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Hetty's Strange History, a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson |
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Chapter 3 |
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_ CHAPTER III The gratitude with which James Little's wife received Hetty's proposition was so great that it softened even her father-in-law's heart. "I do believe, Hetty," he said, when he gave her their answer, "I do believe that poor girl has suffered more'n we've given her credit for. When I explained to her that you was goin' to take her right in to be like one o' your own family, she turned as white as a sheet, and says she,-- "'You don't mean it, father: she won't ever dare to:' and when I said, says I,-- "'Yes, she does: Hetty Gunn ain't a girl not to know what she means to do. And that's just what she says she's goin' to do with you and Jim,' she broke right out crying, out loud, just like a little baby, and says she,-- "'If the Lord don't bless Hetty Gunn for bein' so good to us! she sha'n't ever be sorry for it's long's she lives.'" "Of course I sha'n't," said Hetty, bluntly. "I never was sorry yet for any thing I did which was right, and I am as sure this is right as I am that I am alive. When will they come?" "Sarah said she would come right over to-day, if you'd like to have her help you; and Jim he could fix up things at home, and shut the house up. Jim said they'd better not let the house till you had tried how it worked havin' 'em here. Jim don't seem very sanguine about it. Poor fellow, he's got the spirit all taken out of him." "Well, well, we'll put it back again, see if we don't, before the year is out," replied Hetty, with a beaming smile, which made her face beautiful. It happened fortunately that poor Sarah Little first came to her new home alone, rather than with her husband. The years of solitude and disgrace through which they had lived, had made him dogged and defiant of manner, but had made her humble and quiet. She still kept a good deal of the beauty of her youth; and there were few persons who could be unmoved by the upward glance of her saddened blue eyes. In less than five minutes, she conquered old Nan, and secured her as an ally for ever. As she entered the house, Hetty met her, and saying cordially,-- "I'm glad to see you, Sally. It was so good of you to come right over at once; we have a great deal to do,"--she kissed her on her forehead. Sarah burst into tears. Nan stood by with a sullen face. Turning towards her involuntarily, perhaps because she hardly dared to speak to Hetty, Sarah said,-- "Oh, Nan, I'm only crying because she is so kind to me. I can't help it;" and the poor thing sank into a chair and sobbed. No wonder! it was six years since she had returned to her native village, a shame-stricken woman, bearing in her arms the child whose birth had been her disgrace. That its father was now her husband did little or nothing to repair the loss which her weakness and wrong-doing had entailed on her. If there be a pitiless community in this world, it is a small New England village. Calvinism, in its sternest aspects, broods over it; narrowness and monotony make rigid the hearts which theology has chilled; and a grim Pharisaism, born of a certain sort of intellectual keen-wittedness, completes the cruel inhumanity. It was six years since poor Sarah Little, baby in arms, had come into such an air as this,--six years, and until this moment, when Hetty Gunn kissed her forehead and spoke to her with affection, no woman had ever said to her a kindly word. When the baby died, not a neighbor came to its funeral. The minister, the weeping father and mother, and the stern-looking grandfather, alone followed the little unwelcomed one to its grave. After that, Sarah rarely went out of her house except at night. The tradesmen with whom she had to deal came slowly to have a pitying respect for her. The minister went occasionally to see her, and in his clumsy way thought he perceived what he called "the right spirit" in her. Sarah dreaded his calls more than any thing else. What made her isolation much harder to bear was the fact that, only two years before, every young girl in the county had been her friend. There was no such milliner in all that region as Sarah Newhall. In autumn and in spring, her little shop at Lonway Four Corners was crowded with chattering and eager girls, choosing ribbons and hats, and all deferring to her taste. Now they all passed her by with only a cold and silent bow. Not one spoke. To Sarah's affectionate, mirth-loving temperament, this was misery greater than could be expressed. She said not a word about it, not even to her husband: she bore it as dumb animals bear pain, seeking only a shelter, a hiding-place; but she wished herself dead. Jim's share of the punishment had been in some ways lighter than hers, in others harder. He had less loneliness; but, on the other hand, by his constant intercourse with men, he was frequently reminded of the barrier which separated himself and his wife from all that went on in the village. He had the same mirthful, social temperament which she had: the thoughtless, childish, pleasure-loving quality, which they had in common, had been the root of their sin; and was now the instrument of their suffering. Stronger people could have borne up better; worse people might have found a certain evil solace in evil ways and