Thou Art the Man | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 33.

'Thou Art the Man.'

'It's the last straw that breaks the camel's back,' said Lucy, bursting into tears.

The pleasant June sunbeams came peeping into the cool, stone-paved dairy, where pans of milk were ranged in orderly array. Great stone pots stood under the shelves, and a blue-painted churn was already placed on the table for service.

Mr. Bellenden was justly proud of his dairy. Not a chance guest came to the house but was invited down to see it; not a housekeeper in the neighborhood but secretly envied its many conveniences and exquisite neatness.

'And it isn't the dairy alone,' triumphantly remarked Mr. Bellenden. 'You may go through the house from garret to cellar, and you'll never find a speck of dust. There never was such a housekeeper as my wife.'

Mrs. Bellenden was young, too—scarcely three and twenty. She had been the daughter of a retired army officer, delicately reared, and quite ignorant of all the machinery of domestic life until she married Seth Bellenden.

'It's very strange,' Lucy had written to her father. 'The farm is beautiful. You never saw such monstrous old buttonball trees, nor such superb roses, and the meadows are full of red clover, and the strawberries shine like jewels on the sunny hillsides. But nobody sketches or reads. All they think of is how many eggs the hens lay, and how many cheeses they can make in a year. And the woman who has a new receipt for waffles, or a new pattern for a horrible thing they call 'crazy quilts,' is the leader in society.'

But presently young Mrs. Bellenden herself caught the fever, and became a model housewife.

Example is all-powerful, and Lucy began to believe that the whole end and aim in life was domestic thrift, money-saving, and the treadmill of work.

'My dear,' said Seth, 'if you thought you could get along without Hepsy—the maid—I might be able to afford that new reaper before the oat crop comes in.'

'I'll try,' said Lucy.

After this she rose before daybreak, and worked later in the night than ever.

'What is the matter with your hands, Lucy?' Seth asked one day. 'They are not so white and beautiful as they used to be.'

Lucy colored as she glanced down at the members in question.

'I suppose it is from starting fires,' said she.

And then she took to wearing old kid gloves at her sweeping and dusting, and digging out of the ashes.

'My coat is getting shabby,' Seth one day remarked.

'Why don't you buy another one?' asked his wife.

Seth laughed a short laugh.

'What do you think Mrs. Higginbotham has done?' said he. 'She has ripped up her husband's old suit, and cut a pattern by it, and made a new one, and entirely saved him ten dollars.'

'I could do that,' said Lucy, with sparkling eyes. 'I'll try it.'

'You could do anything, my dear,' said Mr. Bellenden, admiringly.

And Lucy felt that she had her rich reward.

Company began to come as soon as the bright weather set in.

All the affectionate relatives of Mr. Bellenden soon discovered that the farm-house was cool and shady, that Lucy's cooking was excellent, and that the bedrooms were neatness itself.

Some of them were good enough to bring their relatives as well, and so the house was full from April to December.

All the clergymen made their home at Brother Bellenden's when they came to Sylvan Bridge for ecclesiastical conventions; all the agents for unheard-of articles discovered that they knew somebody who was acquainted with the Bellendens, and brought their carpet-bags and valises, with that faith in human hospitality which is one of life's best gifts.

Mrs. Bellenden's fame went abroad among the Dorcases of the neighborhood in the matter of butter and cheese; she took the prize in the domestic department of all the agricultural fairs, and the adjoining housewives took no trouble to make things they could borrow of Mrs. Bellenden, 'just as well as not.'

And one day, when poor Lucy, under the blighting influence of a horrible sick headache, was endeavoring to strain three or four gallons of milk into the shining pans, the news arrived that Uncle Paul was coming to the farm.

'Another guest,' said Lucy, despairingly.

And then she uttered the proverb that heads our sketch.

'Oh, it's only Uncle Paul!' said Mr. Bellenden. 'Don't fret, Lutie; he's the most peaceable old gentleman in the world. He'll make no more trouble than a cricket. John's wife thought she could not have him because she had no hired girl just now'—

'Neither have I,' said Lucy, rebelliously.

'And Sarah Eliza don't like company.'

'And I am supposed to be fond of it,' observed Lucy, bitterly.

'And Reuben's girls don't want old folks staying there, it's too much trouble,' added Seth.

Lucy bit her lips to keep back the words she might have said.

'Where is he to sleep? The Belfords have the front room, and your Cousin Susie occupies the back, and the four Misses Patterson sleep in the two hall chambers, and the hired men have the garret room.'

She might have added that she and her husband and the baby had slept in a hot little den opening from the kitchen for four weeks, vainly expecting Mr. and Mrs. Belford to depart, and that she had never yet had a chance to invite her father to the farm in pleasant weather.

But she was magnanimous, and held her peace.

