Chapter XXXI: A Family Journey

In these days of long journeys, when a trip to Europe is decided on one hour, and undertaken the next, a voyage to New Haven from Norwich is scarcely more than a morning’s drive; but in the time of our story it was altogether a different affair. When a sloop sailed down the river, people gathered on the wharf to see it off; passengers took leave of their friends with tears in their eyes; and handkerchiefs of gorgeously printed cotton fluttered in the air, till the important craft was out of sight. Science has changed time and space, but human love and sympathy are the same forever and ever; and the people who gathered on the little wharf in those days, were actuated by exactly the same feelings which throng our vast piers when a mammoth steamer goes out crowded with hundreds.

The preparation in Mr. Arnold’s house was creating no little commotion. True, there was no great wardrobe to prepare. A huge chest, clamped with brass, which stood in the upper hall, was unlocked, and two or three dresses taken forth; a dainty silver-gray silk, gored in the skirt and ruffled at the elbows, was refolded and placed in a small hair-trunk; cap-ribbons were smoothed out; and Hagar ran about the kitchen all one morning clapping bits of lace and muslin between her hands, which were white and crusted with flakes of starch to the finger nails.

Hannah Arnold, very grave and thoughtful, worked upon the kerchiefs and caps which were to shade the still pretty neck and brow of her mother. Her lover had returned home on the morning after Amy came to the house, in ignorance of the change which that event might make in his sister’s destiny. The reticence of social life was severe in those days; and Hannah herself only knew that her friend Amy had taken the engagement of her brother with Laura more painfully than she had expected, and that trouble was impending between the two families,—that her parents threatened to interfere, against the marriage, and thus darken her own lot.

If the young girl felt this to be a little hard, who can wonder? She had wronged no one. Paul had come to her with a free heart. Why was her brother’s faithlessness, if such it was, to break up all her own sweet hopes? She felt too surely that any interference of her parents sufficiently potent to break up the marriage would place her brother in perpetual feud with the family of his betrothed. Then what would be her own fate? All this made Hannah very gloomy and dispirited. She knew that Amy was in the house, but some sensitive feeling kept her from asking any explanation of the fact till the Leonards carried their daughter away again. Then she learned that Amy was to go with the family to New Haven, and this filled her heart with new anxieties.

Mrs. Arnold was also very much occupied. Her whole heart was so taken up with the great evil that had befallen them, that she had not given the position of her daughter the consideration it deserved. A great wrong had been done, and her pure, honest nature was exercised in all its capacities to redeem that wrong. She thought no further than this, and it was well for her object that she did not. The idea that her daughter also must be sacrificed might have overwhelmed her strength.

Thus it happened that the mother and daughter were, to a certain extent, put asunder during those few days. The thoughts occupying Mrs. Arnold’s mind were not such as she could discuss freely with a young girl, brought up after the fashion of those times, and her confidence was rather bestowed on Hagar, who, in right of her own benefactions, looked on the whole affair as peculiarly belonging to her department.

On the evening before the sloop sailed, Mrs. Arnold and Hagar, after taking out the silver-gray dress, and two or three garments of rich chintz, which were at once neatly packed for the journey, loitered over the open chest, as if there was something more to be said, which neither of them knew exactly how to begin.

Twice Mrs. Arnold put her hand into the chest and drew it forth again, with a flash on her cheek, at which Hagar, who sat on one corner of the chest before which her mistress knelt, turned her eyes decorously away. In the end, this sweet dame drew forth a little bundle from a corner of the chest, and, with the blush deepening on her cheek, began to untie it.

“Hagar!” she said.

“Well, missus, what am it?”

“Here are a few things that I want you to whiten and do up while we are gone, if it won’t be putting too much work on you.”

“Too much work,—what am you tinking ’bout? ‘Cept de men folks, I shan’t have nothin’ to ’tend to. Jest tell me what you want, and I’ll do it sure!”

Mrs. Arnold’s lip began to quiver, and a mist came into her eyes as she opened the little bundle, and took out first one tiny garment and then another.

“It don’t seem possible that he ever wore these,” she said, looking at Hagar through her tears, as she thrust two slender fingers into a tiny sleeve, edged with a cobweb of lace. “He was a noble baby, Hagar; don’t you remember?”

“Yes, I can’t ’spute dat, but it seems ter me discredible dat he ever wore dem ere frocks and tings, and Miss Hannah arter him. Gracious me, how babies does alter in course of time, doesn’t they?”

“He was my first child, you know, Hagar,” said the gentle matron, flushing with the remembrance of that heaven of her young life, when a little rosy hand was laid for the first time on her bosom; “and now to think that he is a grown man! I can’t realize it.”

