The Minister's Wooing
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Grave elderly matrons talked about the ‘prosperity of Zion,’ which they imagined intimately connected with the event of their minister’s marriage; and descending from ‘Zion,’ speculated on bed-quilts and table-cloths, and rummaged their own clean, sweet-smelling stores, fragrant with balm and rose-leaves, to lay out a bureau cover, or a pair of sheets, or a dozen napkins for the wedding outfit.
The solemnest of solemn quiltings was resolved upon.
Miss Prissy declared that she fairly couldn’t sleep nights with the responsibility of the wedding-dresses in her mind; but yet she ‘must give one day to getting on that quilt.’ The grande monde also was in motion. Mrs. General Wilcox called in her own particular carriage, bearing the present of a cashmere shawl for the bride, with the General’s best compliments, and also an oak-leaf pattern for quilting, which had been sent her from England, and which was authentically established to be that used on a petticoat belonging to the Princess Royal; and Mrs. Major Seaforth came also, bearing a scarf of worked Indian muslin; and Mrs. Vernon sent a splendid Indian china punch-bowl. Indeed, to say the truth, the notables high and mighty of Newport, whom the Doctor had so unceremoniously accused of building their houses with blood, and establishing their city with iniquity, considering that nobody seemed to take his words to heart, and that they were making money as fast as old Tyre, rather assumed the magnanimous, and patted themselves on the shoulder for this opportunity to show the Doctor that, after all, they were good fellows, and bore him no malice, though they did make money at the expense of thirty per cent. human life.
Simeon Brown was the only exception: he stood aloof, grim and sarcastic, and informed some good, middle-aged ladies who came to see if he would, as they phrased it, ‘esteem it a privilege’ to add his mite to the Doctor’s outfit, that he would give him a likely negro boy if he wanted, and if he was too conscientious to keep him, he might sell him at a fair profit; a happy stroke of humour, which he was fond of relating many years after.
The quilting was in these days considered as the most solemn and important recognition of a betrothal; and for the benefit of those not to the manner born, a little preliminary instruction may be necessary.
The good wives of New England, impressed with that thrifty orthodoxy of economy which forbids to waste the merest trifle, had a habit of saving every scrap and fragment clipped out in the fashioning of household garments; and these they cut into fanciful patterns, and constructed of them rainbow shapes and quaint traceries, the arrangement of which became one of their few fine arts. Many a maiden, as she sorted and arranged fluttering bits of green, yellow, red, and blue, felt rising in her breast a passion for somewhat vague and unknown, which came out at length in a new pattern of patchwork; and collections of these tiny fragments were always ready to fill an hour when there was nothing else to do; and as the maiden chatted with her beaux, her busy, flying needle stitched together the pretty morsels, which, little in themselves, were destined by gradual unions and accretions to bring about at last substantial beauty, warmth, and comfort; emblems thus of that household life which is to be brought to stability and beauty by reverent economy in husbanding, and tact in arranging the little, useful, and agreeable morsels of daily existence.
When a wedding was forthcoming, then there was a solemn review of the stores of beauty and utility thus provided, and the patchwork-spread best worthy of such distinction was chosen for the quilting.
Thereto, duly summoned, trooped all intimate female friends of the bride, and the quilt being spread on a frame, and wadded with cotton, each vied with the other in the delicacy of the quilting they could put upon it; for quilting also was a fine art, and had its delicacies and nice points, concerning which, grave, elderly matrons discussed with judicious care. The quilting generally began at an early hour in the afternoon, and ended at dusk with a great supper and general jubilee, in which that ignorant and incapable sex who could not quilt were allowed to appear, and put in claims for consideration of another nature. It may perhaps be surmised that this expected reinforcement was often alluded to by the younger maidens, whose wickedly coquettish toilettes exhibited suspicious marks of that willingness to get a chance to say ‘No,’ which has been slanderously attributed to mischievous maidens.
In consequence of the tremendous responsibilities involved in this quilting, the reader will not be surprised to learn that the evening before Miss Prissy made her appearance at the brown cottage, armed with thimble, scissors, and pincushion, in order to relieve her mind by a little preliminary confabulation.
