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.
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 album, 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 partnership 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 assuming
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 Parnassus 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
circumstances. 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 nobody. 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 apron, 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.
John was not insensible to Janet Dunton’s
charms. She could talk fluently about all the
authors most in vogue, and the effect of her fluency
was really dazzling to a man not yet cultivated enough
himself to see how superficial her culture was; for
all her learning floated on top. None of it had
influenced her own culture. She was brim full
of that which she had acquired, but it had not been
incorporated into her own nature. John did not
see this, and he was infatuated with the idea of marrying
a wife of such attainments. How she would dazzle
his friends! How the governor would like to talk
to her! How she would shine in his parlors!
How she would delight people as she gave them tea
and talk at the same time. John was in love with
her as he would have been in love with a new tea urn
or a rare book. She was a nice thing to show.
Other people than John have married on the strength
of such a feeling and called it love; for John really
imagined that he was in love. And during that
week he talked and walked and rode in the sleigh with
Miss Dunton, and had made up his mind that he would
carry this brilliant prize to New York. But,
with lawyerlike caution, he thought he would put off
the committal as long as possible. If his heart
had been in his attentions the caution would not have
been worth much. Caution is a good breakwater
against vanity, but it isn’t worth much against
the springtide of love, as John Harlow soon found out.
For toward the end of the week he
began to feel a warmer feeling for Miss Janet.
It was not in the nature of things that John should
walk and talk with a pleasant girl a week, and not
feel something more than his first interested desire
to marry a showy wife. His heart began to be
touched, and he resolved to bring things to a crisis
as soon as possible. He therefore sought an opportunity
to propose. But it was hard to find. For
though Mrs. Holmes was tolerably ingenious, she could
not get the boys or the deacon to pay any regard to
her hints. Boys are totally depraved on such
questions anyhow, and always manage to stumble in
where any privacy is sought. And as for the deacon,
it really seemed as though he had some design in intruding
at the critical moment.
I do not think that John was seriously
in love with Miss Dunton. If he had been he would
have found some means of communicating with her.
A thousand spies with sleepless eyes all round their
heads can not keep a man from telling his love somehow,
if he really have a love to tell.
There is another fact which convinces
me that John Harlow was not yet very deeply in love
with Janet. He was fond of talking with her of
Byron and Milton, of Lord Bacon and Emerson - i.e.,
as I have already said, he was fond of putting his
own knowledge on dress parade in the presence of one
who could appreciate the display. But whenever
any little thing released him for the time from conversation
in the sitting room he was given to slipping out into
the old kitchen, where, sitting on a chair that had
no back, and leaning against the chimney side, he
delighted to talk to Huldah. She couldn’t
talk much of books, but she could talk most charmingly
of everything that related to the country life, and
she could ask John many questions about the great city.
In fact, John found that Huldah had come into possession
of only such facts and truths as could be reached
in her narrow life, but that she had assimilated them
and thought about them, and that it was more refreshing
to hear her original and piquant remarks about the
topics she was acquainted with than to listen to the
tireless stream of Janet Dunton’s ostentatious
erudition. And he found more delight in telling
the earnest and hungry-minded country girl about the
great world of men and the great world of books than
in talking to Janet, who was, in the matter of knowledge,
a little blasee, if I may be allowed the expression.
And then, to Huldah he could talk of his mother, whom
he had often watched moving about that same kitchen.
When he had spoken to Janet of the associations of
the old place with his mother’s countenance,
she had answered with a quotation from some poet, given
in a tone of empty sentimentality. He instinctively
shrank from mentioning the subject to her again; but
to Huldah it was so easy to talk of his mother’s
gentleness and sweetness. Huldah was not unlike
her in these respects, and then she gave him the sort
of sympathy that finds its utterance in a tender silence - so
much more tender than any speech can be.
He observed often during the week
that Huldah was depressed. He could not exactly
account for it, until he noticed something in his sister’s
behavior toward her that awakened his suspicion.
As soon as opportunity offered he inquired of Huldah,
affecting at the same time to know something about
it.
