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+Project Gutenberg's The Guardian Angel, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+(The Physician and Poet, not the Jurist, O. W. Holmes, Jr.)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Guardian Angel
+
+Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2697]
+Last Updated: February 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUARDIAN ANGEL ***
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
+
+By Oliver Wendell Holmes
+
+
+
+
+TO MY READERS.
+
+“A new Preface” is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any
+among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the
+Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn
+what I have to say here.
+
+This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may
+remember, entitled “Elsie Venner.” Like that,--it is intended for two
+classes of readers, of which the smaller one includes the readers of the
+“Morals” in Aesop and of this Preface.
+
+The first of the two stories based itself upon an experiment which some
+thought cruel, even on paper. It imagined an alien element introduced
+into the blood of a human being before that being saw the light. It
+showed a human nature developing itself in conflict with the ophidian
+characteristics and instincts impressed upon it during the pre-natal
+period. Whether anything like this ever happened, or was possible,
+mattered little: it enabled me, at any rate, to suggest the limitations
+of human responsibility in a simple and effective way.
+
+The story which follows comes more nearly within the range of common
+experience. The successive development of inherited bodily aspects
+and habitudes is well known to all who have lived long enough to see
+families grow up under their own eyes. The same thing happens, but less
+obviously to common observation, in the mental and moral nature. There
+is something frightful in the way in which not only characteristic
+qualities, but particular manifestations of them, are repeated from
+generation to generation. Jonathan Edwards the younger tells the story
+of a brutal wretch in New Haven who was abusing his father, when the old
+man cried out, “Don't drag me any further, for I did n't drag my father
+beyond this tree.” [The original version of this often-repeated story
+may be found in Aristotle's Ethics, Book 7th, Chapter 7th.] I have
+attempted to show the successive evolution of some inherited qualities
+in the character of Myrtle Hazard, not so obtrusively as to disturb the
+narrative, but plainly enough to be kept in sight by the small class of
+preface-readers.
+
+If I called these two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its
+higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the
+learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against
+the scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human
+action from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of
+the cabinet-keepers of our doctrinal museums. By saying nothing
+about it, the large majority of those whom my book reaches, not being
+preface-readers, will never suspect anything to harm them beyond the
+simple facts of the narrative.
+
+Should any professional alarmist choose to confound the doctrine of
+limited responsibility with that which denies the existence of any
+self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of
+intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our
+new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of
+scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into
+the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the
+bodily functions, without being accused of laying “all that we are evil
+in to a divine thrusting on,” we had better return at once to our
+old demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
+time-honored prerogatives.
+
+As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may
+be needed here to make some of my characters and statements appear
+probable. The long-pending question involving a property which had
+become in the mean time of immense value finds its parallel in the great
+De Haro land-case, decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in
+progress (May 14th, 1867). The experiment of breaking the child's
+will by imprisonment and fasting is borrowed from a famous incident,
+happening long before the case lately before one of the courts of
+a neighboring Commonwealth, where a little girl was beaten to death
+because she would not say her prayers. The mental state involving utter
+confusion of different generations in a person yet capable of forming
+a correct judgment on other matters, is almost a direct transcript
+from nature. I should not have ventured to repeat the questions of
+the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle Hazard about her family
+conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of fortune and position
+mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school history of one of
+her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in reproducing Myrtle
+Hazard's “Vision,” but for a singular experience of his own related to
+me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.
+
+Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent
+correspondent of mine. I have also received a good many communications,
+signed with various names, which must have been from near female
+relatives of that young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical
+letter to the whole family connection; but as the delusion under which
+they labor is still common, and often leads to the wasting of time,
+the contempt of honest study or humble labor, and the misapplication of
+intelligence not so far below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording
+a respectable return when employed in the proper direction, I thought
+this picture from life might also be of service. When I say that no
+genuine young poet will apply it to himself, I think I have so far
+removed the sting that few or none will complain of being wounded.
+
+It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
+Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
+regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
+time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine
+and the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect.
+If, in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and
+its publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make
+me question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
+portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
+sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
+every month or two, since my story has been in the course of
+publication, by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors
+than any with which I should have thought of staining my pages.
+
+There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer
+finds it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in
+telling a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in
+this narrative must stand for many whom I have known and loved, and some
+of whom I count to-day among my most valued friends. I hope the best and
+wisest of them will like this story and approve it. If they cannot all
+do this, I know they will recognize it as having been written with a
+right and honest purpose.