‘You see me, Miss Scudder, run almost to death,’ she said; ‘but I thought I would just run up to Mrs. Major Seaforth’s and see her best bedroom quilt, ’cause I wanted to have all the ideas we possibly could before I decided on the pattern. Hers is in shells – just common shells; nothing to be compared with Miss Wilcox’s oak-leaves; and I suppose there isn’t the least doubt that Miss Wilcox’s sister in London did get that from a lady who had a cousin who was governess in the royal family, and I just quilted a little bit to-day on an old piece of silk, and it comes out beautiful, and so I thought I would just come and ask you if you did not think it was best for us to have the oak-leaves.’
‘Well, certainly, Miss Prissy, if you think so,’ said Mrs. Scudder, who was as pliant to the opinions of this wise woman of the parish as New England matrons generally are to a reigning dressmaker and factotum.
Miss Prissy had the happy consciousness always that her early advent under any roof was considered a matter of special grace, and therefore it was with rather a patronizing tone that she announced that she would stay and spend the night with them.
‘I knew,’ she added, ‘that your spare chamber was full with that Madame de What-you-call-her (if I was to die I could not remember the woman’s name). Well, I thought I could just crawl in with you, Mary, most anywhere.’
‘That’s right, Miss Prissy,’ said Mary, ‘you shall be welcome to half my bed any time.’
‘Well, I knew you would say so, Mary; I never saw the thing you would not give away half of since you was that high,’ said Miss Prissy, illustrating her words by placing her hand about two feet from the floor.
Just at this moment Madame de Frontignac entered and asked Mary to come into her room, and give her advice as to a piece of embroidery. When she was gone out, Miss Prissy looked after her, and sank her voice once more to the confidential whisper which we before described.
‘I have heard strange stories about that French woman,’ she said; ‘but as she was here with you and Mary, I suppose there cannot be any truth in them. Dear me! the world is so censorious about women! But then, you know, we don’t expect much from French women. I suppose she is a Roman Catholic, and worships pictures and stone images; but then, after all, she has got an immortal soul, and I can’t help hoping Mary’s influence may be blest to her. They say when she speaks French she swears every few minutes; but if that is the way she was brought up, maybe she isn’t accountable. I think we can’t be too charitable for people that a’n’t privileged as we are. Miss Vernon’s Polly told me she has seen her sew Sabbath day. She came into her room of a sudden, and she was working on her embroidery there, and she never winked, nor blushed, nor offered to put it away, but sat there just as easy! Polly said she never was so beat in all her life; she felt kind o’ scared every time she thought of it. But now she has come here, who knows but she may be converted?’
‘Mary has not said much about her state of mind,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘but something of deep interest has passed between them. Mary is such an uncommon child that I trust everything to her.’
We will not dwell further on the particulars of this evening, nor describe how Madame de Frontignac reconnoitred Miss Prissy with keen, amused eyes; nor how Miss Prissy apprised Mary, in the confidential solitude of her chamber, that her fingers just itched to get hold of that trimming on that Madame de Frogsneck’s dress, because she was pretty nigh sure she could make some just like it; for she never saw any trimming she could not make.
The robin that lived in the apple-tree was fairly out-generalled the next morning, for Miss Prissy was up before him, tripping about the chamber on the points of her toes, and knocking down all the moveable things in the room in her efforts to be still, so as not to waken Mary; and it was not until she had finally upset the stand by the bed, with the candlestick, snuffers, and Bible on it, that Mary opened her eyes.
‘Miss Prissy! dear me! What is it you are doing?’
‘Why I am trying to be still, Mary, so as not to wake you up, and it seems to me as if everything was possessed to tumble down so. But it is only half-past three, so you turn over and go to sleep.’
‘But, Miss Prissy,’ said Mary, sitting up in bed, ‘you are all dressed; where are you going?’
‘Well, to tell the truth, Mary, I am just one of those people that can’t sleep when they have got responsibility on their minds; and I’ve been lying awake more than an hour here, thinking about that quilt. There is a new way of getting it on to the frame that I want to try, ’cause you know when we quilted Cerinthy Stebbins’ it would trouble us in the rolling; and I have got a new way that I want to try, and I mean just to get it into the frame before breakfast. I was in hopes I should get out without waking any of you; and now I don’t know as I shall get by your mother’s door without waking her (’cause I know she works hard, and needs her rest); but that bedroom door squawks like a cat – enough to raise the dead!
‘Mary,’ she added, with sudden energy, ‘if I had the least drop of oil in a teacup, and a bit of quill, I’d stop that door making such a noise.’ And Miss Prissy’s eyes glowed with resolution.