“I don’t want to complain
of your sister to you, Mr. Harlow - ”
“Pshaw! call me John; and as
for my sister, I know her faults better than you do.
Go on, please.”
“Well, it’s only that
she told me that Miss Dunton wasn’t used to
eating at the same table with servants; and
when one of the boys told your father, he was mad,
and came to me, and said, ’Huldah, you must
eat when the rest do. If you stay away from the
table on account of these city snobs I’ll make
a fuss on the spot.’ So, to avoid a fuss,
I have kept on going to the table.”
John was greatly vexed with this.
He was a chivalrous fellow, and he knew how such a
remark must wound a person who had never learned that
domestic service had anything degrading in it.
And the result was just the opposite of what his sister
had hoped. John paid more attention than ever
to Huldah Manners because she was the victim of oppression.
The evening before Thanksgiving day
the ladies were going to make a visit. It was
not at all incumbent on John to go, but he was seeking
an opportunity to carry off the brilliant Miss Dunton,
who would adorn his parlors when he became rich and
distinguished, and who would make so nice a headpiece
for his table. And so he had determined to go
with them, trusting to some fortunate chance for his
opportunity.
But, sitting in the old “best
room” in the dark, while the ladies were getting
ready, and trying to devise a way by which he might
get an opportunity to speak with Miss Dunton alone,
it occurred to him that she was at that time in the
sitting room waiting for his sister. To step
out to where she was, and present the case in a few
words, would not be difficult, and it might all be
settled before his sister came downstairs. The
Fates were against him, however; for, just as he was
about to act on his thought, he heard Amanda Holmes’s
abundant skirts sweeping down the stairway. He
could not help hearing the conversation that followed:
“You see, Janet, I got up this
trip to-night to keep John from spending the evening
in the kitchen. He hasn’t a bit of dignity,
and would spend the evening romping with the children
and talking to Huldah if he took it into his head.”
“Well,” said Janet, “one
can overlook everything in a man of your brother’s
culture. But what a queer way your country servants
have of pushing themselves! Wouldn’t I
make them know their places!”
And all this was said with the kitchen
door open, and with the intention of wounding Huldah.
John’s castles tumbled.
The erudite wife alongside the silver tea urn faded
out of sight rapidly. If knowledge could not give
a touch of humane regard for the feelings of a poor
girl toiling dutifully and self-denyingly to support
her family, of what account was it?
Two minutes before he was about to
give his life to Janet Dunton. Now there was
a gulf wider than the world between them. He slipped
out of the best room by the outside door and came
in through the kitchen. The neighbor’s
sleigh that was to call for them was already at the
door, and John begged them to excuse him. He
had set his heart on helping Huldah make mince pies,
as he used to help his mother when a boy. His
sister was in despair, but she did not say much.
She told John that it was time he was getting over
his queer freaks. And the sleigh drove off.
For an hour afterward John romped
with his sister’s children and told stories
to the boys and talked to his father. When a man
has barely escaped going over a precipice he does
not like to think too much about it. John did
not.
At last the little children went to
bed. The old gentleman grew sleepy, and retired.
The boys went into the sitting room and went to sleep,
one on the lounge and one on the floor. Huldah
was just ready to begin her pies. She was deeply
hurt, but John succeeded in making her more cheerful.
He rolled up his sleeves and went to rolling out the
pastry. He thought he had never seen a sweeter
picture than the young girl in clean dress and apron,
with her sleeves rolled above her elbows. There
was a statuesque perfection in her well-rounded arms.
The heat of the fire had flushed her face a little,
and she was laughing merrily at John’s awkward
blunders in pie-making. John was delighted, he
hardly knew why. In fixing a pie crust his fingers
touched hers, and he started as if he had touched
a galvanic battery. He looked at Huldah, and
saw a half-pained expression on her flushed face.
For the first time it occurred to
him that Huldah Manners had excited in him a feeling
a thousand times deeper than anything he had felt
toward Janet, who seemed to be now in another world.
For the first time he realized that he had been more
in love with Huldah than with Janet all the time.
Why not marry her? And then he remembered what
the governor had said about marrying a woman’s
heart and not her head.
