If John Bunyan had known my grandmother, he certainly would have introduced her in some of his histories as "the house-keeper whose name was Bountiful", and under her care an ample meal of brown bread and pork and beans was soon set forth on the table in the corner of the kitchen, to which the two hungry Indian women sat down with the appetite of wolves. A large mug was placed between them, which Uncle Bill filled to the brim with cider.
"I s'pose you 'd like twice a mug better than once a mug, Sally," he said, punning on her name.
"O, if the mug 's only big enough," said Sally, her snaky eyes gleaming with appetite; "and it 's always a good big mug one gets here."
Sam Lawson's great white eyes began irresistibly to wander in the direction of the plentiful cheer which was being so liberally dispensed at the other side of the room.
"Want some, Sam, my boy?" said Uncle Bill, with a patronizing freedom.
"Why, bless your soul, Master Bill, I would n't care a bit if I took a plate o' them beans and some o' that 'ere pork. Hepsy did n't save no beans for me; and, walkin' all the way from North Parish, I felt kind o' empty and windy, as a body may say. You know Scriptur' tells about bein' filled with the east wind; but I never found it noways satisfyin', - it sets sort o' cold on the stomach."
"Draw up, Sam, and help yourself," said Uncle Bill, putting plate and knife and fork before him; and Sam soon showed that he had a vast internal capacity for the stowing away of beans and brown bread.
Meanwhile Major Broad and my grandfather drew their chairs together, and began a warm discussion of the Constitution of the United States, which had been recently presented for acceptance in a Convention of the State of Massachusetts.
"I have n't seen you, Major Broad," said my grandfather, "since you came back from the Convention. I 'm very anxious to have our State of Massachusetts accept that Constitution. We 're in an unsettled condition now; we don't know fairly where we are. If we accept this Constitution, we shall be a nation, - we shall have something to go to work on."
"Well, Deacon Badger, to say the truth, I could not vote for this Constitution in Convention. They have adopted it by a small majority; but I shall be bound to record my dissent from it."
"Pray, Major, what are your objections?" said Miss Mehitable.
"I have two. One is, it gives too much power to the President. There 's an appointing power and a power of patronage that will play the mischief some day in the hands of an ambitious man. That 's one objection. The other is the recognizing and encouraging of slavery in the Constitution. That is such a dreadful wrong, - such a shameful inconsistency, - when we have just come through a battle for the doctrine that all men are free and equal, to turn round and found our national government on a recognition of African slavery. It cannot and will not come to good."
"O, well," said my grandfather, "slavery will gradually die out. You see how it is going in the New England States."
"I cannot think so," said the Major. "I have a sort of feeling about this that I cannot resist. If we join those States that still mean to import and use slaves, our nation will meet some dreadful punishment. I am certain of it." *
"Well, really," said my grandfather, "I 'm concerned to hear you speak so. I have felt such anxiety to have something settled. You see, without a union we are all afloat, - we are separate logs, but no raft."
"Yes," said Miss Mehitable, "but nothing can be settled that is n't founded on right. We ought to dig deep, and lay our foundations on a rock, when we build for posterity."
"Were there many of your way of thinking in the Convention, Major?" said my grandfather.
"Well, we had a pretty warm discussion, and we came very near to carrying it. Now, in Middlesex County, for instance where we are, there were only seventeen in favor of the Constitution, and twenty-five against; and in Worcester County there were only seven in favor and forty-three against. Well, they carried it at last by a majority of nineteen; but the minority recorded their protest. Judge Widgery of Portland, General Thomson of Topsham, and Dr. Taylor of Worcester, rather headed the opposition. Then the town of Andover instructed its representative, Mr. Symmes, to vote against it, but he did n't, he voted on the other side, and I understand they are dreadfully indignant about it. I saw a man from Andover last week who said that he actually thought Symmes would be obliged to leave the town, he was so dreadfully unpopular."
"Well, Major Broad, I agree with you," said my grandmother, heartily, "and I honor you for the stand you took. Slavery is a sin and a shame; and I say, with Jacob, 'O my soul, come not thou into their secret, - unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united.' I wish we may keep clear on 't. I don't want anything that we can't ask God's blessing on heartily, and we certainly can't on this. Why, anybody that sees that great scar on C?sar's forehead sees what slavery comes to."