with evil associates: but Jim and Sally were incapable of any such course; they were simply two utterly broken-spirited and hopeless children whose punishment had been greater than they could bear. In a dogged way, because they must live, Jim went on earning a little money as surveyor and draughtsman. He often talked of going away into some new far-away place where they could have, as he said, in the same words Hetty had used, "a fair chance;" but Sally would not go. "It would not make a bit of difference," she said: "it would be sure to be found out, and strange folks would despise us even more than our own folks do; perhaps things will come round right after a while, if we stay here." Jim did not insist, for he loved Sally tenderly; and he felt, to the core of his heart, that the least he could do for her now was to let her live where she chose to live: but he grew more sullen and dogged, day by day; and Sally grew sadder and quieter, and things were fast coming to a bad pass, when Hetty Gunn's generous offer came to them, like a great rift of sunlight in a black sky. When Sally sank into the chair sobbing, Hetty made a quick movement towards her, and was about to speak; but, seeing that old Nan was hastening to do the same thing, she wisely waited, thinking to herself,-- "If Nan will only take her under her wing, all will go well." Old Nan's tenderness of heart was unlimited. If her worst enemy were in pain or sorrow, she would succor him: ready perhaps to take up the threads of her resentment again, as soon as his sufferings were alleviated; but a very Samaritan of good offices as long as he needed them. Caesar, so well understood this trait in her, that in their matrimonial disputes, which, it must be confessed, were frequent and sharp, when all other weapons failed him, he fell back on the colic. He had only to interrupt the torrent of her reproaches, with a groan, and a twist of his fat abdomen, and "oh, honey, I'm so bad in my stomach!" and she was transformed, in an instant from a Xantippe into a Florence Nightingale: the whole current of her wrath deviated from him to the last meal he had eaten, whatever it might be. "Now, it's jist nothin' but that pesky bacon you ate this mornin', Caesar: you sha'n't never touch a bit again's long's you live; do you hear?" and with hot water and flannels, she would proceed to comfort and coddle him as if no anger had ever stirred her heart. When she saw poor Sarah Little sink crying into a chair, and heard the humble gratefulness of her words; and, moreover, felt herself, as it were, distinctly taken into confidence by the implied reference to the unhappy past,--old Nan melted. "There, there, honey: don't ye take on so. We're jest powerful glad to get you here, we be. I was a tellin' Miss Hetty yesterday she couldn't live here alone, noways: we couldn't any of us stand it. Come along into the dinin'-room, an' Caesar he'll give you a glass of his blackberry wine. Caesar won't let anybody but hisself touch the blackberry wine, an' hain't this twenty year." "Here, Caesar! you, Caesar! where be yer? Come right in here, you loafin' niggah." This was Nan's most affectionate nickname for her husband; it was always accompanied with a glance of proud admiration, which was the key to the seemingly opprobrious epithet, and revealed that all it really meant was a complacent satisfaction in her breast that her husband was in a position to loaf if he liked to,--a gentleman of leisure and dignity, so to speak, subject to no orders but her own. Caesar could hardly believe his ears when he heard himself called upon to bring a glass of his blackberry wine to Mrs. Sarah Little. This was not at all in keeping with the line of conduct which Nan had announced beforehand that she should pursue in regard to that lady. Bewildered by his perplexed meditations on this change of policy, he moved even more slowly than was his wont, and was presently still more bewildered by finding the glass snatched suddenly from his hand, with a sharp reprimand from Nan. "You're asleep, ain't you? p'raps you'd better go back to bed, seein' it's nigh noon." "There, honey, you jest drink this, an' it'll do you good," came in the next second from the same lips, in such dulcet tones, that Caesar rubbed his head in sheer astonishment, and gazed with open mouth and eyes upon Nan, who was holding the glass to Sally's mouth, as caressingly as she would to a sick child's. The battle was won; won by a tone and a tear; won, as, ever since the days of Goliath, so many battles have been won by the feebleness of weapons, and not by their might. When two days later, James Little, more than half unwillingly, spite of his gratitude to Hetty, came to take his position as overseer at "Gunn's," he was met at the great gate by his wife, who had been watching there for him for an hour. He looked at her with undisguised wonder. There was a light in her eyes, a color in her cheeks, he had not seen there for many years. "Why, Sally!" he exclaimed, but gave no other expression to his amazement. She understood. "Oh, Jim!" she said, "it is like heaven here: they're all so kind. I told you things would come round all right if we waited." The new overseer found himself welcomed because he was Sally's husband, and the strangeness of this was a bewilderment indeed. He could hardly understand the atmosphere of cordial good feeling which seemed in so short time to have grown up between his