He put on his hat and walked out - out,
out, into the darkness, the drizzling rain, and the
slush of melting snow, fighting a fierce battle.
All his pride and all his cowardly vanity were on one
side, all the irresistible torrent of his love on
the other. He walked away into the dark wood
pasture, trying to cool his brow, trying to think,
and - would you believe it? - trying
to pray, for it was a great struggle, and in any great
struggle a true soul always finds something very like
prayer in his heart.
The feeling of love may exist without
attracting the attention of its possessor. It
had never occurred to John that he could love or marry
Huldah. Thus the passion had grown all the more
powerful for not being observed, and now the unseen
fire had at a flash appeared as an all-consuming one.
Turning back, he stood without the
window, in the shadow, and looked through the glass
at the trim young girl at work with her pies.
In the modest, restful face he read the story of a
heart that had carried great burdens patiently and
nobly. What a glorious picture she was of warmth
and light, framed in darkness! To his heart at
that moment all the light and warmth of the world
centered in Huldah. All the world besides was
loneliness and darkness and drizzle and slush.
His fear of his sister and of his friends seemed base
and cowardly. And the more he looked at this
vision of the night, this revelation of peace and love
and light, the more he was determined to possess it.
You will call him precipitate. But when all a
man’s nobility is on one side and all his meanness
on the other, why hesitate? Besides, John Harlow
had done more thinking in that half hour than most
men do in a month.
The vision had vanished from the window,
and he went in and sat down. She had by this
time put in the last pie, and was sitting with her
head on her hand. The candle flickered and went
out, and there was only the weird and ruddy firelight.
I can not tell you what words passed between John
and the surprised Huldah, who had thought him already
betrothed to Miss Dunton. I can not tell what
was said in the light of that fire; I don’t
suppose Harlow could tell that story himself.
Huldah asked that he should not say
anything about it till his sister was gone. Of
course John saw that she asked it for his sake.
But his own cowardice was glad of the shelter.
Next day a brother of John’s,
whom I forgot to mention before, came home from college.
Mrs. Holmes’s husband arrived unexpectedly.
Aunt Judith, with her family, came over at dinner
time, so that there was a large and merry party.
Two hearts, at least, joined in the deacon’s
thanksgiving before dinner with much fervor.
At the table the dinner was much admired.
“Huldah,” said Janet Dunton,
“I like your pies. I wish I could hire you
to go to Boston. Our cook never does so well.”
John saw the well-aimed shaft hidden
under this compliment, and all his manhood rallied.
As soon as he could be sure of himself he said:
“You can not have Huldah; she is already engaged.”
“How’s that?” said Aunt Judith.
“Oh! I’ve secured her services,”
said John.
“What?” said Mrs. Holmes,
“engaged your - your - your
help before you engaged a wife!”
“Not at all,” said John;
“engaged my help and my wife in one. I hope
that Huldah Manners will be Huldah Harlow by Christmas.”
The deacon dropped his knife and fork,
and dropped his lower jaw, and stared. “What!
How! What did you say, John?”
“I say, father, that this good
girl Huldah is to be my wife.”
“John!” gasped the old
man, getting to his feet and reaching his hand across
the table, “you’ve got plenty of sense
if you do wear a mustache! God bless you, my
boy; there ain’t no better woman here, nor in
New York, nor anywhere, than Huldah. God bless
you both! I was afraid you’d take a different
road, though.”
“Hurrah for our Huldah and our
John!” said George Harlow, the college boy,
and his brothers joined him. Even the little Holmes
children hurrahed.
Here the judge stopped.
“Well,” said Irene, “I
don’t think it was very nice in him to
marry the ‘help.’ Do you, father?”
“Indeed I do,” said the judge,
with emphasis.
“Did she ever come to understand
Emerson?” asked Anna, who detested the Concord
philosopher because she could not understand him.
“Indeed I don’t know,”
said the judge; “you can ask Huldah herself.”
“Who? what? You don’t mean that mother
is Huldah?”
It was a cry in concert.
“Mother” was a little
red in the face behind the copy of Whittier she was
affecting to read.
1870.