‘I don’t know where you could find any at this time,’ said Mary.
‘Well, never mind, I’ll just go and open the door as slow and careful as I can,’ said Miss Prissy, as she trotted out of the apartment.
The result of her carefulness was very soon announced to Mary by a protracted sound resembling the mewing of a hoarse cat, accompanied with sundry audible grunts from Miss Prissy, terminating in a grand finale of clatter, occasioned by her knocking down all the pieces of the quilt-frame that stood in a corner of the room, with a concussion that roused everybody in the house.
‘What is that?’ called out Mrs. Scudder from her bedroom.
She was answered by two streams of laughter; one from Mary, sitting up in bed, and the other from Miss Prissy, holding her sides, as she sat dissolved in merriment on the sanded floor.
CHAPTER XXX
By six o’clock in the morning, Miss Prissy came out of the best room to the breakfast-table, with the air of a general who has arranged a campaign, her face glowing with satisfaction. All sat down together to their morning meal. The outside door was open into the green, turfy yard, and the apple-tree, now nursing stores of fine yellow jennetings, looked in at the window. Every once in a while, as a breeze shook the leaves, a fully ripe apple might be heard falling to the ground, at which Miss Prissy would bustle up from the table and rush to secure the treasure.
As the meal waxed to its close, the rattling of wheels was heard at the gate, and Candace was discerned, seated aloft in the one-horse waggon, with her usual complements of baskets and bags.
‘Well, now, dear me! if there is not Candace,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘I do believe Mrs. Marvyn has sent her with something for the quilting;’ and out she flew as nimble as a humming-bird, while those in the house heard various exclamations of admiration, as Candace, with stately dignity, disinterred from the waggon one basket after another, and exhibited to Miss Prissy’s enraptured eyes sly peeps under the white napkins by which they were covered. And then, lodging a large basket on either arm, she rolled majestically towards the house, like a heavy-laden Indiaman coming in after a fat voyage.
‘Good morning, Mrs. Scudder. Good morning, Doctor,’ she said, dropping her curtsy on the door-step; ‘good morning, Miss Mary. You see our folks were stirring pretty early this morning, and Mrs. Marvyn sent me down with two or three little things.’ Setting down her baskets on the floor, and seating herself between them, she proceeded to develop their contents with ill-concealed triumph. One basket was devoted to cakes of every species, from the great Mont Blanc loaf-cake, with its snowy glaciers of frosting, to the twisted cruller and puffy dough-nut. In the other basket lay pots of golden butter curiously stamped, reposing on a bed of fresh green leaves, while currants, red and white, and delicious cherries and raspberries, gave a final finish to the picture. From a basket which Miss Prissy brought in from the rear, appeared cold fowl and tongue, delicately prepared, and shaded with feathers of parsley. Candace, whose rollicking delight in the good things of this life was conspicuous in every emotion, might have famished to a painter, as she sat in a brilliant turban, an idea for an African genius of plenty.
‘Why, really, Candace,’ said Mrs. Scudder, ‘you are overwhelming us!’
‘Ho! ho! ho!’ said Candace, ‘I’se tellin’ Miss Marvyn folks don’t get married but once in their lives (gen’rally speaking, that is), and then they ought to have plenty to do it with.’
‘Well, I must say,’ said Miss Prissy, taking out the loaf-cake with busy assiduity, ‘I must say, Candace, this does beat all!’
‘I should rather think it ought,’ said Candace, bridling herself with proud consciousness; ‘if it don’t it a’n’t ’cause old Candace ha’n’t put enough into it. I tell ye, I didn’t do nothing all day yesterday but just make dat ar cake. Cato, when he got up, he begun to talk something about his shirt buttons, and I just shet him right up. Says I, “Cato, when I’se really got cake to make for a great ’casion, I want my mind just as quiet and just as serene as if I was agoin’ to the meetin’. I don’t want no earthly cares on it. Now,” says I, “Cato, the old Doctor is going to be married, and dis yer is his quiltin’ cake, and Miss Mary, she’s going to be married, and dis yer is her quiltin’ cake. And dare’ll be everybody to dat ar quiltin’, and if de cake a’n’t right, why, ’twould be puttin’ a candle under a bushel. And so, says I, Cato, your buttons must wait.” And Cato, he sees the ’priety of it, ’cause though he can’t make cake like me, he’s a mazin’ good judge of it, and is dre’ful tickled when I slip out a little loaf for his supper.’
