Sevenoaks Part 69

The execution in satisfaction of the judgment obtained against Mr.

Belcher was promptly issued and levied; claimants and creditors of various sorts took all that the execution left; Mrs. Belcher and her children went to their friends in the country; the Sevenoaks property was bought for Mr. Benedict, and a thousand lives were adjusted to the new circ.u.mstances; but narrative palls when its details are antic.i.p.ated.

Let us pa.s.s them, regarding them simply as memories coming up--sometimes faintly, sometimes freshly--from the swiftly retiring years, and close the book, as we began it, with a picture.

Sevenoaks looks, in its main features, as it looked when the reader first saw it. The river rolls through it with the old song that the dwellers upon its banks have heard through all these changing years. The workmen and workwomen come and go in the mill, in their daily round of duty, as they did when Phipps, and the gray trotters, and the great proprietor were daily visions of the streets. The little tailoress returns twice a year with her thrifty husband, to revisit her old friends; and she brings at last a little one, which she shows with great pride. Sevenoaks has become a summer thoroughfare to the woods, where Jim receives the city-folk in incredible numbers.

We look in upon the village on a certain summer evening, at five years'

remove from the first occupation of the Belcher mansion by Mr. Benedict.

The mist above the falls cools the air and bathes the trees as it did when Robert Belcher looked upon it as the incense which rose to his lordly enterprise. The nestling cottages, the busy shops, the fresh-looking spires, the distant woods, the more distant mountain, the old Seven Oaks upon the Western plateau and the beautiful residence behind them, are the same to-day that they were when we first looked upon them; but a new life and a new influence inform them all. Nature holds her unvarying frame, but the life upon the canvas is what we paint from year to year. The river sings to vice as it sings to virtue. The birds carol the same, whether selfishness or love be listening. The great mountains rejoice in the sun, or drape their brows in clouds, irrespective of the eyes that regard them.

This one fact remains good in Sevenoaks, and the world over. The man who holds the financial power and the social throne of a town, makes that town, in a good degree, what he is. If he is virtuous, n.o.ble, unselfish, good, the elements beneath him shape themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to his character. Vice shrinks into disgrace, or flies to more congenial haunts. The greed for gold which grasps and over-reaches, becomes ashamed, or changes to neighborly helpfulness. The discontent that springs up in the shadow of an unprincipled and boastful worldly success, dies; and men become happy in the toil that wins a comfortable shelter and daily bread, when he to whom all look up, looks down upon them with friendly and sympathetic eyes, and holds his wealth and power in service of their good.

Paul Benedict is now the proprietor of Sevenoaks; and from the happy day in which he, with his sister and child, came to the occupation of the mansion which his old persecutor had built for himself, the fortunes and character of the town have mended. Even the poor-house has grown more comfortable in its apartments and administration, while year by year its population has decreased. Through these first years, the quiet man has moved around his mill and his garden, his mind teeming with suggestions, and filling with new interest in their work the dull brains that had been worn deep and dry with routine. All eyes turn upon him with affection. He is their brother as well as their master.

In the great house, there is a happy woman. She has found something to love and something to do. These were all she needed to make her supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in the best degree, womanly.

Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her young affections to gold at the first, and wasting years in idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack of affection and the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she has found, at last, the secret of her woman's life, and has accepted it with genuine grat.i.tude. In ministering to her brother and her brother's child, now a stalwart lad, in watching with untiring eyes and helping with ready wit the unused proprietor in his new circ.u.mstances, and in a.s.sisting the poor around her, she finds her days full of toil and significance, and her nights brief with grateful sleep. She is the great lady of the village, holding high consideration from her relations.h.i.+p to the proprietor, and bestowing importance upon him by her revelation of his origin and his city a.s.sociations.

The special summer evening to which we allude is one which has long been looked forward to by all the people in whom our story has made the reader sympathetically interested. It is an anniversary--the fifth since the new family took up their residence in the grand house. Mr. and Mrs.

Balfour with their boy are there. Sam Yates is there--now the agent of the mill--a trusty, prosperous man; and by a process of which we have had no opportunity to note the details, he has transformed Miss Snow into Mrs. Yates. The matter was concluded some years ago, and they seem quite wonted to each other. The Rev. Mr. Snow, grown thinner and grayer, and a great deal happier, is there with his wife and his two unmarried daughters. He finds it easier to "take things as they air," than formerly, and, by his old bridge, holds them against all comers. And who is this, and who are these? Jim Fenton, very much smoothed exteriorly, but jolly, acute, outspoken, peculiar as ever. He walks around the garden with a boy on his shoulder. The "little feller" that originally appeared in Mr. Benedict's plans of the new hotel is now in his hands--veritable flesh and blood; and "the little woman," sitting with Mrs. Snow, while Mrs. Dillingham directs the arrangement of the banquet that is being spread in the paG.o.da, watches the pair, and exclaims: "Look at them! now isn't it ridiculous?"

