Part 12 (1/2)
”But if I tell the story out I am afraid you would not,” said Hubert.
”Why, isn't it done?”
”I beg your pardon, doctor, for having used a little craft. I had much at stake. I have disguised this story in its details. But it is true, I am the hero----”
The doctor looked quickly towards his daughter. Her head was bent low over her book. Her long hair hung about it like a curtain, shutting out all view of the face. The doctor walked to the other window and looked out. Hubert sat like a mummy. After a minute Dr. Hood spoke.
”Cornelia!”
She lifted a face that was aflame. Tears glistened in her eyes, and I doubt not there was a prayer in her heart.
”You are a brave girl. I had other plans. You have a right to choose for yourself. G.o.d bless you both! But it's a great pity Hu is not a lawyer; he pleads well.” So saying he put on his hat and walked out.
This is the conversation that Hubert repeated to me that day sitting in his own little parsonage in Allenville. A minute after his wife came in. She had been prescribing for the minor ailments of some poor neighbors. She took the baby from her crib, and bent over her till that same long hair curtained mother and child from sight.
”I think,” said Hubert, ”that you folks who write love stories make a great mistake in stopping at marriage. The honeymoon never truly begins until conjugal affection is enriched by this holy partners.h.i.+p of loving hearts in the life of a child. The climax of a love story is not the wedding. It is the baby!”
”What do you call her?” I asked.
”Hope,” said the mother.
”Hope Valentine,” added the father, with a significant smile.
”And you spell the Hope with an 'a,' I believe,” I said.
”You naughty Hu!” said Mrs. Cornelia. ”You've been telling. You think that love story is interesting to others because _you_ enjoy it so much!”
_1871._
HULDAH, THE HELP.[2]
A THANKSGIVING LOVE STORY.
I remember a story that Judge Balcom told a few years ago on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. I do not feel sure that it will interest everybody as it did me. Indeed, I am afraid that it will not, and yet I can not help thinking that it is just the sort of a trifle that will go well with turkey, celery, and mince pie.
[2] This is the first story written by me, beyond a few juvenile tales; and it was the first short story to appear in Scribner's Monthly, the present Century Magazine. Mr. Gilder, then a.s.sociated with Dr. Holland in editing that newborn periodical, begged me to write a short story for the second number of the magazine. I told him that something Helps had written suggested that a story might be devised in which the hero should marry a servant. He said it couldn't be done, and I wrote this, on a wager, as it were. But a ”help” is not a servant. The popularity of this story encouraged me to continue, but I can not now account for the popularity of the story.
It was in the judge's own mansion on Thirty-fourth Street that I heard it. It does not matter to the reader how I, a stranger, came to be one of that family party. Since I could not enjoy the society of my own family, it was an act of Christian charity that permitted me to share the joy of others. We had eaten dinner and had adjourned to the warm, bright parlor. I have noticed on such occasions that conversation is apt to flag after dinner. Whether it is that digestion absorbs all of one's vitality, or for some other reason, at least so it generally falls out, that people may talk ever so brilliantly at the table, but they will hardly keep it up for the first half-hour afterward. And so it happened that some of the party fell to looking at the books, and some to turning the leaves of the photograph alb.u.m, while others were using the stereoscope. For my own part, I was staring at an engraving in a dark corner of the parlor, where I could not have made out much of its purpose if I had desired, but in reality I was thinking of the joyous company of my own kith and kin, hundreds of miles away, and regretting that I could not be with them.
”What are you thinking about, papa?” asked Irene, the judge's second daughter.
She was a rather haughty-looking girl of sixteen, but, as I had noticed, very much devoted to her parents. At this moment she was running her hand through her father's hair, while he was rousing himself from his revery to answer her question.
”Thinking of the old Thanksgivings, which were so different from anything we have here. They were the genuine thing; these are only counterfeits.”
”Come, tell us about them, please.” This time it was Annie Balcom, the elder girl, who spoke. And we all gathered round the judge. For I notice that when conversation does revive, after that period of silence that follows dinner, it is very attractive to the whole company, and in whatsoever place it breaks out there is soon a knot of interested listeners.
”I don't just now think of any particular story of New England Thanksgivings that would interest you,” said the judge.
”Tell them about Huldah's mince pie,” said Mrs. Balcom, as she looked up from a copy of Whittier she had been reading.