+
+BOSTON, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
+
+It is a quarter of a century since the foregoing Preface was written,
+and that is long enough to allow a story to be forgotten by the public,
+and very possibly by the writer of it also. I will not pretend that I
+have forgotten all about “The Guardian Angel,” but it is long since
+I have read it, and many of its characters and incidents are far from
+being distinct in my memory. There are, however, a few points which hold
+their place among my recollections. The revolt of Myrtle Hazard from the
+tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty now breaking up in all directions has
+found new illustrations since this tale was written. I need only refer
+to two instances of many. The first is from real life. Mr. Robert
+C. Adams's work, “Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason,” is the
+outcome of the teachings of one of the most intransigeant of our New
+England Calvinists, the late Reverend Nehemiah Adams. For an example in
+fiction,--fiction which bears all the marks of being copied from real
+life,--I will refer to “The Story of an African Farm.” The boy's honest,
+but terrible outburst, “I hate God,” was, I doubt not, more acceptable
+in the view of his Maker than the lying praise of many a hypocrite who,
+having enthroned a demon as Lord of the Universe, thinks to conciliate
+his favor by using the phrases which the slaves of Eastern despots are
+in the habit of addressing to their masters. I have had many private
+letters showing the same revolt of reasoning natures against doctrines
+which shock the more highly civilized part of mankind in this nineteenth
+century and are leading to those dissensions which have long shown as
+cracks, and are fast becoming lines of cleavage in some of the largest
+communions of Protestantism.
+
+The principle of heredity has been largely studied since this story
+was written. This tale, like “Elsie Venner,” depends for its deeper
+significance on the ante-natal history of its subject. But the story
+was meant to be readable for those who did not care for its underlying
+philosophy. If it fails to interest the reader who ventures upon it,
+it may find a place on an unfrequented bookshelf in common with other
+“medicated novels.”
+
+Perhaps I have been too hard with Gifted Hopkins and the tribe of
+rhymesters to which he belongs. I ought not to forget that I too
+introduced myself to the reading world in a thin volume of verses; many
+of which had better not have been written, and would not be reprinted
+now, but for the fact that they have established a right to a place
+among my poems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, although the
+writing of verses is often a mark of mental weakness, I cannot forget
+that Joseph Story and George Bancroft each published his little book,
+of rhymes, and that John Quincy Adams has left many poems on record, the
+writing of which did not interfere with the vast and important labors of
+his illustrious career.
+
+BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 7, 1891. O. W. H.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. AN ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the “State Banner and Delphian
+Oracle,” published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres
+in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement
+which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of
+a small community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking of heads, such
+gatherings at corners, such halts of complaining, rheumatic wagons, and
+dried-up, chirruping chaises, for colloquy of their still-faced tenants,
+had not been known since the rainy November Friday, when old Malachi
+Withers was found hanging in his garret up there at the lonely house
+behind the poplars.
+
+The number of the “Banner and Oracle” which contained this advertisement
+was a fair specimen enough of the kind of newspaper to which it
+belonged. Some extracts from a stray copy of the issue of the date
+referred to will show the reader what kind of entertainment the paper
+was accustomed to furnish its patrons, and also serve some incidental
+purposes of the writer in bringing into notice a few personages who are
+to figure in this narrative.
+
+The copy in question was addressed to one of its regular
+subscribers,--“B. Gridley, Esq.” The sarcastic annotations at
+various points, enclosed in brackets and italicised that they may be
+distinguished from any other comments, were taken from the pencilled
+remarks of that gentleman, intended for the improvement of a member of
+the family in which he resided, and are by no means to be attributed to
+the harmless pen which reproduces them.
+
+Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted
+with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster,
+a college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,--a man of
+learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be
+found, except in old, unmarried students,--the double flowers of college
+culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life
+of the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles
+Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the
+good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known
+much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the
+importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of
+course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers
+and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,--perhaps
+not in any village where a score or two of families are brought
+together,--enough of them, at any rate, to furnish the ordinary
+characters of a real-life stock company.
+
+The old Master of Arts was a permanent boarder in the house of a very
+worthy woman, relict of the late Ammi Hopkins, by courtesy Esquire,
+whose handsome monument--in a finished and carefully colored
+lithograph, representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed
+willow--hung in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental
+parlor. Her household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of
+age, of whom more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon
+her doorstep when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken
+in for the night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by
+the good soul as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at
+school at the “Academy” in another part of the same town, a distant
+relative, boarding with her.
+
+What the old scholar took the village paper for it would be hard to
+guess, unless for a reason like that which carried him very regularly to
+hear the preaching of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, colleague of the
+old minister of the village parish; namely, because he did not believe a
+word of his favorite doctrines, and liked to go there so as to growl to
+himself through the sermon, and go home scolding all the way about it.
