Mrs. Hawes

“ My wife named it Faithful—that was her own mother’s given name—and the child grew and ran about quite strong, and began to talk in her own pretty way, and Esther and I used to say to one another, what a blessing she was, and what a comfort she would be to us in our old age. In the evening after my work was done, I often used to carry her down to the lake, where I spent much of my time fishing, and she would run about on the hard white sand that lies along the shore, as happy as an angel, while her mother and I sat under the shade of the pines near by, watching her. ”

“ The injunction given me by his wife, in such a mysterious manner, had raised a doubt in my mind as to whether he was perfectly sane, and the apprehension I was under lest I should unwittingly say something that would “set him off,” or “send him wild,” was a constant restraint upon the freedom of my conversation.
“I am not to say anything about the lakes of New England, and I am to take no notice of that queer picture,” said I to myself. “Well, there are plenty of other subjects open to me, for Mr. Baldwin is a sensible, intelligent man.” ”

“ With such a gem of a farm as he is now in, with such an admirable partner in his joys and sorrows, and, above all, with the blessings of Providence, Reuben Baldwin may yet live to be a happy, if not a rich man. ”

“ On the contrary, the garden can boast of fig-trees of a magnitude seldom attained in our island except upon the southern coast, and the myrtle, which, farther inland, can only be kept alive through the winter months in a green-house, covers the walls with its shining dark-green leaves and fragrant silvery blossoms, to a height far above the drawing-room windows. ”

“ Baldwin, or I should rather say, the hasty conclusion that I had drawn from them, had prevented my asking Reuben many questions which occurred to me respecting New England and its farming, and the comparative advantages and disadvantages to be found in Ohio; the former, if I might at all trust my own judgment, greatly preponderating. Yet the man seemed to be communicative, and much more open in his manner than the generality of his countrymen whom I had conversed with; and in whom, indeed, the want of openness is so common, as fairly to be called a national characteristic. ”

“ Before the party at Sandiland broke up, I was obliged to return to my studies. Many years have rolled on since those happy days, bringing their stores of good and of evil, bringing new friends and dearer relations, sweeping away old friends, none more dear to me than my kind-hearted old friend the Squire. ”

“ The Squire said, “The truth is that many years ago the room got a bad name, and it has not been slept in since; in fact, the house is so large that it has not been wanted. As to myself, I never did sleep in it, for I prefer my own room, which has a south aspect.”
“Perhaps,” suggested one of the party, “the rats may have found their way over the ceiling, or a cowl on some chimney top makes a noise—when people go to bed with nonsense of this sort in their heads, the hooting of an owl, or the roaring of the sea, or even the wind in the trees becomes something supernatural in their imagination.” ”

“ There is nothing like a community of tastes for furnishing subjects of conversation, even between strangers; so, in five minutes from the time of our first meeting, we were deep in the mysteries of fly-fishing. My companion, who was evidently an experienced angler, caught at least two fish to my one, for he had greatly the advantage over me, inasmuch as he was thoroughly acquainted with the peculiarities of fish, of which I did not even know the names—for they, like the birds, the plants, and many other things pertaining to natural history, are different from those of England. ”

“ Fried bacon, omelets, Johnny-cake, two or three kinds of preserved fruits, and excellent coffee were on the table, all prepared by the indefatigable Esther: her husband milked the cow and sawed the wood for the stove, and probably helped her with the heaviest work, but she kept no servant of any kind to assist her. It has often been a mystery to me to imagine how these American women get through all the multifarious business that falls to their share with so little apparent effort or fatigue. ”

“ There is a cool imperturbability about a genuine Yankee woman which makes me believe that she could never be taken by surprise, never be thrown off her guard; her complete self-possession and command of countenance, under all circumstances, are admirable; and yet, perhaps, there are cases in which an English woman’s embarrassment would be more interesting; but, however, this was not one of them.
Mrs. Baldwin had hardly finished speaking when her husband returned with the eggs, which he handed to her in his hat. ”

