Samantha at Saratoga, Marietta Holley [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

“Jealous!” says I, a lookin’ him calmly over from head to feet—it wuz a witherin’ look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull body and soul, and weighed ’em in the balances of common sense, and pity, and justice. It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him all to one time, and took him all in, his bald head, his vest, and his boots, and his mind (what he had), and his efforts to be fashionable, and his trials and tribulations at it, and—and everything. I give him that one long look, and then I says:

“Jealous? No, I haint jealous.”

Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his conscience was a troublin’ him), and he says:

“You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things which seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can’t understand these things as I do.”

Says I: “Josiah Allen, you’ll see the day that you’ll be sorry for your treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra.”

“Oh wall,” says he, pullin’ up his collar, “I’m bound to be fashionable. While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and my privilege to go with ’em, and not mingle in the lower classes like the Balches.”

Says I firmly, “You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death of you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave ’em, the hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch.”

But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by the arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss Balch on the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in front a drivin’. It wuz a good lookin’ sight, and I hastened down the steps, Josiah disappearin’ inside jest as quick as he ketched sight of their heads.

They asked me anxiously “where Josiah wuz and why he didn’t come?” And I told ’em, “that Josiah had told me that mornin’ that he felt manger, and he had some corns that wuz a achin’.”

So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject, and they seein’ my looks, didn’t pursue it any further. They proposed to go back to their boardin’ place, and take in Deacon Balch, Ezra’s brother from Chicago, who wuz stayin’ there a few days to recooperate his energies, and get help for tizick. So they did. He wuz a widowed man. Yes, he was the widower of Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a good lookin’ and a good actin’ man. And he seemed to like my appeerance pretty well, though I am fur from bein’ the one that ort to say it.

And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.

The Deacon wuz edifyin’ in conversation, and he thought, and said, “that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he had met hundreds and hundreds of ’em.” He meant it, you could see that, he meant every word he said. And it wuz kind of comfortin’ to hear the Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I knew he meant just what he said.

He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed it, “that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married.”

I told him “I didn’t feel so young.”

“Wall,” he said, “then my looks deceived me, for I looked as young, if not younger.”

Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.

His conversation was very edifyin’, and he looked kinder good, and warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color of my Josiah’s. But alas! I felt that though some comforted and edified by his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in that double buggy with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner. I felt that Josiah Allen wuz a carryin’ my heart with him wherever he wuz a goin’. Curious, haint it? Now you may set and smile, and talk, and seem to be enjoyin’ yourself first-rate, with agreeable personages all around you, and you do enjoy yourself with that part of your nater. But with it all, down deep under the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you get out of the answerin’ laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the steady consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the soul is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether he be low, it don’t matter—there your heart is, a goin’ towards happiness, or a travellin’ towards pain as the case may be—curious, haint it?

Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way beyend Saratoga Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also, we sot out for it, though, as we all said, it wuz goin’ to be a pretty long and tegus journey for a hot day. But we went along the broad, beautiful highway, by the high, handsome gates of the Racing Park, down, down, by handsome houses and shady woods, and fields of bright-colored wild flowers on each side of the road, down to the beautiful lake, acrost it over the long bridge, and then into the long, cool shadows of the bendin’ trees that bend over the road on each side, while through the green boughs, jest at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue, peaceful waters, a lyin’ calm and beautiful jest by the side of us—on, on, through the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a spell, with peaceful fields a layin’ about us, and peaceful cattle a wanderin’ over ’em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we see a beautiful mountin’, with its head held kinder high, crowned with ferns and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of the beautiful lake.

The shadows of this mountin’, tree crowned, lay on the smooth, placid wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin’ round the side on’t, and floatin’ over the green, crystal branches, and golden shadows. It wuz a fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we went into the green shadows of the woods again, round a corner, and here we wuz, at the Sulphur Springs.