+
+The leading article of the “Banner and Oracle” for June 18th must have
+been of superior excellence, for, as Mr. Gridley remarked, several of
+the “metropolitan” journals of the date of June 15th and thereabout
+had evidently conversed with the writer and borrowed some of his ideas
+before he gave them to the public. The Foreign News by the Europa at
+Halifax, 15th, was spread out in the amplest dimensions the type of the
+office could supply. More battles! The Allies victorious! The King and
+General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned
+in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of
+conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious
+digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby
+won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for!
+Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to
+the Holy Land. Letter from our own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West
+Minkville?] Cotton advanced. Breadstuffs declining.--Deacon Rumrill's
+barn burned down on Saturday night. A pig missing; supposed to have
+“fallen a prey to the devouring element.” [Got roasted.] A yellow
+mineral had been discovered on the Doolittle farm, which, by the report
+of those who had seen it, bore a strong resemblance to California gold
+ore. Much excitement in the neighborhood in consequence [Idiots! Iron
+pyrites!] A hen at Four Corners had just laid an egg measuring 7 by 8
+inches. Fetch on your biddies! [Editorial wit!] A man had shot an eagle
+measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his wings.--Crops
+suffering for want of rain [Always just so. “Dry times, Father Noah!”]
+The editors had received a liberal portion of cake from the happy couple
+whose matrimonial union was recorded in the column dedicated to Hymen.
+Also a superior article of [article of! bah!] steel pen from the
+enterprising merchant [shopkeeper] whose advertisement was to be found
+on the third page of this paper.--An interesting Surprise Party [cheap
+theatricals] had transpired [bah!] on Thursday evening last at the house
+of the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The parishioners had donated [donated! GIVE is
+a good word enough for the Lord's Prayer. DONATE our daily bread!] a
+bag of meal, a bushel of beans, a keg of pickles, and a quintal of
+salt-fish. The worthy pastor was much affected, etc., etc. [Of course.
+Call'em. SENSATION parties and done with it!] The Rev. Dr. Pemberton and
+the venerable Dr. Hurlbut honored the occasion with their presence.--We
+learn that the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, rector of St. Bartholomew's Chapel,
+has returned from his journey, and will officiate to-morrow.
+
+Then came strings of advertisements, with a luxuriant vegetation of
+capitals and notes of admiration. More of those PRIME GOODS! Full
+Assortments of every Article in our line! [Except the one thing you
+want!] Auction Sale. Old furniture, feather-beds, bed-spreads [spreads!
+ugh!], setts [setts!] crockery-ware, odd vols., ullage bbls. of this
+and that, with other household goods, etc., etc., etc.,--the etceteras
+meaning all sorts of insane movables, such as come out of their
+bedlam-holes when an antiquated domestic establishment disintegrates
+itself at a country “vandoo.”--Several announcements of “Feed,” whatever
+that may be,--not restaurant dinners, anyhow,--also of “Shorts,”--terms
+mysterious to city ears as jute and cudbear and gunnybags to such as
+drive oxen in the remote interior districts.--Then the marriage column
+above alluded to, by the fortunate recipients of the cake. Right
+opposite, as if for matrimonial ground-bait, a Notice that Whereas
+my wife, Lucretia Babb, has left my bed and board, I will not be
+responsible, etc., etc., from this date.--Jacob Penhallow (of the late
+firm Wibird and Penhallow) had taken Mr. William Murray Bradshaw into
+partnership, and the business of the office would be carried on as usual
+under the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came
+the standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce
+Hurlbut, the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this,
+hideous quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of
+Honorables, Esquires, and Clergymen.--Then a cow, strayed or stolen
+from the subscriber.--Then the advertisement referred to in our first
+paragraph:
+
+MYRTLE HAZARD has been missing from her home in this place since
+Thursday morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly
+for her age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features,
+pleasant smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a
+black and white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon.
+It is feared she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering
+at large in a state of temporary mental alienation. Any information
+relating to the missing child will be gratefully received and properly
+rewarded by her afflicted aunt,
+
+MISS SILENCE WITHERS, Residing at the Withers Homestead, otherwise known
+as “The Poplars,” in this village.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. GREAT EXCITEMENT
+
+The publication of the advertisement in the paper brought the village
+fever of the last two days to its height. Myrtle Hazard's disappearance
+had been pretty well talked round through the immediate neighborhood,
+but now that forty-eight hours of search and inquiry had not found her,
+and the alarm was so great that the young girl's friends were willing
+to advertise her in a public journal, it was clear that the gravest
+apprehensions were felt and justified. The paper carried the tidings to
+many who had not heard it. Some of the farmers who had been busy all
+the week with their fields came into the village in their wagons on
+Saturday, and there first learned the news, and saw the paper, and the
+placards which were posted up, and listened, open-mouthed, to the whole
+story.