The warm sun hides himself behind the western hill, though still an hour above his setting. The roar of the falling river rises to their ears, the sound of the factory bell echoes among the hills, and the crowd of grimy workmen and workwomen pours forth, darkening the one street that leads from the mill, and dissipating itself among the waiting cottages.

All is tranquillity and beauty, while the party gather to their out-door feast.

It is hardly a merry company, though a very happy one. It is the latest issue of a tragedy in which all have borne more or less important parts.

The most thoughtless of them cannot but feel that a more powerful hand than their own has shaped their lives and determined their destinies.

The boys are called in, and the company gather to their banquet, amid conversation and laughter.

Mr. Balfour turns to Jim and says: "How does this compare with Number Nine, Jim? Isn't this better than the woods?"

Jim has been surveying the preparations with a critical and professional eye, for professional purposes. The hotel-keeper keeps himself constantly open to suggestions, and the table before him suggests so much, that his own establishment seems very humble and imperfect.

"I ben thinkin' about it," Jim responds. "When a man has got all he wants, he's brung up standin' at the end of his road. If thar ain't comfort then, then there ain't no comfort. When he's got more nor he wants, then he's got by comfort, and runnin' away from it. I hearn the women talk about churnin' by, so that the b.u.t.ter never comes, an' a man as has more money nor he wants churns by his comfort, an' spends his life swas.h.i.+n' with his dasher, and wonderin' where his b.u.t.ter is. Old Belcher's b.u.t.ter never come, but he worked away till his churn blowed up, an' he went up with it."

"So you think our good friend Mr. Benedict has got so much that he has left comfort behind," says Mr. Balfour with a laugh.

"I should be afeard he had, if he could reelize it was all his'n, but he can't. He hain't got no more comfort here, no way, nor he used to have in the woods." Then Jim leans over to Mr. Balfour's ear, and says: "It's the woman as does it. It's purty to look at, but it's too pertickler for comfort."

Mr. Balfour sees that he and Jim are observed, and so speaks louder.

"There is one thing," he says: "that I have learned in the course of this business. It does not lie very deep, but it is at least worth speaking of. I have learned how infinitely more interesting and picturesque vulgar poverty is than vulgar riches. One can find more poetry in a log cabin than in all that wealth ever crowded into Palgrave's Folly. If poor men and poor women, honest and patient workers, could only apprehend the poetical aspects of their own lives and conditions, instead of imagining that wealth holds a monopoly of the poetry of life, they would see that they have the best of it, and are really enviable people."

Jim knows, of course, that his old cabin in the woods is in Mr.

Balfour's mind, and feels himself called upon to say something in response. "If so be as ye're 'ludin' at me," says he, "I'm much obleeged to ye, but I perfer a hotel to a log cabin, pertickler with a little woman and a little feller in it, Paul B., by name."

"That's all right, Jim," says Mr. Balfour, "but I don't call that vulgar wealth which is won slowly, by honest industry. A man who has more money than he has brains, and makes his surroundings the advertis.e.m.e.nt of his possessions, rather than the expression of his culture, is a vulgar man, or a man of vulgar wealth."

"Did ye ever think," says Jim, "that riches rots or keeps accordin' to their natur?--rots or keeps," he goes on, "accordin' to what goes into 'em when a man is gitten' 'em together? Blood isn't a purty thing to mix with money, an' I perfer mine dry. A golden sweetin' grows quick an'

makes a big show, but ye can't keep it through the winter."

"That's true, Jim," responds Mr. Balfour. "Wealth takes into itself the qualities by which it is won. Gathered by crime or fraud, and gathered in haste, it becomes a curse to those who hold it, and falls into ruin by its own corruptions. Acquired by honest toil, manly frugality, patient endurance, and patient waiting, it is full of good, and holds together by a force within itself."

"Poor Mrs. Belcher!" exclaims Mrs. Dillingham, as the reflection comes to her that that amiable lady was once the mistress of the beautiful establishment over which she has been called upon to preside.

"They say she is living nicely," says Mr. Snow, "and that somebody sends her money, though she does not know where it comes from. It is supposed that her husband saved something, and keeps himself out of sight, while he looks after his family."

Mr. Benedict and Mrs. Dillingham exchange significant glances. Jim is a witness of the act, and knows what it means. He leans over to Mr.