It wuz a quiet peaceful spot. The house looked pleasant, and so did the Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked through a long clean hall, and went out onto a back piazza and sot down. And I thought as I sot there, that I would be glad enough to set there, for some time. Everything looked so quiet and serene. The paths leadin’ up the hills in different directions, out into the green woods, looked quiet; the pretty, grassy backyard leadin’ down to the water side looked green and peaceable, and around all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the waters. They lay stretched out beautiful and in heavenly calm, and the sun, which wuz low in the West, made a gold path acrost ’em, where it seemed as if one could walk over only a little ways, into Perfect Repose. The Lake somehow looked like a glowin’ pavement, it didn’t look like water, but it seemed like broad fields of azure and palest lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly white, and every soft and delicate color that water could be crystalized into. And over all lay the glowin’, tender sunset skies—it wuz a fair seen. And even as I looked on in a almost rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud, and lay on the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow did, that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.

The rest on ’em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2 straws in ’em. I didn’t make no fuss. They are nice, clean folks, I make no doubt. I wouldn’t make no fuss and tell on the hired man—women of the house have enough to worry ’em anyway. But he had dropped some straws into our tumblers, every one on ’em, I dare presume to say they had been a fillin’ straw ticks. I jest took mine out in a quiet way, and throwed ’em to one side. The rest on ’em, I see, and it wuz real good in ’em, drinked through ’em, as we used to at school. It wuz real good in Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon. It kinder ondeared the hull on ’em to me. I hope this won’t be told of, it orto be kep—for he wuz a goodnatured lookin’ hired man, black, but not to blame for that—and good land! what is a straw?—anyway they wuz clean.

There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin’ some as I s’pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer times of old. And I asked a bystander a standin’ by, whose tents they wuz, and he said they wuz Free Thinkers havin’ a convention.

And I says, “How free?”

And he said “they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they doubted whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if so, why?”

And he says, “won’t you stay to-night over and attend the meetin’?”

And I says, “What are they goin’ to teach tonight?”

And he says, “The Whyness of the What”

I says, “I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle,” and says I, “Don’t they believe anything easier than that?”

And he says, “They don’t believe anything. That is their belief—to believe nothin’.”

“Nothin’!” says I.

“Yes,” says he, “Nothin’.” And, says he, “to-morrer they are goin’ to prove beyond any question, that there haint any God, nor anything, and never wuz anything.”

“Be they?” sez I.

“Yes,” says he, “and won’t you come and be convinced?”

I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as the mountains did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that seemed to hold in it the flames of that light that had lighted the old world onto the mornin’ of the new day,—and one star had come out, and stood tremblin’ over the brow of the mountain and I thought of that star that had riz so long time ago, and had guided the three wise men, guided ’em jest alike from their three different homes, entirely unbeknown to each other, guidin’ ’em to the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the world, so long foretold by bard and prophet. I looked out onto the heavenly glory of the day, and then inside into my heart, that held a faith jest as bright and undyin’ as the light of that star—and I says, “No, I guess I won’t go and be convinced.”

Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon (he is very smart) observed:

“How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin’ about there not bein’ any future.” And he says, “It wuz a good deal like a man laughin’ and clappin’ his hands to see his house burn down”

And I sez, “it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn’t stand more’n a 100 years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin’ to destroy, wuz one that would last through eternity.” “But,” says I, “it hain’t built by hands, and I guess their hands hain’t strong enough to tear it down, nor high enough to set fire to it.”

And the Deacon says, “Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully, and eloquent.” (The Deacon is very smart.)

When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, “I would like to resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen’s wife, a goin’ back.”

And Druzilla spoke right out and says, “I will set on the front seat by Ezra.” I says, “Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon from where I sot before.”

But the Deacon says, Talkin’ loud towards night always offected his voice onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change seats.

Again I demurred. And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra, she wanted to tell him sumthin’ in confidence.

And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to come between pardners, no indeed. The road laid peacefuller and beautifuller than ever, or so it seemed under the sunset glory that sort o’ hung round it. Jest about half way through the woods we met the English girl, a stridin’ along alone, each step more’n 3 feet long, or so it seemed to me. There wuz a look of health, and happy determination on her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.

I would have fain