+
+Saturday was therefore a day of much agitation in Oxbow Village, and
+some stir in the neighboring settlements. Of course there was a great
+variety of comment, its character depending very much on the sense,
+knowledge, and disposition of the citizens, gossips, and young people
+who talked over the painful and mysterious occurrence.
+
+The Withers Homestead was naturally the chief centre of interest. Nurse
+Byloe, an ancient and voluminous woman, who had known the girl when she
+was a little bright-eyed child, handed over “the baby” she was holding
+to another attendant, and got on her things to go straight up to The
+Poplars. She had been holding “the baby” these forty years and more,
+but somehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
+reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
+house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
+she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.
+
+“Have you heerd anything yet, Kitty Fagan?” asked Nurse Byloe.
+
+“Niver a blissed word,” said she. “Miss Withers is upstairs with Miss
+Bathsheby, a cryin' and a lamentin'. Miss Badlam's in the parlor. The
+men has been draggin' the pond. They have n't found not one thing, but
+only jest two, and that was the old coffeepot and the gray cat,--it's
+them nigger boys hanged her with a string they tied round her neck and
+then drownded her.” [P. Fagan, Jr., Aet. 14, had a snarl of similar
+string in his pocket.]
+
+Mistress Fagan opened the door of the best parlor. A woman was sitting
+there alone, rocking back and forward, and fanning herself with the
+blackest of black fans.
+
+“Nuss Byloe, is that you? Well, to be sure, I'm glad to see you, though
+we 're all in trouble. Set right down, Nuss, do. Oh, it's dreadful
+times!”
+
+A handkerchief which was in readiness for any emotional overflow was
+here called on for its function.
+
+Nurse Byloe let herself drop into a flaccid squab chair with one of
+those soft cushions, filled with slippery feathers, which feel so
+fearfully like a very young infant, or a nest of little kittens, as they
+flatten under the subsiding person.
+
+The woman in the rocking-chair was Miss Cynthia Badlam, second-cousin
+of Miss Silence Withers, with whom she had been living as a companion at
+intervals for some years. She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more
+or less, and looked not badly for that stage of youth, though of course
+she might have been handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with
+women. She wore a not unbecoming cap; frequent headaches had thinned her
+locks somewhat of late years. Features a little too sharp, a keen, gray
+eye, a quick and restless glance, which rather avoided being met, gave
+the impression that she was a wide-awake, cautious, suspicious, and,
+very possibly, crafty person.
+
+“I could n't help comin',” said Nurse Byloe, “we do so love our
+babies,--how can we help it, Miss Badlam?”
+
+The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive
+pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech.
+
+“I never tended children as you have, Nuss,” she said. “But I 've known
+Myrtle Hazard ever since she was three years old, and to think she
+should have come to such an end,--'The heart is deceitful above all
+things and desperately wicked,'”--and she wept.
+
+“Why, Cynthy Badlam, what do y' mean?” said Nurse Byloe. “Y' don't think
+anything dreadful has come o' that child's wild nater, do ye?”
+
+“Child!” said Cynthia Badlam,--“child enough to wear this very gown I
+have got on and not find it too big for her neither.” [It would have
+pinched Myrtle here and there pretty shrewdly.]
+
+The two women looked each other in the eyes with subtle interchange of
+intelligence, such as belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty.
+Talk without words is half their conversation, just as it is all the
+conversation of the lower animals. Only the dull senses of men are dead
+to it as to the music of the spheres.
+
+Their minds travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through
+whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths
+of thought ripened in both their souls into articulate speech,
+consentingly, as the movement comes after the long stillness of a Quaker
+meeting.
+
+Their lips opened at the same moment. “You don't mean”--began Nurse
+Byloe, but stopped as she heard Miss Badlam also speaking.
+
+“They need n't drag the pond,” she said. “They need n't go beating the
+woods as if they were hunting a patridge,--though for that matter Myrtle
+Hazard was always more like a patridge than she was like a pullet.
+Nothing ever took hold of that girl,--not catechising, nor advising, nor
+punishing. It's that dreadful will of hers never was broke. I've always
+been afraid that she would turn out a child of wrath. Did y' ever watch
+her at meetin' playing with posies and looking round all the time of
+the long prayer? That's what I've seen her do many and many a time. I'm
+afraid--Oh dear! Miss Byloe, I'm afraid to say--what I'm afraid of. Men
+are so wicked, and young girls are full of deceit and so ready to listen
+to all sorts of artful creturs that take advantage of their ignorance
+and tender years.” She wept once more, this time with sobs that seemed
+irrepressible.