'Oh, you can find some place for him!' said her husband lightly. 'There's that little room at the end of the hall where the spinning-wheel is.'

'But it isn't furnished,' pleaded Lucy.

'You can easily sew a carpet together out of those old pieces from the Belfords' room, and it's no trouble to put up a muslin curtain to the window, and lift in a cot bed. There are plenty of good, sweet husks in the corn house, and you can just tack a mattress together, and white-wash the ceiling, and—

'What's that, Beniah? The cows in the rye lot! Dear me! Everything goes wrong if I step into the house a moment. And really Lutie, those things are your business, and not mine!' he added irritably.

Lucy could not help laughing all to herself as her husband ran up the steps. But it was a very sad little laugh, and soon changed into a sigh.

But this little bedroom was fitted up for all that, as fresh as a rose, and Uncle Paul arrived—a dried-up, yellow-complexioned old man, with an old-fashioned cravat tied in many folds around his neck, and a suit of navy blue with brass buttons.

He had the polite way of half a century ago, and Lucy thought she should like him very much, if she only had time to get acquainted with him.

But she was churning ten pounds of butter a day; and there was the baby, and the company, and the young chickens, and the baking to do for the sewing society, which was to meet at her house that week.

She was almost too busy to sleep.

But Uncle Paul was watching her quietly all the time.

He came out one day to the barn where his nephew was putting a new handle on a sickle-blade.

'Pretty busy times, eh, Uncle Paul?' asked the farmer, scarcely taking the leisure to look up.

'Aye,' absently answered the old man. 'Did I tell you, Nephew Seth, about the reason I left your Cousin Eliab's?'

'Not that I remember,' said Seth, breathing on the blade and polishing it with his silk handkerchief.

'Dorothy died—his wife.'

'Oh, yes,' said Seth. 'Malarial fever, wasn't it?'

'No!' bluntly answered Uncle Paul. 'It was hard work. That woman, Nephew Seth, did the housework for eight persons. Eliab did not even let her have a woman to help her with the washing and the ironing.'

'Must have been a regular going brute,' said Seth, tightening the handle a little.

'All the sewing, too,' added Uncle Paul, 'the mending and making. Never went anywhere, except to church. Eliab didn't believe in women gadding about.'

'The old savage!' said Seth.

'She was fond of reading, but she never had any time for it,' said Uncle Paul. 'She rose before sun-up, and never lay down until eleven o'clock. It was hard work that killed that woman, and Eliab coolly declared that it was sheer laziness when she could not drag herself around any longer. And when she died, he rolled up his eyes and called it a visitation of Providence.'

'Why didn't the neighbors lynch him?' cried Seth, fairly aroused to indignation at last.

Uncle Paul took off his glasses, wiped them vigorously, and looked his nephew hard in the face.

'Why don't the neighbors lynch you?' said he.

Seth dropped his sickle, and stared.

'Nephew Seth,' said Uncle Paul, impressively, 'Thou art the man!' Are you not doing the same thing?'

'I!' gasped Seth.

'Your wife is doing the work of a household of sixteen people,' said Uncle Paul. 'She is drudging as you could hire no foreigner to drudge. She is rising early and lying down late. She is offering up her life on the shrine of your farm and its requirements. I have seen her grow thin and pale, even during the few days I have been here. I have carried water and split wood for her, because there was no one to do it. I have seen her carry up Mrs. Belford's breakfast daily to her room, because Mrs. Belford preferred to lie in bed; and

cooking dainty dishes for Helen Patterson, because Helen couldn't eat what the rest liked. No galley slave ever worked as she does. And you, with your hired men, whose board only adds to her cares, and your labor-saving machinery, stand coolly by and see her commit slow suicide. Yes, Nephew Seth, I think it is a case for lynching!'

Seth had grown pale.

'I—I never thought of this,' said he. 'Why didn't some one tell me?'

'Where were your own eyes?' asked Uncle Paul.

Seth Bellenden rolled down his shirt sleeves, put on his coat and went into the house. He told the Belfords and Pattersons that it was inconvenient to keep them any longer. He gave Cousin Susan to understand that her room was needed. He made arrangements to board the hired men at a vacant farmhouse, and engaged a stout dairyman and a house servant to wait on Lucy. He telegraphed to her father to come to Sylvan Bridge at once.

'She deserves a treat,' he said, 'He shall spend the summer with us.'

And then he went to tell Lucy.

She had fainted among the butter-cups, picking strawberries for tea.

Poor little Lucy! The machinery had refused to revolve any longer.

His heart grew cold within him.

'She will die,' he thought, 'and I shall have murdered her!'

But she did not die. She recovered her strength by degrees.

And Uncle Paul, 'the last straw,' as she had called him, had proved her salvation.

'I didn't want her to go as Eliab's wife did,' said Uncle Paul.—Home Circle.