My grandmother always pointed her anti-slavery arguments with an appeal to this mark of ill-usage which old C?sar had received at the hands of a brutal master years before, and the appeal never failed to convince the domestic circle.
"Well," said my grandfather, after some moments of silence, in which he sat gazing fixedly at the great red coals of a hickory log, "you see, Major, it 's done, and can't be helped."
"It 's done," said the Major, "but in my opinion mischief will come of it as sure as there is a god 'n heaven."
"Let 's hope not," said my grandfather, placidly.
Outside the weather was windy and foul, the wind rattling doors, shaking and rumbling down the chimney, and causing the great glowing circle lighted by the fire to seem warmer and brighter. The Indian woman and Sam Lawson, having finished their meal and thoroughly cleaned out the dishes, grouped themselves about the end of the ingle already occupied by black C?sar, and began a little private gossip among themselves.
"I say," says Sam, raising his voice to call my grandfather's attention, "do you know, Deacon Badger, whether anybody is living in the Dench house now?"
"There was n't, the last I knew about it," said my grandfather.
"Wal, you won't make some folks believe but what that 'ere house is haunted."
"Haunted!" said Miss Mehitable; "nothing more likely. What old house is n't? - if one only knew it; and that certainly ought to be if ever a house was."
"But this 'ere 's a regular haunt," said San. "I was a talkin' the other night with Bill Payne and Jake Marshall, and they both on 'em said that they 'd seen strange things in them grounds, - they 'd seen a figger of a man - "
"With his head under his arm," suggested Uncle Bill.
"No, a man in a long red cloak," said Sam Lawson, "such as Sir Harry Frankland used to wear."
"Poor Sir Harry!" said Miss Mehitable, "has he come to that?"
"Did you know Sir Harry?" said Aunt Lois.
"I have met him once or twice a the Governor's house," said Miss Mehitable. "Lady Lothrop knew Lady Frankland very well."
"Well, Sam," said Uncle Bill, "do let 's hear the end of this haunting."
"Nothin', only the other night I was a goin' over to watch with Lem Moss, and I passed pretty nigh the Dench place, and I thought I 'd jest look round it a spell. And as sure as you 're alive I see smoke a comin' out of the chimbley."
"I did n't know as ghosts ever used the fireplaces," said Uncle Bill. "Well, Sam, did you go in?"
"No, I was pretty much in a hurry; but I telled Jake and Bill, and then they each on 'em had something to match that they 'd seen. As nigh as I can make it out, there 's that 'ere boy that they say was murdered and thrown down that 'ere old well walks sometimes. And then there 's a woman appears to some, and this 'ere man in a red cloak; and they think it 's Sir Harry in his red cloak."
"For my part," said Aunt Lois, "I never had much opinion of Sir Harry Frankland, or Lady Frankland either. I don't think such goings on ever ought to be countenanced in society."
"They both repented bitterly, - repented in sackcloth and ashes," said Miss Mehitable. "And if God forgives such sins, why should n't we?"
"What was the story?" sa
id Major Broad.
"Why," said Aunt Lois, "have n't you heard of Agnes Surridge, of Marblehead? She was housemaid in a tavern there, and Sir Harry fell in love with her, and took her and educated her. That was well enough; but when she 'd done going to school he took her home to his house in Boston, and called her his daughter; although people became pretty sure that the connection was not what it should be, and they refused to have anything to do with her. So he bought this splendid place out in the woods, and built a great palace of a house, and took Miss Agnes out there. People that wanted to be splendidly entertained, and that were not particular as to morals, used to go out to visit them."
"I used to hear great stories of their wealth and pomp and luxury," said my grandmother, "but I mourned over it, that it should come to this in New England, that people could openly set such an example and be tolerated. It would n't have been borne a generation before, I can tell you. No, indeed, - the magistrates would have put a stop to it. But these noblemen, when they came over to America, seemed to think themselves lords of God's heritage, and free to do just as they pleased."