+
+“Dear suz!” said the nurse, “I won't believe no sech thing as wickedness
+about Myrtle Hazard. You mean she's gone an' run off with some
+good-for-nothin' man or other? If that ain't what y' mean, what do y'
+mean? It can't be so, Miss Badlam: she's one o' my babies. At any rate,
+I handled her when she fust come to this village,--and none o' my babies
+never did sech a thing. Fifteen year old, and be bringin' a whole family
+into disgrace! If she was thirty year old, or five-an'-thirty or more,
+and never'd had a chance to be married, and if one o' them artful
+creturs you was talkin' of got hold of her, then, to be sure,--why, dear
+me!--law! I never thought, Miss Badlam!--but then of course you could
+have had your pickin' and choosin' in the time of it; and I don't mean
+to say it's too late now if you felt called that way, for you're better
+lookin' now than some that's younger, and there's no accountin' for
+tastes.”
+
+A sort of hysteric twitching that went through the frame of Cynthia
+Badlam dimly suggested to the old nurse that she was not making her
+slightly indiscreet personality much better by her explanations. She
+stopped short, and surveyed the not uncomely person of the maiden lady
+sitting before her with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and
+one hand clenching the arm of the reeking-chair, as if some spasm
+had clamped it there. The nurse looked at her with a certain growing
+interest she had never felt before. It was the first time for some years
+that she had had such a chance, partly because Miss Cynthia had often
+been away for long periods,--partly because she herself had been busy
+professionally. There was no occasion for her services, of course, in
+the family at The Poplars; and she was always following round from place
+to place after that everlasting migratory six-weeks or less old baby.
+
+There was not a more knowing pair of eyes, in their way, in a circle of
+fifty miles, than those kindly tranquil orbs that Nurse Byloe fixed
+on Cynthia Badlam. The silver threads in the side fold of hair, the
+delicate lines at the corner of the eye, the slight drawing down at
+the angle of the mouth,--almost imperceptible, but the nurse dwelt upon
+it,--a certain moulding of the features as of an artist's clay model
+worked by delicate touches with the fingers, showing that time or pain
+or grief had had a hand in shaping them, the contours, the adjustment of
+every fold of the dress, the attitude, the very way of breathing, were
+all passed through the searching inspection of the ancient expert,
+trained to know all the changes wrought by time and circumstance. It
+took not so long as it takes to describe it, but it was an analysis of
+imponderables, equal to any of Bunsen's with the spectroscope.
+
+Miss Badlam removed her handkerchief and looked in a furtive,
+questioning way, in her turn, upon the nurse.
+
+“It's dreadful close here,--I'm 'most smothered,” Nurse Byloe said; and,
+putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of
+gold beads she had worn since she was a baby,--a bead having been added
+from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large
+neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when
+her husband was run over by an ox-team.
+
+At this moment Miss Silence Withers entered, followed by Bathsheba
+Stoker, daughter of Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
+
+She was the friend of Myrtle, and had come to comfort Miss Silence, and
+consult with her as to what further search they should institute. The
+two, Myrtle's aunt and her friend, were as unlike as they could well
+be. Silence Withers was something more than forty years old, a shadowy,
+pinched, sallow, dispirited, bloodless woman, with the habitual look of
+the people in the funeral carriage which follows next to the hearse, and
+the tone in speaking that may be noticed in a household where one of its
+members is lying white and still in a cool, darkened chamber overhead.
+Bathsheba Stoker was not called handsome; but she had her mother's
+youthful smile, which was so fresh and full of sweetness that she seemed
+like a beauty while she was speaking or listening; and she could never
+be plain so long as any expression gave life to her features. In perfect
+repose, her face, a little prematurely touched by sad experiences,--for
+she was but seventeen years old,--had the character and decision stamped
+in its outlines which any young man who wanted a companion to warn,
+to comfort, and command him, might have depended on as warranting the
+courage, the sympathy, and the sense demanded for such a responsibility.
+She had been trying her powers of consolation on Miss Silence. It was a
+sudden freak of Myrtle's. She had gone off on some foolish but innocent
+excursion. Besides, she was a girl that would take care of herself;
+for she was afraid of nothing, and nimbler than any boy of her age, and
+almost as strong as any. As for thinking any bad thoughts about her,
+that was a shame; she cared for none of the young fellows that were
+round her. Cyprian Eveleth was the one she thought most of; but Cyprian
+was as true as his sister Olive, and who else was there?
+
+To all this Miss Silence answered only by sighing and moaning, For two
+whole days she had been kept in constant fear and worry, afraid every
+minute of some tragical message, perplexed by the conflicting advice
+of all manner of officious friends, sleepless of course through the two
+nights, and now utterly broken down and collapsed.
