Little Foxes | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 20, 1882

Little Foxes.

“Don’t be overcome yet. May be you’ll change your mind before the end, Miss. I’ve got a bit of advice for you, and a promise to make first. The advice is to leave off the piano for six months, and to take to the kitchen. Men can’t live on love and waltzes, much less a man of the Seldom tribe. I know ’em. If he don’t have good food, he’ll be sour first and then he’ll have dyspepsia, and there’ll be a sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees; which things are a figure. But that’s the advice.”

That is the way grandma Jarvis vented some of her views as to Mabel Lee’s approaching marriage.

“O, grandma!” replied Mabel, “I can make splendid cake, and ice-pudding too, and charlottes, just as good as Cross.”

“Fiddlestick! You can’t make bread, or boil a potato, or broil a steak.”

“But anybody can do that.”

Mrs. Lee smiled, and grandma turned a withering look on Mabel.

“Don’t be a fool! There isn’t one in a hundred can do either, and I doubt if you’ve got brain to; but you might try.”

There rose up instantly a mighty resolve in Mabel’s feminine soul to show Grandma Jarvis that she could do more than she gave her credit for; that she would learn to cook, in spite of this discouraging prophecy. It is just possible grandma knew to whom she was talking.

“Then, as to the promise. I’m going to send you over a motto—one of those painted gimcracks everybody hangs up everywhere. I don’t know why they call them illuminated, I’m sure, except by the rule of contraries, for they need extra spectacles and a calcium light to read them by. But you can read mine!—I rubbed off the curlieues. Only promise to read it every morning before breakfast, or I can tell you you won’t get the tea-set; please remember.”

“O, of course I’ll read it, grandma—the idea!”

“Well, well, if you read it you’ll think about it, I’ll warrant. Now I must go home and send Johnny over with the things;” and, with a frosty little caress on Mabel’s fair cheek, and a nod to her mother, she went. “Grandma kisses me just like a clamshell,” said Mabel, in half-soliloquy, as she sat down again by the window. Her mother could not help laughing, for the cool nip of thin lips, that was grandma’s substitute for a kiss, certainly did suggest shells and clamminess. John came directly back with the package, and Mabel eagerly untied and unfolded it. The motto was printed in large German text, easy to read, though gay with gold and colors, and it ran thus:—

“Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes.”

Mabel started.

“Mother, what on earth does it mean?”

Mrs. Lee smiled and sighed both, as she read the legend over the girl’s shoulder. “Look here, Mab.;” said she, slipping a flat gold loop over her third finger, and the girl read inside, “Beware of little foxes!” and looked up, freshly astonished, into her mother’s face.

“I suppose grandma means me to tell you a story, Mabel, which she told me when I was first engaged. It hurt her bitterly to tell it, but it did me much good. I think she could not bring herself to tell you. You are not her daughter, and cannot love her as I do, and you never had reason to pity her as I have. You never saw grandfather Jarvis, Mabel.”

“Why, I thought he died before I was born.”

“No, he died ten years ago, in Brazil. I never saw him myself, Mab.; he never knew he had a daughter.”

“Mother!”

Mrs. Lee’s lovely dark eyes filled with tears as she drew Mabel down beside her on the sofa.

“I have been told that grandma was a very beautiful, high-spirited girl at your age; dear, animated, brilliant, thoroughly satisfied with herself and her surroundings, especially when Jonathan Jarvis fell in love with her. Her father died when she was three years old, and her invalid mother adored the child, and spoiled her, even more than I do you.”

Mabel kissed the soft hand laid on her shoulder, and gave it a willful little bite.

“As if I was one bit spoiled!”

“If you were not, my child, you would not need grandma’s lessons. She was spoiled, as I said, and Jonathan Jarvis knew it; but he was bewitched by her spirit and beauty, and thought, as men are apt to think, that he could control and cure all that. She loved him, too, very deeply, after her fashion, and there was nothing to delay their marriage; but the day was scarcely fixed when her mother suddenly sank and died. Grandmother did not mourn so hopelessly that it was thought best to put off her marriage, though out of respect to her mother’s memory there was no wedding party, and the happy pair began their life at once in the old homestead where grandmother lives to day.