"But," said Miss Mehitable, "they repented, as I said. He took her to England, and there his friends refused to receive her; and then he was appointed Ambassador to Lisbon, and he took her there. On the day of the great earthquake Sir Harry was riding with a lady of the court when the shock came, and in a moment, without warning, they found themselves buried under the ruins of a building they were passing. He wore a scarlet cloak, as was the fashion; and they say that in her dying agonies the poor creature bit through this cloak and sleeve into the flesh of his arm, and made a mark that he carried to his dying day. Sir Harry was saved by Agnes Surridge. She came over the ruins, calling and looking for him, and he heard her voice and answered, and she got men to come and dig him out. When he was in that dreadful situation, he made a vow to God, if he would save his life, that he would be a different man. And he was a changed man from that day. He was married to Agnes Surridge as soon as they could get a priest to perform the ceremony; and when he took her back to England all his relations received her, and she was presented in court and moved in society with perfect acceptance."
"I don't think it ever ought to have been," said Aunt Lois. "Such women never ought to be received."
"What! is there no place for repentance for a woman?" said Miss Mehitable. "Christ said, 'Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.'"
I noticed again that sort of shiver of feeling in Miss Mehitable; and there was a peculiar thrill in her voice, as she said these words, that made me sensible that she was speaking from some inward depth of feeling.
"Don't you be so hard and sharp Lois," said my grandmother; "sinners must have patience with sinners."
"Especially with sinners of quality, Lois," said Uncle Bill. "By all accounts Sir Harry and Lady Frankland swept all before them when they came back to Boston."
"Of course," said Miss Mehitable; "what was done in court would be done in Boston, and whom Queen Charlotte received would be received in our upper circles. Lady Lothrop never called on her till she was Lady Frankland, but after that I believe she has visited out at their place."
"Wal, I 've heerd 'em say," said San Lawson, "that it would take a woman two days jest to get through cleaning the silver that there was in that 'ere house, to say nothing about the carpets and the curtains and the tapestry. But then, when the war broke out, Lady Frankland, she took most of it back to England, I guess, and the house has been back and forward to one and another. I never could rightly know jest who did live in it. I heard about some French folks that lived there one time. I thought some day, when I had n't nothin' to do, I 'd jest walk over to old granny Walker's, that lives over the other side of Hopkinton. She used to be a housekeeper to Lady Frankland, and I could get particulars out o' her."
"Well," said Miss Mehitable, "I know one woman that must go back to a haunted house, and that is this present one." So saying, she rose and put me off her knee.
"Send this little man over to see me to-morrow," she said to my mother. "Polly has a cake for him, and I shall find something to amuse him."
Major Broad, with old-fashioned gallantry, insisted on waiting on Miss Mehitable home; and Sam Lawson reluctantly tore himself from the warm corner to encounter the asperities of his own fireside.
"Here, Sam," said good-natured Bill, - "here 's a great red apple for Hepsy."
"Ef I dares to go nigh enough to give it to her," said Sam, with a grimace. "She 's allers a castin' it up at me that I don't want to set with her at home. But lordy massy, she don't consider that a fellow don't want to set and be hectored and lectured when he can do better elsewhere."
"True enough, Sam; but give my regards to her."
As to the two Indian women, they gave it as their intention to pass the night by the kitchen fire; and my grandmother, to whom such proceedings were not at all strange, assented, - producing for each a blanket, which had often seem similar service. My grandfather closed the evening by bringing out his great Bible and reading a chapter. Then we all knelt down in prayer.
So passed an evening in my grandmother's kitchen, - where religion, theology, politics, the gossip of the day, and the legends of the supernatural all conspired to weave a fabric of thought quaint and various. Intense earnestness, a solemn undertone of deep mournful awe, was overlaid with quaint traceries of humor, strange and weird in their effect. I was one of those children who are all ear, - dreamy listeners, who brood over all that they hear, without daring to speak of it; and in this evening's conversation I had heard enough to keep my eyes broad open long after my mother had lain me in bed. The haunted house and its vague wonders filled my mind, and I determined to question Sam Lawson yet more about it.