+
+Bathsheba had said all she could in the way of consolation, and hastened
+back to her mother's bedside, which she hardly left, except for the
+briefest of visits.
+
+“It's a great trial, Miss Withers, that's laid on you,” said Nurse
+Byloe.
+
+“If I only knew that she was dead, and had died in the Lord,” Miss
+Silence answered,--“if I only knew that but if she is living in sin, or
+dead in wrong--doing, what is to become of me?--Oh, what is to become of
+me when 'He maketh inquisition far blood'?”
+
+“Cousin Silence,” said Miss Cynthia, “it is n't your fault, if that
+young girl has taken to evil ways. If going to meeting three times every
+Sabbath day, and knowing the catechism by heart, and reading of good
+books, and the best of daily advice, and all needful discipline, could
+have corrected her sinful nature, she would never have run away from
+a home where she enjoyed all these privileges. It's that Indian blood,
+Cousin Silence. It's a great mercy you and I have n't got any of it in
+our veins! What can you expect of children that come from heathens and
+savages? You can't lay it to yourself, Cousin Silence, if Myrtle Hazard
+goes wrong”--
+
+“The Lord will lay it to me,--the Lord will lay it to me,” she moaned.
+“Did n't he say to Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?'”
+
+Nurse Byloe was getting very red in the face. She had had about enough
+of this talk between the two women. “I hope the Lard 'll take care of
+Myrtle Hazard fust, if she's in trouble, 'n' wants help,” she said;
+“'n' then look out for them that comes next. Y' 're too suspicious, Miss
+Badlam; y' 're too easy to believe stories. Myrtle Hazard was as pretty
+a child and as good a child as ever I see, if you did n't rile her;
+'n' d' d y' ever see one o' them hearty lively children, that had n't
+a sperrit of its own? For my part, I'd rather handle one of 'em than a
+dozen o' them little waxy, weak-eyed, slim-necked creturs that always do
+what they tell 'em to, and die afore they're a dozen year old; and never
+was the time when I've seen Myrtle Hazard, sence she was my baby, but
+what it's always been, 'Good mornin', Miss Byloe,' and 'How do you do,
+Miss Byloe? I'm so glad to see you.' The handsomest young woman, too, as
+all the old folks will agree in tellin' you, s'ence the time o' Judith
+Pride that was,--the Pride of the County they used to call her, for her
+beauty. Her great-grandma, y' know, Miss Cynthy, married old King David
+Withers. What I want to know is, whether anything has been heerd, and
+jest what's been done about findin' the poor thing. How d' ye know she
+has n't fell into the river? Have they fired cannon? They say that busts
+the gall of drownded folks, and makes the corpse rise. Have they looked
+in the woods everywhere? Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not till y'
+must,--least of all of them that come o' the same folks, partly, and
+has lived with yo all their days. I tell y', Myrtle Hazard's jest as
+innocent of all what y' 've been thinkin' about,--bless the poor child;
+she's got a soul that's as clean and sweet-well, as a pond-lily when it
+fust opens of a mornin', without a speck on it no more than on the fust
+pond-lily God Almighty ever made!”
+
+That gave a turn to the two women's thoughts, and their handkerchiefs
+went up to their faces. Nurse Byloe turned her eyes quickly on Cynthia
+Badlam, and repeated her close inspection of every outline and every
+light and shadow in her figure. She did not announce any opinion as
+to the age or good looks or general aspect or special points of Miss
+Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which
+real folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!--a sort of half-suppressed
+labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which
+might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if
+there is to be any talking.
+
+Friends and neighbors were coming in and out; and the next person that
+came was the old minister, of whom, and of his colleague, the Rev.
+Joseph Bellamy Stoker, some account may here be introduced.
+
+The Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton Father Pemberton as brother ministers
+called him, Priest Pemberton as he was commonly styled by the country
+people--would have seemed very old, if the medical patriarch of the
+village had not been so much older. A man over ninety is a great comfort
+to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme
+outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy
+must get by him before he can come near their camp. Dr. Hurlbut, at
+ninety-two, made Priest Pemberton seem comparatively little advanced;
+but the college catalogue showed that he must be seventy-five years old,
+if, as we may suppose, he was twenty at the time of his graduation.
+
+He was a man of noble presence always, and now, in the grandeur of
+his flowing silver hair and with the gray shaggy brows overhanging his
+serene and solemn eyes, with the slow gravity of motion and the measured
+dignity of speech which gave him the air of an old pontiff, he was an
+imposing personage to look upon, and could be awful, if the occasion
+demanded it. His creed was of the sternest: he was looked up to as a
+bulwark against all the laxities which threatened New England theology.