‘How is Mrs. Marvyn?’ said Mrs. Scudder.
‘Kinder thin and shimmery, but she is about, havin’ her eyes everywhere and looking into everything. She just touches things with the tips of her fingers and they seem to go like. She’ll be down to the quiltin’ this afternoon. But she told me to take the things and come down and spend the day here; for Mrs. Marvyn and I both knows how many steps must be taken such times, and we agreed you ought to favour yourselves all you could.’
‘Well, now,’ said Miss Prissy, lifting up her hands, ‘if that a’n’t what ’tis to have friends! Why, that was one of the things I was thinking of as I lay awake last night: because you know at times like these people run their feet off before the time begins, and then they are all limpsey and lop-sided when the time comes. Now, I say, Candace, all Mrs. Scudder and Mary have to do is to give everything up to us, and we’ll put it through straight.’
‘That’s what we will,’ said Candace. ‘Just show me what’s to be done, and I’ll do it.’
Candace and Miss Prissy soon disappeared together into the pantry with the baskets, whose contents they began busily to arrange. Candace shut the door that no sound might escape, and began a confidential outpouring to Miss Prissy.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘I has feelin’s all the while for Miss Marvyn; ’cause, yer see, she was expectin’, if ever Mary was married – well – that it would be to somebody else, you know.’
Miss Prissy responded with a sympathetic groan.
‘Well,’ said Candace, ‘if it had been anybody but the Doctor, I would not have been resigned. But after all he has done for my colour, there a’n’t nothing I could find it in my heart to grudge him. But then I was tellin’ Cato the other day, says I, “Cato, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I ha’n’t never felt it in my bones that Master James is really dead, for sartin. Now I feels things gen’rally, but some things I feels in my bones, and them always comes true. And that ar is a feelin’ I ha’n’t had about Master Jim yet, and that ar is what I’m waitin’ for ’fore I clear make up my mind. Tho’ I know, ’cordin’ to all white folks’ way o’ thinkin’, there a’n’t no hope, ’cause ’Squire Marvyn he had that Jeduth Pettibone up to his house, a questioning on him off and on, nigh about three hours. And reely I didn’t see no hope no way, except just this, as I was tellin’ Cato, I can’t feel it in my bones.”‘
Candace was not versed enough in the wisdom of the world to know that she belonged to a large and respectable school of philosophers in this particular mode of testing evidence, which, after all, the reader will perceive has its conveniences.
‘Another thing,’ said Candace, ‘as much as a dozen times, dis yer last year, when I have been a-scourin’ knives, a fork has fell and stuck straight up in the floor: and the last time I pinted it out to Miss Marvyn, and she only just said, “Why, what of that, Candace?”’
‘Well,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I don’t believe in signs, but then strange things do happen. Now about dogs howling under windows; why, I don’t believe in it a bit, but I never knew it fail that there was a death in the house after.’
‘Ah, I tell ye what,’ said Candace, looking mysterious, ‘dogs knows a heap more than they likes to tell!’
‘Just so,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘now I remember one night, when I was watching with Miss Colonel Andrews, after Martha Ann was born, that we heard the mournfullest howling that ever you did hear. It seemed to come from right under the front stoop; and Miss Andrews, she just dropped the spoon in her gruel, and says she, “Miss Prissy, do for pity’s sake just go down and see what that noise is.” And I went down, and lifted up one of the loose boards of the stoop, and what should I see there but their Newfoundland pup; there that creature had dug a grave, and was a-sitting by it crying.’
Candace drew near to Miss Prissy, dark with expressive interest, as her voice, in this awful narration, sank to a whisper.
‘Well,’ said Candace, after Miss Prissy had made something of a pause.
‘Well, I told Miss Andrews I didn’t think there was anything in it,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but,’ she added, impressively, ‘she lost a very dear brother six months after, and I laid him out with my own hands – yes, laid him out in white flannel.’
‘Some folks say,’ said Candace, ‘that dreaming about white horses is a certain sign. Jinny Styles is very strong about that. Now she came down one morning crying, ’cause she had been dreaming about white horses, and she was sure she should hear some friend was dead. And sure enough, a man came in that day and told her that her son was drown’d out in the harbour. And Jinny said, “There, she was sure that sign never would fail.” But then, ye see, that night he came home. Jinny wan’t reely disappointed, but she always insisted he was as good as drowned, any way, “’cause he sank three times.”’