“ I had seen enough of New England in merely travelling through it, to be aware of the general inferiority of its soil; for, with some notable exceptions, the land is absolutely encumbered with rocks, which can be got rid of by the farmer only at a vast expense of capital and labour; the climate, too, is severe, and the winter long and cold. ”

“ My way lay through the edge of a forest—one of those magnificent forests of gigantic trees that stretch back from the river for miles, and which are now and then broken by a fertile prairie, or, as we should call it, a natural meadow. ”

“ I ain’t so good a scholar as you, and I never can read when anybody is talking,” said Mrs. Baldwin, as she laid an old, well-worn Bible in large print on the table before her. Reuben also sat down to read, and for the time, I hoped, the danger was over.
I took up “Good News from England,” which I found to be a curious journal of the doings and sufferings of the first settlers who went from England in the May Flower, written by one of them, Mr. Winslowe, whose name is still held in reverence in New England. ”

“ Lofty—that was her name—used to tell us that nobody could sleep in that room; there was something so very dreadful to be seen, or to be heard, or both perhaps; for the old dame never would tell us all that she knew, or pretended to know; she declared, too, that no one had ever dared to pass a second night in it—was not that the story, Squire? We boys used to laugh at her superstition, but, to confess the truth, I believe at that time neither of us would have been very willing to spend a night in that room by himself.”
We took up our several candlesticks, and proceeded upstairs to bed. ”

“ Baldwin to look at his farm, of which he was not a little proud. He told me that he had had it only two years, and that his were the first crops that were ever grown on the land. Though so small in extent, he and his wife could get a good living out of the farm, the soil of which was rich and deep, and very easily worked, and when there was nothing particular to be done on the land, he caught fish in some of the neighbouring streams, which he could always find a ready sale for at Steubenville. ”

“ My father was always a sound sleeper, and not easily disturbed by noise in the night, and it was not by any noise that he was now awakened, but by feeling the bed-clothes gently moving, as if some one were pulling them towards the foot of the bed. The bed, I should observe, stood just as you saw it last night, facing the fireplace, on each side of which stand those high-backed chairs, and with the left side towards the door. ”

“ The bedstead on which my wife had laid the dear child was found in the pine wood at the foot of the mountain, one of our chairs, along with some of the rafters of the house, were carried right across the lake into another man’s farm, but she was never found. A neighbour brought us a small piece of the frock she had on, which he picked up amongst the broken stumps of the trees that had had all their tops clean carried away, and this—this is all,” said the poor fellow, pointing to the piece of print under the glass, “that we now have that ever belonged to our dear child.” ”

“ In these pleasant wide stoups, the floors of which are generally very nicely boarded and painted, the women of the family sit to sew or knit in warm weather, the children play in them when the sun is too hot, or the weather too wet for them to go out of doors; and the men not unfrequently solace themselves with a pipe. At the back of the house, the stoup serves for larder, store-room, laundry, garden-house, and a vast many other purposes. I have seen joints of frozen meat hanging in the “back stoup” for weeks together, along with frozen fowls, dry salt-fish, and venison. ”

“ Lofty, the old housekeeper here, who was dying. I had buried her husband only a few weeks before. The old couple had for a great many years been considered as most trustworthy and conscientious servants of the old Squire, your father (for you were called the young Squire then) , but it seems in one particular they had not deserved the confidence which was reposed in them. The woman, it seems, was greatly afraid of her husband, for whilst he was alive she had never had sufficient courage to confess the guilty part she had taken in deceiving her master. ”

“ In order to prevent, if possible, the room from being used at night, they gave it a bad name, and affected to believe that it was haunted, and so long as this scheme answered their purpose they took no other means; but if, in spite of the dark hints that the housekeeper threw out, any person should persist in sleeping there, they were prepared with some frightful disguises with which to terrify him sufficiently to prevent a second attempt at such an indiscretion. Still,” continued Mr. Bradley, again addressing the Squire, “this does not account for the most perplexing part of the business. ”

“ What you say about our rough climate and stony farms in New England is quite true, but as I was raised there I did not think much of them things—we don’t when we have been used to them all our life, any more than you think of all the fogs and dull dark days you get in England. ”