She sighed heavily, and the tears, which had stood in her eyes, began to rain down, dropping upon the little yellow garments in her lap.

“Nor I neither. De Lord ob hebben forgib him!” answered Hagar, wiping her eyes with one corner of her linsey-woolsey apron.

“And now,” said Mrs. Arnold, between the faint sobs that began to gather in her bosom, “he is a man, while I am getting feeble and old. What if he refuses to listen? What if he should deal harshly with me and with her?”

“Don’t tink ob no sich ting, missus. De bressed Lord sends yer, and it’s yer duty ter go right straight forred wedder or no. Don’t be skeered ’bout not’in’. Human natur’ ain’t bad ’nuff to stand up agin yer, ’specially yer own son. De minnit he looks in yer eyes he’ll wilt rite down and gib up, nebber fear.”

“But if he should not,—if Mr. Arnold were to fail, and cast him off,—then, Hagar, this poor girl must be taken care of. We shall adopt her in his place, and deal tenderly with her, as if she were our own child.”

“Ob course yer would,” answered Hagar, gathering up a handful of her rough apron and holding it to her eyes with a hard pressure; “but ’twont ebber ’mount to dat. He’ll come too.”

“I hope so,” said the mother, mournfully; “but it’s a painful duty to undertake, and I’m not used to such things.”

Hagar gazed on the poor lady despondingly a moment; then her face brightened all over, and, lifting her chin in the air, she broke out, all at once.

“S’posin’ I go wid yer, missus. He knows me ob old Let him only jes’ say his soul’s his own, an’ I’ll maul de right ting out ob him!”

Mrs. Arnold laughed faintly amid her tears, at which Hagar flung her apron down and smoothed it over her knees in a huff, until the lady, seeing this, began in her tender way to expostulate.

“Don’t, Hagar,—don’t be hurt about it. What would the house come to without a head? Besides, I want some one that we love and trust to be here and welcome us when we come back. Who knows that it will not be a wedding-party, all among ourselves, of course?”

Hagar brightened propitiously, and taking up her apron again, began to plait the edge between her fingers, holding her head on one side, as you sometimes see a hen eyeing its food.

“Missus, in de co’rse ob natur’ one weddin’ breeds anudder; an’ if all tings turns out ’cordin’ to our wishes, p’r’aps you’ll hear ob two cullerd pussons ob yer ’quaintance as may want to toe de same mark in yer kitchen.”

Mrs. Arnold looked up and smiled pleasantly.

“Well, Hagar, no one will object. I only hope it may come to that.”

“Then we has yer consent; and if yer sees dat tall nigger as cum wid de gemman las’ winter, jes’ gib’m a hint ob what’s goin’ on in de undercrust oh dis ‘stablishment. P’r’aps he’ll wish he’d sent some word or cum back, as he promised to, when he knows dat dis member ob de fair sect he used ter tink so much on is lost ter him for good an’ all.”

Mrs. Arnold promised to remember. At another time she might have been amused at Hagar’s transparent coquetry; but now her heart was too heavy even for a smile.

“Now,” said Hagar, rising from her seat on the chest, “jes’ gib me dem tings and I’ll hab ’em white as de drifted snow ’fore yer cum back.”

“Not yet,” answered the matron, gathering the bundle together, “No one ever did them up but myself, before this. I should like to wash them out once more, if you have no objection, Hagar.”

Hagar was getting her chin into the air again; but the last few words modified her rising discontent, and she observed, in an indifferent way,

“Oh, well, missus, if you take a notion to wash ’em out wid yer own hands, I’ll heat de water an’ set out de soap-dish. It’s not my way to ‘trude work on nobody, ’specially in de fust wash; but when it comes to starchin’ an’ ironin’, and sich like, I reckon Hagar’ll be wanted.”

Mrs. Arnold gathered up her treasure of little garments with a sigh, and stole down the back stairs into the kitchen, where Hagar, as good as her word, got the smallest tub in order, and, putting handful after handful of soap in the water, stirred up a snowy foam of suds in no time with a few dashes of her hand.

Then, with tears in her eyes, the gentle housemother bent over her delicate work, as she had done years and years before in the first glow of her married life.

This was the last household work that Mrs. Arnold performed before her journey; and many a sadly tender thought filled her heart as those small hands accomplished their task. Yet if any one entered the room she grew frightened, and, burying the article she held in her hand deep in the suds, would continue her task under water, regarding the person who approached her with shy and anxious glances.

When her task of love was done, the mistress had a long talk with Hagar about the housework, and those multifarious cares that were to devolve on the faithful kitchen slave. After that she was ready for rest; but when did rest come to a poor mother’s heart burdened like hers with a certainly of unworthiness in the first-born of her life!