“The outlook before those two was very fair; youth, health, competency, what seemed to be devoted love, made them an enviable couple. But no sooner were these two unbroken wills brought into daily contact than trouble began.

“You may laugh, Mabel, but their first dispute was about a coffee-pot. Mother preferred the old-fashioned urn; her husband, the newer style of pitcher. Neither would yield in a mere matter of taste, and this was the beginning of evil.

“Silly? Yes, it looks wonderfully silly to us; but I think I heard a very warm discussion only yesterday on the proper style of riding-hats for a lady.”

Mabel colored to the waves of her dark hair, and tried to smile.

“They came to a compromise on this matter, agreed to drink chocolate instead of coffee; but other small disputes followed—they all burnt in, on grandma’s mind; but I forget most of them, so slight and trivial were the matters of discussion, though they grew to active means of torment.

“A child was born, and Jonathan in his sad and sore heart, thought that would bring peace, and his indignant and grieved wife hoped it also; for each blamed the other, as combatants will. But the baby’s eyes never saw the strife; it died, and the hope died with it. Little frets are what wear away love and life, Mabel. My poor father!—and my poor mother! There was no kind friend to say a judicious word to either. They showed a smiling front to the world outside, but became more alienated daily.

“There was no real quarrel, no vital disagreement; but the hourly fret of undisciplined tempers, impatient natures, strong wills, and a self-consideration that forbade yielding, that cherished pride and petulance, that recognized no duty except as owed to itself.

“The end of these things hastened. Before the nameless baby had been in its grave a year, father had set out for Brazil in a vessel, leaving this short adieu to his wife:—

“‘You can say I have gone South on business, Mehetable, but you must know I shall never come back, I am tired of living in torment, and you will be glad to part with one who never could please you. So farewell.

“‘Yours at command, “‘JONATHAN JARVIS.’

“Mother was frantically angry at first. She raved in her own chamber over what she termed a mortal insult; but, as day after day came on, and her loneliness and weakness grew over her, she began to see things more honestly; and when news came that the ship had foundered at sea and all hands perished, then she was entirely prostrated. As she told me, her past life rose up, looked her in the face, and struck her down.

“I was born after my father’s departure, and a very long illness carried her on to the gates of the grave. She recovered at last, a stern and saddened woman, with only one interest in life; but she brought me up with strictness and care, tenderly as she loved me; and when I was about to take up my life for myself, told me this story, and gave me this ring.

“‘If I had killed the little foxes,’ she said, sadly, ‘I might to-day have a goodly vineyard of my own. Beware of them, Hetty. They have spoiled my life.’

“And after all, Mabel, my father was not lost on the wreck. He was picked up by another vessel, and, under an assumed name, lived on in Brazil. In the grasp of mortal illness, he wrote his wife, asking and giving pardon. It was from him that all her wealth came, but she has never forgiven herself.”

“Poor grandma!” sobbed Mabel, “and I have been so hateful to her.”

“It will console her for all your freaks, my darling, if you profit by her pitiful story.”

The next time Grandma Jarvis came over, Mabel greeted her with a stringent hug and a heartfelt kiss, not at all of the clam-shell order.

The old lady drew back with astonishment and looked at Mabel; but she saw the brown eyes fill, and her own grew dim.

“Go along, child, go along!” she growled, under her breath. “And now you’ve got your lesson, don’t forget.”

It would have been hard for Mabel to do so, when the exquisitely wrought tea-set that adorned her table through all her married life bore on every cover the sly and eager head of a tiny fox, and the very cream pitcher had for its handle the slender form of that treacherous animal, its eager head peering over the brim, and its long, bushy tail curving outward at the base. Many and many a time, when some trifling matter irritated her, and a quick or stinging word rose to her lips, a glance at the tea-set shut her pretty mouth closely just in time; and when grandma Jarvis came into Boston a year after Mabel’s marriage, to eat her Christmas dinner at Mr. Seldom’s, she nodded quaintly at the lady of the house, as she said, “I congratulate you now Mehetable; I can do it with a clear conscience. It’s been a good hunting year, I see.”

Mabel colored and laughed, and her husband stared, but nobody explained the sybilline utterance; only Mrs. Lee gave her mother a loving and grateful look, and grandma Jarvis wiped her spectacles.

And the moral is—let us all go fox-hunting.— Christian Woman.