“ After enjoying several hours’ good sport, I thought it time to return to my inn, but my companion would not hear of it.
“You must not go back to-night,” said he. “You must come home with me; the old woman will find you a bed, and I will show you my little farm, out in the bush, yonder. I guess you could not match it for beauty in your country.”
I felt no inclination to throw doubts on this point. Why should I? I like to see a man prefer his own country, as he would his own wife and his own children, to any other in the world ”

“ Nor do I believe in apparitions, most of which may be easily accounted for by the state of the seer’s health, or of his nerves, or by the state of the atmosphere, or a hundred other circumstances. But I will say, without fear of contradiction from any reasonable person, that some things are quite unaccountable, though they cannot either be denied or explained away.
For example, noises! Dreadfully unaccountable are the noises that a person, sitting up late at night, and alone, “and when a’ the weary world to rest are gone,” may hear in some houses. ”

“ At length, much to the satisfaction of us young people, who scorned the idea of rats, cowls, or wind, and who had a strong inclination to believe in the supernatural, some of the Major’s traps, as he called them, were removed from the opposite room, as he declared that here, and nowhere else, would he spend the night. ”

“ Under a glass, smoothed out, and tacked at the corners with four or five very small, neatly cut wooden pegs, to a cedar shingle of about eight inches wide, and six deep, was a torn, irregularly-shaped piece of common-looking calico print and around this picture, as I must call it, for want of a more appropriate name, was a deep frame, made of some kind of pine cones, sawn in halves, and arranged in a manner that showed considerable taste as well as ingenuity. ”

“ We Americans are so used to fine weather that we don’t think much of it. I guess you don’t get much of it in your country.”
Of course I defended our country from such an injurious imputation, while I generously admitted that we had not, either in summer or winter, anything like the bright clear atmosphere of America.
I had seen enough of New England and the New Englanders to enable me to recognise a Yankee as soon as I heard him speak, and I was well aware that this man was from one of the Eastern States ”

“ The Squire said, “If it had not been for the—what shall I call it?—obstinacy? resolution? firmness? of my old friend, here, who would persist in sleeping in that unlucky room last night, and the fortunate circumstance of Mr. Bradley’s being here, you certainly would never have heard, from me at least, any account of the mystery which has so long perplexed me. I must begin by telling you, that to the best of my knowledge that room was never slept in but twice since I was born, and I am more than forty years old. You heard what the Major said respecting our old housekeeper. ”

“ I say alone, because it is not to be supposed that when several persons are together, some talking and laughing, some moving about, some occupied one way and some another, that they should pay any attention to the mysterious noises of which I am speaking. ”

“ She told me that in his youth her husband, like a great many men of his class on this coast, had often been actively engaged in smuggling spirits, and that long after he had discontinued going out to sea, and had to all appearance become a steady man, he had kept up a connection with smugglers, and aided them in various ways, but so cunningly that he never had been suspected by his master. ”

“ The house may be a hundred years old—it may be more, or it may be less, though I should not think it. Who lives there now is no matter; our business is with the “good old Squire,” as he was commonly called in the neighbourhood, who lived there five-and-twenty years ago. ”

“ The old housekeeper, in your good father’s time, used to try to frighten us boys about that room: she declared that nobody—”
“Foolish old woman!” interrupted our host rather hastily; “he was obliged to threaten her with instant dismissal if she spread such absurd reports; why, you would hardly believe it, but I assure you, at one time, my father could scarcely get a servant to live in the house—you know how superstitious most of our rural population is ”

“ The Major seated himself in one of the large easy chairs, and made a scrutinizing survey of the room.
“So this room is given up to the—”
“Come, come,” interrupted the Squire; “there’s the clock striking twelve, and—”
“Upon my honour, Jack, I believe you know a good deal more about the housekeeper’s story than you choose to tell us—what is it now? Nay, don’t look so grim. I’ve a great mind to take up my quarters here for the night. I wish I may never have a worse berth to sleep in than this great downy chair; it fits me exactly.” ”