do you pay for your winter-strained?"

The Colonel told him the price.

"Very hahnsome supper,--very hahnsome! Nothin' ever seen like it in
Rockland. Must have been a great heap of things left over."

The compliment was not ungrateful, and the Colonel acknowledged it by
smiling and saying, "I should think the' was a trifle! Come and look."

When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had survived the evening's
conflict, his commercial spirit rose at once to the point of a
proposal.

"Colonel Sprowle," said he, "there's meat and cakes and pies and
pickles enough on that table to spread a hahnsome colation. If you'd
like to trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be willin' to take
'em off your hands. There's been a talk about our havin' a celebration
in the Parnassian Grove, and I think I could work in what your folks
don't want and make myself whole by chargin' a small sum for tickets.
Broken meats, of course, a'n't of the same valoo as fresh provisions;
so I think you might be willin' to trade reasonable."

Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his proposal. It would not, perhaps,
have been very extraordinary, if Colonel Sprowle had entertained the
proposition. There is no telling beforehand how such things will strike
people. It didn't happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had a
little red-blooded manhood in him.

"Sell you them things to make a colation out of?" the Colonel replied.
"Walk up to that table, Mr. Peckham, and help yourself! Fill your
pockets, Mr. Peckham! Fetch a basket, and our hired folks shall fill it
full for ye! Send a cart, if y' like, 'n' carry off them leavin's to
make a celebration for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this:--as
sure's my name's Hezekiah Spraowle, you'll be known through the taown
'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as the Principal of the
Broken-Victuals Institoot!"

Even provincial human-nature sometimes has a touch of sublimity about
it. Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come
upon the "hard pan," as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's
character, before he thought of it. A militia-colonel standing on his
sentiments is not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in New
England two or three generations ago. There were a good many plain
officers that talked about their "rigiment" and their "caounty" who
knew very well how to say "Make ready!" "Take aim!" "Fire!"--in the
face of a line of grenadiers with bullets in their guns and bayonets on
them. And though a rustic uniform is not always unexceptionable in its
cut and trimmings, yet there was many an ill-made coat in those old
times that was good enough to be shown to the enemy's front rank, too
often to be left on the field with a round hole in its left lapel that
matched another going right through the brave heart of the plain
country captain or major or colonel who was buried in it under the
crimson turf.

Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not
acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped
that there was no offence,--thought it might have been mutooally
agreeable, conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and
backed himself out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of
his person to the risk of accelerating impulses.

The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot,
as if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round
the room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red
brandy and water to compose his feelings.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY.

(_With a Digression on "Hired Help"_)

"Abel! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."

Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of a State, with fat streaks of soil and population where
they breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export
imperfectly nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites,
who may be found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be
until of late years, when they have been half driven out of their
favorite basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them
by California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland
of New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of
that deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule
between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England
serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once
an emperor and a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth
part (be the same more or less) of the power that sways the destinies
of the Great Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is
about to polish. It is impossible to turn a fellow-citizen whose vote
may make his master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or
who may be one or both himself, into a flunky. That article must be
imported ready-made from other centres of civilization. When a
New-Englander has lost his self-respect as a citizen and as a man, he
is demoralized, and cannot be trusted with the money to pay for a
dinner.

It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional emperor, this
continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when he goes into service,
and that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing. It is
always under protest that the hired man does his duty. Every act of
service is subject to the drawback, "I am as good as you are." This is
so common, at least, as almost to be the rule, and partly accounts for
the rapid disappearance of the indigenous "domestic" from the basements
above mentioned. Paleontologists will by-and-by be examining the floors
of our kitchens for tracks of the extinct native species of
serving-man. The female of the same race is fast dying out; indeed, the
time is not far distant when all the varieties of young _woman_ will
have vanished from New England, as the dodo has perished in the
Mauritius. The young _lady_ is all that we shall have left, and the mop
and duster of the last Almira or Loizy will be stared at by generations
of Bridgets and Noras as that famous head and foot of the lost bird are
stared at in the Ashmolean Museum.

Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true American view of his
difficult position. He sold his time to the Doctor, and, having sold
it, he took care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor, on his
part, treated him, not like a gentleman, because one does not order a
gentleman to bring up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him
like a man. Every order was given in courteous terms. His reasonable
privileges were respected as much as if they had been guarantied under
hand and seal. The Doctor lent him books from his own library, and gave
him all friendly counsel, as if he were a son or a younger brother.

Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and though he saw fit to
"hire out," he could never stand the word "servant," or consider
himself the inferior one of the two high contracting parties. When he
came to live with the Doctor, he made up his mind he would dismiss the
old gentleman, if he did not behave according to his notions of
propriety. But he soon found that the Doctor was one of the right sort,
and so determined to keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side, that
he had a trustworthy, intelligent fellow, who would be invaluable to
him, if he only let him have his own way of doing what was to be done.