wife and all the household. He had become so used to Sally's sweet sad face, that he did not know how great a charm it held for others; and he had never seen in her the manner which she now wore to every one. One day's kindly treatment had been to her like one day's sunlight to a drooping plant. Hetty was relieved and glad. All her misgivings had vanished; and she found growing up in her heart a great tenderness toward Sally. She recollected well the bright rosy face Sally had worn only a few years before, and the contrast between it and her pale sorrow-stricken countenance now smote Hetty whenever she looked at her. Her sympathy, however, took no shape in words or caresses. She was too wise for that. She simply made it plain that Sally's place in the family was to be a fixed and a busy one. "I shall look after the out-door things, Sally," she said. "I have done that ever since father was so poorly, and I like it best. I shall trust to you to keep the house going all straight. Old Nan isn't much of a housekeeper, though she's a good cook: she needs looking after." And so the new household entered on its first summer. The crops sprang up, abundant and green: all the cattle throve and increased: the big garden bloomed full of its old-fashioned flowers; its wide borders of balm and lavender made the whole road-side sweet: the doors stood open, and the cheery sounds of brisk farm life were to be heard all day long. To all passers-by "Gunn's" seemed unchanged, unless it were that it had grown even more prosperous and active. But in the hall, two knobbed old canes which used to stand in the corner were hung by purple ribbons from the great antlers on the wall, and would never be taken down again. Hetty had hung them there the day after the funeral, and had laid the squire's riding-whip across them, saying to herself as she did so,-- "There! I'll keep those up there as long as I live, and I wonder what will become of them then or of the farm either," and she had a long and sad reverie, standing with the riding-whip in her hand in the doorway, and tying and untying the purple ribbons. But she shook the thought off at last, saying to herself,-- "Well, well, I don't suppose the farm'll go begging. There are plenty of people that would be glad enough to have me give it to them. I expect it will have to go to Cousin Josiah after all; but father couldn't abide him. It's a great pity I wasn't a boy, then I could have married and had children to take it." A sudden flush covered Hetty's face as she said this, and with a shamefaced, impatient twist of her expressive features, she ran in hastily and laid the whip above the canes. The only thing which broke in on the even tenor of this summer at Gunn's was Caesar's experiencing religion in a great revival at the Methodist church. Caesar had been under conviction again and again; but, as old Nan said pathetically to her minister, there didn't seem to be "nothin' to ketch hold by in Caesar." By the time his emotions had worked up to the proper climax for a successful result, he was "done tired out," and would "jest give right up" and "let go," and "there he was as bad's ever, if not wuss." Poor old Nan was a very ardent and sincere Christian, spite of her infirmities of temper, and she would wrestle in prayer with and for her husband till her black cheeks shone under streams of tears. She wrestled all the harder because the ungodly Caesar would sometimes turn upon her, and in the most sarcastic and ungenerous way ask if he didn't keep his temper better "without religion than she did with it:" upon which Nan would groan and travail in spirit, and beseech the Lord not to "go an' let her be a stumbler-block in Caesar's way." The Squire's death had produced a great impression on Caesar: from that day he had been, Nan declared, "quite a changed pusson;" and the impression deepened until three months later, in the course of a great midnight meeting in the Methodist church, Caesar Gunn suddenly announced that he had "got religion." The one habit which it was hardest for Caesar to give up, in his new character, was the habit of swearing. Profanity had never been strongly discountenanced at "Gunn's." The old Squire and the young Squire had both been in the habit of swearing, on occasion, as roundly as troopers! and black Caesar was not going to be behind his masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to break himself of this was Caesar's difficulty. "Yer see, Nan!" he said, "I dunno when it's a comin': the fust I know, it's said and done, an' what am I goin' to do 'bout it then, 'll yer tell me?" At last, Caesar hit on a compromise which seemed to him a singularly happy one. To avoid saying "damn" was manifestly impossible: the word slipped out perpetually without giving him warning; as soon as he heard it, however, his righteous soul remorsefully followed up the syllable by,-- "Bress the Lord," in Stentorian tones. The compound ejaculation thus formed was one which nobody's gravity could resist; and the surprised and grieved expression with which poor Caesar would look round upon an audience which he had thus convulsed was even more irresistible than the original expression. Everybody who came to "Gunn's" went away and said,-- "Have you heard the new oath Caesar Gunn swears with since he got religion?" and "Damn bress the Lord" soon became a very by-word in the town. _ |
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