+But it was a creed rather of the study and of the pulpit than of
+every-day application among his neighbors. He dealt too much in the
+lofty abstractions which had always such fascinations for the higher
+class of New England divines, to busy himself as much as he might have
+done with the spiritual condition of individuals. He had also a good
+deal in him of what he used to call the Old Man, which, as he confessed,
+he had never succeeded in putting off,--meaning thereby certain
+qualities belonging to humanity, as much as the natural gifts of the
+dumb creatures belong to them, and tending to make a man beloved by his
+weak and erring fellow-mortals.
+
+In the olden time he would have lived and died king of his parish,
+monarch, by Divine right, as the noblest, grandest, wisest of all that
+made up the little nation within hearing of his meeting-house bell. But
+Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
+forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
+getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
+man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
+may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
+In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
+colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.
+
+If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the
+charity, the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father
+Pemberton, he would have found a small remnant of the “Old Man,” as the
+good clergyman would have called it, which was never in harmony with the
+Rev. Mr. Stoker. The younger divine felt his importance, and made his
+venerable colleague feel that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair
+chance at rainy Sundays and hot summer-afternoon services; but the
+junior pushed him aside without ceremony whenever he thought there was
+like to be a good show in the pews. As for those courtesies which
+the old need, to soften the sense of declining faculties and failing
+attractions, the younger pastor bestowed them in public, but was
+negligent of them, to say the least, when not on exhibition.
+
+Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
+him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
+use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
+and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
+signify?
+
+Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
+was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
+smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a
+gift in prayer, was considered eloquent, was fond of listening to their
+spiritual experiences, and had a sickly wife. This is what Byles Gridley
+said; but he was apt to be caustic at times.
+
+Father Pemberton visited his people but rarely. Like Jonathan Edwards,
+like David Osgood, he felt his call to be to study-work, and was
+impatient of the egotisms and spiritual megrims, in listening to which,
+especially from the younger females of his flock, his colleague had won
+the hearts of so many of his parishioners. His presence had a wonderful
+effect in restoring the despondent Miss Silence to her equanimity; for
+not all the hard divinity he had preached for half a century had spoiled
+his kindly nature; and not the gentle Melanchthon himself, ready to
+welcome death as a refuge from the rage and bitterness of theologians,
+was more in contrast with the disputants with whom he mingled, than
+the old minister, in the hour of trial, with the stern dogmatist in his
+study, forging thunderbolts to smite down sinners.
+
+It was well that there were no tithing-men about on that next day,
+Sunday; for it shone no Sabbath day for the young men within half a
+dozen miles of the village. They were out on Bear Hill the whole day,
+beating up the bushes as if for game, scaring old crows out of their
+ragged nests, and in one dark glen startling a fierce-eyed, growling,
+bobtailed catamount, who sat spitting and looking all ready to spring at
+them, on the tall tree where he clung with his claws unsheathed, until a
+young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and
+through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than
+a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and
+alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near
+enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End
+there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making
+baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had seen
+a young lady answering the description, about a week ago. She had bought
+a basket. Asked them if they had a canoe they wanted to sell.--Eyes like
+hers (pointing to a squaw with a man's hat on).
+
+At Pocasset the young men explored all the thick woods,--some who ought
+to have known better taking their guns, which made a talk, as one might
+well suppose it would. Hunting on a Sabbath day! They did n't mean to
+shoot Myrtle Hazard, did they? it was keenly asked. A good many said it
+was all nonsense, and a mere excuse to get away from meeting and have
+a sort of frolic on pretence that it was a work of necessity and mercy,
+one or both.
+
+While they were scattering themselves about in this way, some in
+earnest, some rejoicing in the unwonted license, lifting off for a
+little while that enormous Sabbath-day pressure which weighs like forty
+atmospheres on every true-born Puritan, two young men had been since
+Friday in search of the lost girl, each following a clue of his own, and
+determined to find her if she was among the living.
+
+Cyprian Eveleth made for the village of Mapleton, where his sister Olive
+was staying, trusting that, with her aid, he might get a clue to the
+mystery of Myrtle's disappearance.
+
+William Murray Bradshaw struck for a railroad train going to the great
+seaport, at a station where it stops for wood and water.
+
+In the mean time, a third young man, Gifted Hopkins by name, son of
+the good woman already mentioned, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and
+wrote those touching stanzas, “The Lost Myrtle,” which were printed in
+the next “Banner and Oracle,” and much admired by many who read them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. ANTECEDENTS.