The Doctor's hired man had not the manners of a French valet. He was
grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled,
but was always at work in the daytime and always reading in the
evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could
properly do, would go to the door or "tend table," bought the
provisions for the family,--in short, did almost everything for them
but get their clothing. There was no office in a perfectly appointed
household, from that of steward down to that of stable-boy, which he
did not cheerfully assume. His round of work not consuming all his
energies, he must needs cultivate the Doctor's garden, which he kept in
one perpetual bloom, from the blowing of the first crocus to the fading
of the last dahlia.

This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen beds were so many cantos.
Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy
in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and
sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the
sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving-
man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God
according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism
is always colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature never shows
him a black corolla.

Perhaps he may have little or nothing to do in this narrative; but as
there must be some who confound the New-England _hired man_,
native-born, with the _servant_ of foreign birth, and as there is the
difference of two continents and two civilizations between them, it did
not seem fair to let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky
without touching his features in half-shadow into our background.

The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her
cinnamon color, cassia being one of the professional names for that
spice or drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an
Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut,--a genuine "Morgan" mare, with
a low forehand, as is common in this breed, but with strong quarters
and flat hocks, well ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively
ears,--a first-rate doctor's beast,--would stand until her harness
dropped off her back at the door of a tedious case, and trot over hill
and dale thirty miles in three hours, if there was a child in the next
county with a bean in its windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of
the fact. Cassia was not large, but she had a good deal of action, and
was the Doctor's show-horse. There were two other animals in his
stable: Quassia or Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay,
with whom he jogged round the village.

"A long ride to-day?" said Abel, as he brought up the equipage.

"Just out of the village,--that's all.--There's a kink in her
mane,--pull it out, will you?"

"Goin' to visit some of the great folks," Abel said to himself. "Wonder
who it is."--Then to the Doctor,--"Anybody get sick at Sprowles's? They
say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin' some o' their frozen
victuals."

The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon would do well enough. He was
only going to ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.

CHAPTER X.

THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER.

If that primitive physician, CHIRON, M.D., appears as a Centaur, as we
look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern
country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not
be distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He _inhabits_ a
wheel-carriage. He thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin
did of land in general; a house may be well enough for incidental
purposes, but for a "stiddy" residence give him a "kerridge." If he is
classified in the Linnaean scale, he must be set down thus: Genus
_Homo_; Species _Rotifer infusorius_,--the wheel-animal of infusions.

The Dudley mansion was not a mile from the Doctor's; but it never
occurred to him to think of walking to see any of his patients'
families, if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the
narrow sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes,
or hoeing corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe in
wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheel-barrow,
or trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated,
short-legged oxen, rocking along the road as if they had just been
landed after a three-months' voyage,--the toiling native, whatever he
was doing, stopped and looked up at the house the doctor was visiting.

"Somebody sick over there t' Haynes's. Guess th' old man's ailin'
ag'in. Winder's haaef-way open in the chamber,--shouldn't wonder 'f he
was dead and laid aout. Docterin' a'n't no use, when y' see the winders
open like that. Wahl, money a'n't much to speak of to th' old man naow!
He don't want but _tew cents_,--and old Widah Peake, she knows what he
wants them for!"

Or again,--

"Measles raound pootty thick. Briggs's folks's' buried two children
with 'em laaest week. Th' old Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck
in 'n' p'dooeed mot'f cation,--so they say."

This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they used to think or
talk, when the narrow sulky turned in at the gate of some house where
there was a visit to be made.

Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what fears, what comfort, what
anguish, what despair, in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels!
In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few
shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread
which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred,--in the
hot summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like
the son of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head,"--in the dying
autumn days, when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a
household, still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped,
low-muttering in their daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly
like those of slumbering harpers,--in the dead winter, when the white
plague of the North has caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they
think of the frozen soil which must be quarried like rock to receive
them, if their perpetual convalescence should happen to be interfered
with by any untoward accident,--at every season, the narrow sulky
rolled round freighted with unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.

The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley
mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose
steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of over-hanging wood.
It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from
a distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like
miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a
dark, deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy--looking
hackmatacks or native larches, with pallid green tufts sticking out
fantastically all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while the
hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would
be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would
wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre, with a twist as of a
feathered oar,--and this, when not a breath could be felt, and every
other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one
having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been
found in the spring,--whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow."
Higher up there were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought,
concealed caves, where in old times they said that Tories lay
hid,--some hinted not without occasional aid and comfort from the
Dudleys then living in the mansion-house. Still higher and farther west
lay the accursed ledge,--shunned by all, unless it were now and then a
daring youth, or a wandering naturalist who ventured to its edge in the
hope of securing some infantile _Crotalus durissus_, who had not yet
cut his poison-teeth.

Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable Thomas Dudley,
Esquire, a man of note and name and great resources, allied by descent
to the family of "Tom Dudley," as the early Governor is sometimes
irreverently called by our most venerable, but still youthful
antiquary,--and to the other public Dudleys, of course,--of all of whom
he made small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with
little taste for the splendors of provincial office,--early in the last
century, Thomas Dudley had built this mansion. For several generations
it had been dwelt in by descendants of the same name, but soon after
the Revolution it passed by marriage into the hands of the Venners, by
whom it had ever since been held and tenanted.