Benedict, and says: "When I seen sheet-lightnin', I know there's a shower where it comes from. Ye can't fool me about ma'am Belcher's money."

"You will not tell anybody, Jim," says Mr. Benedict, in a low tone.

"n.o.body but the little woman," responds Jim; and then, seeing that his "little feller," in the distance, is draining a cup with more than becoming leisure, he shouts down the table: "Paul B! Paul B! Ye can't git that mug on to yer head with the brim in yer mouth. It isn't yer size, an' it doesn't look purty on ye."

"I should like to know where the old rascal is," says Mrs. Snow, going back to the suggestion that Mr. Belcher was supplying his family with money.

"Well, I can tell ye," replies Jim. "I've been a keepin' it in for this very meetin'."

"Oh Jim!" exclaim half a dozen voices, which means: "we are dying to hear all about it."

"Well," says Jim, "there was a feller as come to my hotel a month ago, and says he: 'Jim, did ye ever know what had become of old Belcher?'

'No,' says I, 'I only knowed he cut a big stick, an' slid.' 'Well,' says he, 'I seen 'im a month ago, with whiskers enough on 'is ugly face to set up a barberry-bush.' Says I, 'Where did ye seen 'im?' 'Where do ye guess', says he?' 'Swoppin' a blind hoss', says I, 'fur a decent one, an' gettin' boot.' 'No,' says he, 'guess agin.' 'Preachin' at a camp-meetin',' says I, 'an' pa.s.sin' round a hat arter it.' 'No,' says he, 'I seen 'im jest where he belonged. He was tendin' a little bar, on a S'n' Lor'nce steamboat. He was settin' on a big stool in the middle of 'is bottles, where he could reach 'em all without droppin' from his roost, an' when his customers was out he was a peekin' into a little lookin'-gla.s.s, as stood aside of 'im, an' a combin' out his baird.'

'That settles it,' says I, 'you've seen 'im, an no mistake.' 'Then,'

says he, 'I called 'im 'General,' an' he looked kind a skeered, an' says 'e to me, 'Mum's the word! Crooked Valley an' Air Line is played out, an' I'm workin' up a corner in Salt River,'--laughin', an' offerin' to treat.'

"I wonder how he came in such a place as that," says Mrs. Snow.

"That's the funniest part on't," responds Jim. "He found an old friend on the boat, as was much of a gentleman,--an old friend as was dressed within an inch of his life, an' sold the tickets."

"Phipps!" "Phipps!" shout half a dozen voices, and a boisterous laugh goes around the group.

"Ye've guessed right the fust time," Jim continues, "an' the gentlemanlest clerk, an' the poplarest man as ever writ names in a book, an' made change on a counter, with no end o' rings an' hankercher-pins, an' presents of silver mugs, an' rampin' resolootions of admirin'

pa.s.singers. An' there the two fellers be, a sailin' up an' down the S'n.' Lor'nce, as happy as two clams in high water, workin' up corners in their wages, an' playin' into one another's hands like a pair of pickpockets; and what do ye think old Belcher said about Phipps?"

"What did he say?" comes from every side.

"Well, I can't tell percisely," responds Jim. "Fust he said it was proverdential, as Phipps run away when he did; an' then he put in somethin' that sounded as if it come from a book,--somethin' about tunin' the wind to the sheared ram."

Jim is very doubtful about his quotation, and actually blushes scarlet under the fire of laughter that greets him from every quarter.

"I'm glad if it 'muses ye," says Jim, "but it wasn't anything better nor that, considerin' the man as took it to himself."

"Jim, you'll be obliged to read up," says "the little woman," who still stands by her early resolutions to take her husband for what he is, and enjoy his peculiarities with her neighbors.

"I be as I be," he responds. "I can keep a hotel, an' make money on it, an' pervide for my own, but when it comes to books ye can trip me with a feather."

The little banquet draws to a close, and now two or three inquire together for Mr. Yates. He has mysteriously disappeared! The children have already left the table, and Paul B. is romping with a great show of equine spirit about the garden paths, astride of a stick. Jim is looking at him in undisguised admiration. "I do believe," he exclaims, "that the little feller thinks he's a hoss, with a neck more nor three feet long.

See 'im bend it over agin the check-rein he's got in his mind! Hear 'im squeal! Now look out for his heels!"

At this moment, there rises upon the still evening air a confused murmur of many voices. All but the children pause and listen. "What is coming?"

"Who is coming?" "What is it?" break from the lips of the listeners.

Only Mrs. Yates looks intelligent, and she holds her tongue, and keeps her seat. The sound comes nearer, and breaks into greater confusion. It is laughter, and merry conversation, and the jar of tramping feet. Mr.