The Harvest of Years Part 32

"That's it; put not your light under a bushel but where men can see it, Louis, for I tell you the candles you carry to folks' hearts are run in the mould of the Lord's love, and every gleam on 'em is worth seein'."

Aunt Hildy's step we knew was growing less firm, and now and then she rode to the village. Matthias got on bravely, and gloried in the deposit of some "buryin' money," as he called it, with Louis, who took it to the bank and brought him a bank-book.

"Who'd a thought on't, Mas'r Louis, me, an old n.i.g.g.e.r slave, up heah in de Norf layin' up money."

Ben had a saw-mill now of his own, and was an honest and thrifty young man. Many new houses had been built in our midst, and with them came of course new people and their needs.

We had, up to this time, heard often from our Southern Mary, and her letters grew stronger, telling us how n.o.ble a womanhood had crowned her life, and the latter part of 1851 she wrote us of a true marriage with one who loved her dearly. Her gifts to Mrs. Goodwin had been munificent, and well appreciated by this good woman. We hoped some time to see her in the North. She had never lost sight of Mr. Benton, and he still lived with his wife and boys. This delighted the heart of Mary, and I grew to think of him as one who perhaps had been refined through the fire of suffering, which I secretly hoped had done its work so well that he would not need, as Matthias thought Mas'r Sumner would, "dat eternal fire."

CHAPTER XX.

LIFE PICTURES AND LIFE WORK.

The pictures Louis painted were not on canvas, but living, breathing ent.i.ties, and my heart rejoiced as the years rolled over us that the brush he wielded with such consummate skill was touched also by my hand; that it had been able to verify Clara's "Emily will do it," and that now in the days that came I heard her say "Louis and Emily are doing great good." I think nothing is really pleasure as compared with the blessedness of benefitting others.

My experience in my earliest years had taught me to believe gold could buy all we desired, but after Clara came to us and one by one the burden of daily planning to do much with very little fell out of our lives, and the feeling came to us that we had before us a wider path, with more privileges than we had ever before known, I found the truth under it all, that the want of a dollar is not the greatest one in life, neither the work and struggle "to make both ends meet," as we said, the hardest to enforce.

It was good to know my parents were now free from petty anxieties, that no unsettled bills hung over my father's head like threatening clouds, and that my mother could, if she would, take more time; to herself.

Indeed she was forced to be less busy with hard work, for Aunt Hildy worked with power and reigned supreme here, and I helped her in every way. It was the help that came in these ways, I firmly believed, that saved mother's life and kept her with us. This was a great comfort, but none of us could say our desires ended here.

No, as soon as the vexed question of how to live had settled itself, then within our minds rose the great need of enlarged understanding.

Millions of dollars could not have rendered me happy when my mind was clouded, and now it seemed to me, while strength lasted, no work, however hard it might be, could deprive me of the happiness and love that filled my heart. I loved to read and think, and I loved to work also.

Sometimes when my hands were filled with work and I could not stop to write, beautiful couplets would come to me, and after a time stanzas which I thought enough of to copy. In this way I "wrote myself down," as Louis termed it, and occasionally he handed me a paper with my verses printed, saying always:

"Another piece of my Emily."

May, 1853, brought Southern Mary and her husband to us. We met them with our own carriage, and within her arms there nestled a dainty parcel called "our baby," of whose coming we had not been apprised. What a beautiful picture she was, this little lady, nine months old, the perfect image of her mother, with little flaxen rings that covered her head like a crown. I heeded not the introduction to her father, but, reaching my hands to her, said:

"Let me have her, Mary, let me take her. I cannot wait a minute."

Louis gently reminded me that Mr. Waterman was speaking to me, and I apologized hastily, as I gathered the blossom to my heart, where she sat just as quiet as a kitten all the way home. Clara was delighted with the "little bud," as she called her.

"Tell me her name," I said.

"Oh! guess it," said Mary.