As the Doctor turned an angle in the road, all at once the stately old
house rose before him. It was a skilfully managed effect, as it well
might be, for it was no vulgar English architect who had planned the
mansion and arranged its position and approach. The old house rose
before the Doctor crowning a terraced garden, flanked at the left by a
double avenue of tall elms. The flower-beds were edged with box, which
diffused around it that dreamy balsamic odor, full of ante-natal
reminiscences of a lost Paradise, dimly fragrant as might be the
bdellium of ancient Havilah, the land compassed by the river Pison that
went out of Eden. The garden was somewhat neglected, but not in
disgrace,--and in the time of tulips and hyacinths, of roses, of
"snowballs," of honeysuckles, of lilacs, of syringas, it was rich with
blossoms.

From the front-windows of the mansion the eye reached a far blue
mountain-summit,--no rounded heap, such as often shuts in a
village-landscape, but a sharp peak, clean-angled as Ascutney from the
Dartmouth green. A wide gap through miles of woods had opened this
distant view, and showed more, perhaps, than all the labors of the
architect and the landscape-gardener the large style of the early
Dudleys.

The great stone chimney of the mansion-house was the centre from which
all the artificial features of the scene appeared to flow. The roofs,
the gables, the dormer-windows, the porches, the clustered offices in
the rear, all seemed to crowd about the great chimney. To this central
pillar the paths all converged. The single poplar behind the
house,--Nature is jealous of proud chimneys, and always loves to put a
poplar near one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down its black
throat every autumn,--the one tall poplar behind the house seemed to
nod and whisper to the grave square column, the elms to sway their
branches towards it. And when the blue smoke rose from its summit, it
seemed to be wafted away to join the azure haze which hung around the
peak in the far distance, so that both should bathe in a common
atmosphere.

Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a century's growth upon
them, and looking more like trees than like shrubs. Shaded by a group
of these was the ancient well, of huge circuit, and with a low arch
opening out of its wall about ten feet below the surface,--whether the
door of a crypt for the concealment of treasure, or of a subterranean
passage, or merely of a vault for keeping provisions cool in hot
weather, opinions differed.

On looking at the house, it was plain that it was built with Old-World
notions of strength and durability, and, so far as might be, with
Old-World materials. The hinges of the doors stretched out like arms,
instead of like hands, as we make them. The bolts were massive enough
for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes were actually inclosed in the
wood of the sashes, instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in
our modern windows. The broad staircase was of easy ascent, and was
guarded by quaintly turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings of the
two rooms of state were moulded with medallion-portraits and rustic
figures, such as may have been seen by many readers in the famous old
Philipse house,--Washington's headquarters,--in the town of Yonkers.
The fireplaces, worthy of the wide-throated central chimney, were
bordered by pictured tiles, some of them with Scripture stories, some
with Watteau-like figures,--tall damsels in slim waists and with spread
enough of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or
musical swains of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,--that
is, the swain adapted to genteel society rather than to a literal
sheep-compelling existence.

The house was furnished, soon after it was completed, with many heavy
articles made in London from a rare wood just then come into fashion,
not so rare now, and commonly known as mahogany. Time had turned it
very dark, and the stately bedsteads and tall cabinets and claw-footed
chairs and tables were in keeping with the sober dignity of the ancient
mansion. The old "hangings" were yet preserved in the chambers, faded,
but still showing their rich patterns,--properly entitled to their
name, for they were literally hung upon flat wooden frames like
trellis-work, which again were secured to the naked partitions.
There were portraits of different date on the walls of the various
apartments, old painted coats-of-arms, bevel-edged mirrors, and in one
sleeping-room a glass case of wax-work flowers and spangly symbols,
with a legend signifying that E.M. (supposed to be Elizabeth Mascarene)
wished not to be "forgot"

"When I am dead and lay'd in dust
And all my bones are"----

Poor E.M.! Poor everybody that sighs for earthly remembrance in a
planet with a core of fire and a crust of fossils!

Such was the Dudley mansion-house,--for it kept its ancient name in
spite of the change in the line of descent. Its spacious apartments
looked dreary and desolate; for here Dudley Venner and his daughter
dwelt by themselves, with such servants only as their quiet mode of
life required. He almost lived in his library, the western room on the
ground-floor. Its window looked upon a small plat of green, in the
midst of which was a single grave marked by a plain marble slab. Except
this room, and the chamber where he slept, and the servants' wing, the
rest of the house was all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering
child from her early years, and would have her little bed moved from
one chamber to another,--flitting round as the fancy took her.
Sometimes she would drag a mat and a pillow into one of the great empty
rooms, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a
corner. Nothing frightened her; the "haunted" chamber, with the torn
hangings that flapped like wings when there was air stirring, was one
of her favorite retreats.

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