‘Well, I tell you,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘there are a great many more things in this world than folks know about.’
‘So they are,’ said Candace. ‘Now, I ha’n’t never opened my mind to nobody; but there’s a dream I’ve had, three mornings running, lately. I dreamed I see Jim Marvyn a-sinking in the water, and stretching up his hands. And then I dreamed that I see the Lord Jesus come a-walking on the water, and take hold of his hand, and says He, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” And then He lifted him right out. And I ha’n’t said nothing to nobody, ’cause you know the Doctor, – he says people must not mind nothing about their dreams, ’cause dreams belong to the old ’spensation.’
‘Well! well! well!’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I am sure I don’t know what to think. What time in the morning was it that you dreamed it?’
‘Why,’ said Candace, ‘it was just after bird-peep. I kinder always wakes myself then, and turns over, and what comes after that is apt to run clear.’
‘Well! well! well!’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I don’t know what to think. You see, it may have reference to the state of his soul.’
‘I know that,’ said Candace; ‘but as nigh as I could judge in my dream,’ she added, sinking her voice and looking mysterious, ‘as nigh as I can judge, that boy’s soul was in his body!’
‘Why, how do you know?’ said Miss Prissy, looking astonished at the confidence with which Candace expressed her opinion.
‘Well, ye see,’ said Candace, rather mysteriously, ‘the Doctor he don’t like to have us talk much about these things, ’cause he thinks it’s kind o’ heathenish. But then, folks as is used to seein’ such things, knows the look of a sperit out of the body, from the look of a sperit in the body, just as easy as you can tell Mary from the Doctor.’
At this moment Mrs. Scudder opened the pantry-door and put an end to this mysterious conversation, which had already so affected Miss Prissy that, in the eagerness of her interest, she had rubbed up her cap border and ribbon into rather an elfin and goblin style, as if they had been ruffled up by a breeze from the land of spirits; and she flew around for a few moments in a state of great nervous agitation, upsetting dishes, knocking down plates, and huddling up contrary suggestions as to what ought to be done first, in such impossible relations, that Mrs. Katy Scudder stood in dignified surprise at this strange freak of conduct in the wise woman of the parish.
A dim consciousness of something not quite canny in herself appeared to strike her, for she made a vigorous effort to appear composed; and facing Mrs. Scudder, with an air of dignified suavity, inquired if it would not be best to put Jim Marvyn in the oven now, while Candace was getting the pies ready, meaning of course a large turkey which was to be the first in an indefinite series to be baked that morning; and discovering, by Mrs. Scudder’s dazed expression and a vigorous pinch from Candace, that somehow she had not improved matters, she rubbed her spectacles in a diagonal manner across her eyes and stood glaring through them, with a helpless expression, which in a less judicious person might have suggested the idea of a state of slight intoxication.
But the exigencies of an immediate temporal dispensation put an end to Miss Prissy’s unwonted vagaries, and she was soon to be seen flying round like a meteor, dusting, shaking curtains, counting napkins, wiping and sorting china, all with such rapidity as to give rise to the idea that she actually existed in forty places at once.
Candace, whom the limits of her corporeal frame restricted to an altogether different style of locomotion, often rolled the whites of her eyes after her, and gave vent to her views of her proceedings in sententious expressions.
‘Do you know why dat ar never was married?’ she said to Mary, as she stood looking after her. Miss Prissy had made one of those rapid transits through the apartment.
‘No,’ answered Mary, innocently; ‘why was not she?’
‘Because never was a man could run fast enough to catch her,’ said Candace; and then her portly person shook with the impulse of her own wit.
By two o’clock a goodly company began to assemble. Mrs. Deacon Twitchel arrived, soft, pillowy, and plaintive as ever, accompanied by Cerinthy Ann, a comely damsel, tall and trim, with a bright black eye and a most vigorous and determined style of movement.
Good Mrs. Jones, broad, expansive, and solid, having vegetated tranquilly on in the cabbage garden of the virtues since three years ago when she graced our tea-party, was now as well preserved as ever, and brought some fresh butter, a tin pail of cream, and a loaf of cake made on a new Philadelphia receipt. The tall, spare, angular figure of Mrs. Simeon Brown only was wanting; but she patronized Mrs. Scudder no more, and tossed her head with a becoming pride when her name was mentioned.