But now that I have fairly introduced myself, the scene of my story, and many of the actors in it, I must take my reader off for a while, and relate a history that must at last blend with mine in one story.
CHAPTER VII.
OLD CRAB SMITH.
ON the brow of yonder hill you see that old, red farm-house, with its slanting back roof relieved against the golden sky of the autumn afternoon. The house lifts itself up dark and clear under the shadow of two great elm-trees that droop over it, and is the first of a straggling, irregular cluster of farm-houses that form the village of Needmore. A group of travellers, sitting on a bit of rock in the road below the hill on which the farm-house stands, are looking up to it, in earnest conversation.
"Mother, if you can only get up there, we 'll ask them to let you go in and rest," said a little boy of nine years to a weary, pale, sick-looking woman who sat as in utter exhaustion and discouragement on the rock. A little girl two years younger than the boy sat picking at the moss at her feet, and earnestly listening to her older brother with the air of one who is attending to the words of a leader.
"I don't feel as if I could get a step farther," said the woman; and the increasing deadly paleness of her face confirmed her words.
"O mother, don't give up," said the boy; "just rest here a little and lean on me, and we 'll get you up the hill; and then I 'm sure they 'll take you in. Come, now; I 'll run and get you some water in our tin cup, and you 'll feel better soon." And the boy ran to a neighboring brook and filled a small tin cup, and brought the cool water to his mother.
She drank it, and then, fixing a pair of dark, pathetic eyes on the face of her boy, she said: "My dear child, you have always been such a blessing to me! What should I do without you?"
"Well, mother, now if you feel able, just rest on my shoulder, and Tina will take the bundle. You take it, Tina, and we 'll find a place to rest."
And so, slowly and with difficulty, the three wound their way up to the grassy top of the hill where stood the red house. This house belonged to a man named Caleb Smith, whose character had caused the name he bore to degenerate into another which was held to be descriptive of his nature, namely, "Crab "; and the boys of the vicinity commonly expressed the popular idea of the man by calling
him "Old Crab Smith." His was one of those sour, cross, gnarly natures that now and then are to be met with in New England, which, like, knotty cider-apples, present a compound of hardness, sourness, and bitterness. It was affirmed that a continual free indulgence in very hard cider as a daily beverage was one great cause of this churlishness of temper; but be that as it may, there was not a boy in the village that did not know and take account of it in all his estimates and calculations, as much as of northeast storms and rainy weather. No child ever willingly carried a message to him; no neighbor but dreaded to ask a favor of him; nobody hoped to borrow or beg of him; nobody willingly hired themselves out to him, or did him cheerful service. In short, he was a petrified man, walled out from all neighborhood sympathies, and standing alone in his crabbedness. And it was to this man's house that the wandering orphan boy was leading his poor sick mother.
The three travellers approached a neat back porch on the shady side of the house, where an old woman sat knitting. This was Old Crab Smith's wife, or, more properly speaking, his life-long bond-slave, - the only human being whom he could so secure to himself that she should be always at hand for him to vent that residue of ill-humor upon which the rest of the world declined to receive. Why half the women in the world marry the men they do, is a problem that might puzzle any philosopher; how any woman could marry Crab Smith, was the standing wonder of all the neighborhood. And yet Crab's wife was a modest, industrious, kindly creature, who uncomplainingly toiled from morning till night to serve and please him, and received her daily allowance of grumbling and fault-finding with quiet submission. She tried all she could to mediate between him and the many whom his ill-temper was constantly provoking. She did surreptitious acts of kindness here and there, to do away the effects of his hardness, and shrunk and quivered for fear of being detected in goodness, as much as many another might for fear of being discovered in sin. She had been many times a mother, - had passed through all the trials and weaknesses of maternity without one tender act of consideration, one encouraging word. Her children had grown up and gone from her, always eager to leave the bleak, ungenial home, and go out to shift for themselves in the world, and now, in old age, she was still working. Worn to a shadow, - little, old, wrinkled, bowed, - she was still about the daily round of toil, and still the patient recipient of the murmurs and chidings of her tyrant.