"Your own?"

"No, no, you can never guess, for we called her Althea, after kind Mrs.

Goodwin, who nursed me so tenderly, and Emily, for another lady we know"--and she looked at me with her bright eyes, while an arch smile played over her face. I only kissed the face of the beautiful child, and Louis said:

"My Emily's name is fit for the daughter of a king. G.o.d bless the little namesake," and Althea Emily gave utterance to a protracted "goo," which meant, of course, _yes_.

You should have heard her talk, though, when Matthias came over to see "Miss Molly."

"Come shufflin' over to see you," he said, "an' O my! but aint she jest as pooty. O"--and at this moment she realized his presence, both her little hands were stretched forth in welcome, and "ah goo! ah goo!" came a hundred times from her sweet mouth as she tried to spring out of her mother's lap.

"Take her, Matthias," I said.

"Wall, wall, she 'pears as ef she know me, Miss Emily--reckon she's got a mammy down thar."

"She has, indeed," said Mary, "and I know she will miss Mammy Lucy. She was my nurse, and she cried bitterly when we left, but I do not need her, Allie is just nothing to care for, and I like to be with her myself, for I am her mother, you know," she added proudly.

"I mus' know that ole Mammy Lucy, doesn't I, Miss Molly?"

"Certainly you do, Matthias, and she has sent a bandanna turban for your wife, and a pair of knitted gloves for you. She told me to say she didn't forget you, and was mighty glad for your freedom. Father long since gave her her's and she has quite a sum of money of her own."

All this time white baby fingers were pawing Matthias' face, as if in pity, and losing their little tips among his woolly hair.

When he rose to leave she cried bitterly, and turning back he said:

"Kin I tote her over to see Peg to-morrer?"

"Oh! yes," said Mary "give her my love and tell her I am coming over."

"Look out for breakers," said Aunt Hildy, when she saw the child, "this house'll be a bedlam now, but then we were all as leetle as that once, I spos'e," and her duty evidently spoke at that moment, saying, "You must bear with it." But she was not troubled.

Allie never troubled us, she was as sweet and sunny as a May morning all through, and even went to meeting and behaved herself admirably. She never said a word till the service ended, when she uttered one single "goo" as if well pleased. Aunt Hildy said at the supper-table she didn't believe any such thing ever happened before in the annals of our country's history,

"She's the best baby I ever see. Wish she'd walk afore you leave."

"She has never deigned to creep," said Mary; "the first time I tried to have her, she looked at me and then at her dress as if to say, "That isn't nice," and could not be coaxed to crawl. She hitches along instead, and even that is objectionable. I imagine some nice morning she will get right up and walk." At that moment Allie threw back her head of dainty yellow rings, and laughed heartily, as if she knew what we said.

Mrs. Goodwin claimed the trio for one-half of the six weeks allotted to their stay, and she said afterward:

"They were three beautiful weeks with three beautiful folks."

Louis at this time was working hard with the brush of his active goodness, and had before him much canvas to work upon. The days were placing it in his view, and we both dreamed at night of the work which had come and was coming.

It was a sunny day in June when he said: "Will my Emily go with me to-day? The colors are waiting on the pallet of the brain, and our hands must use them to-day."

"Your Emily is ready," I replied, "and Gipsy (our horse) will take us, I guess."

We went first to Jane North's, and Louis said to her;

"Jane, are you ready now to help us as you have promised?"

"Yes, sir," she replied; "I am."

"Will you take two boys to care for; one eleven years of age, and the other twelve?"

"I'll do just what you say, or try to, and if my patience gives out I can tell you, I 'spose, but I'm bound to do my duty, for I scolded and fretted and tended to other folk's business fifteen years jist because my own plans was upset, and I couldn't bear to see anybody happy. Well, 'twas the power of sin that did it, and if some of the old Apostles fell short I can't think I'm alone, though that don't make it any better for me. When are they coming?"