+
+The Withers Homestead was the oldest mansion in town. It was built on
+the east bank of the river, a little above the curve which gave the name
+to Oxbow Village. It stood on an elevation, its west gable close to the
+river's edge, an old orchard and a small pond at the foot of the slope
+behind it, woods at the east, open to the south, with a great row of
+Lombardy poplars standing guard in front of the house. The Hon. Selah
+Withers, Esq., a descendant of one of the first colonists, built it
+for his own residence, in the early part of the last century. Deeply
+impressed with his importance in the order of things, he had chosen to
+place it a little removed from the cluster of smaller dwellings about
+the Oxbow; and with some vague fancy in his mind of the castles that
+overlook the Rhine and the Danube, he had selected this eminence on
+which to place his substantial gambrel roofed dwelling-house. Long
+afterwards a bay-window, almost a little room of itself, had been thrown
+out of the second story on the west side, so that it looked directly
+down on the river running beneath it. The chamber, thus half suspended
+in the air, had been for years the special apartment of Myrtle Hazard;
+and as the boys paddling about on the river would often catch glimpses,
+through the window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she
+fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name
+which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to
+Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, “The
+Fire-hang-bird's Nest.”
+
+If we would know anything about the persons now living at the Withers
+Homestead, or The Poplars, as it was more commonly called of late years,
+we must take a brief inventory of some of their vital antecedents. It
+is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single
+inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. Nay, there is recorded an
+experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,--to
+be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as it is received
+in evidence, tends to show that some, at least, who have long been dead,
+may enjoy a kind of secondary and imperfect, yet self-conscious life,
+in these bodily tenements which we are in the habit of considering
+exclusively our own. There are many circumstances, familiar to common
+observers, which favor this belief to a certain extent. Thus, at one
+moment we detect the look, at another the tone of voice, at another some
+characteristic movement of this or that ancestor, in our relations or
+others. There are times when our friends do not act like themselves, but
+apparently in obedience to some other law than that of their own proper
+nature. We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us.
+Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. No less than eight
+distinct personalities are said to have coexisted in a single female
+mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable authority. In this
+light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which
+will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: “This body in
+which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a
+private carriage, but an omnibus.”
+
+The ancestry of the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith
+before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some
+points; but the portrait, marked “Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy
+Papists, ano 15..” (figures illegible), was still hanging against
+the panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The
+following words were yet legible on the canvas: “Thou hast made a
+covenant O Lord with mee and my Children forever.”
+
+The story had come down, that Ann Holyoake spoke these words in a prayer
+she offered up at the stake, after the fagots were kindled. There had
+always been a secret feeling in the family, that none of her descendants
+could finally fall from grace, in virtue of this solemn “covenant.”
+
+There had been also a legend in the family, that the martyred woman's
+spirit exercised a kind of supervision over her descendants; that she
+either manifested herself to them, or in some way impressed them, from
+time to time; as in the case of the first pilgrim before he cast his
+lot with the emigrants,--of one Mrs. Winslow, a descendant in the third
+generation, when the Indians were about to attack the settlement where
+she lived,--and of another, just before he was killed at Quebec.
+
+There was a remarkable resemblance between the features of Ann Holyoake,
+as shown in the portrait, and the miniature likeness of Myrtle's mother.
+Myrtle adopted the nearly obsolete superstition more readily on this
+account, and loved to cherish the fancy that the guardian spirit which
+had watched over her ancestors was often near her, and would be with her
+in her time of need.
+
+The wife of Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of
+that delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that “ye
+Parson was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em,” had
+got abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt
+that some odd “manifestations,” as they would be called nowadays, had
+taken place in the household when she was a girl, and that she presented
+many of the conditions belonging to what are at the present day called
+mediums.
+
+Major Gideon Withers, her son, was of the very common type of hearty,
+loud, portly men, who like to show themselves at militia trainings,
+and to hear themselves shout orders at musters, or declaim patriotic
+sentiments at town-meetings and in the General Court. He loved to wear
+a crimson sash and a military cap with a large red feather, in which the
+village folk used to say he looked as “hahnsome as a piny,”--meaning a
+favorite flower of his, which is better spelt peony, and to which it was
+not unnatural that his admirers should compare him.
+
+If he had married a wife like himself, there might probably enough have
+sprung from the alliance a family of moon-faced children, who would
+have dropped into their places like posts into their holes, asking no
+questions of life, contented, like so many other honest folks, with the
+part of supernumeraries in the drama of being, their wardrobe of flesh
+and bones being furnished them gratis, and nothing to do but to walk
+across the stage wearing it. But Major Gideon Withers, for some reason
+or other, married a slender, sensitive, nervous, romantic woman, which
+accounted for the fact that his son David, “King David,” as he was
+called in his time, had a very different set of tastes from his father,
+showing a turn for literature and sentiment in his youth, reading
+Young's “Night Thoughts,” and Thomson's “Seasons,” and sometimes in
+those early days writing verses himself to Celia or to Chloe, which
+sounded just as fine to him as Effie and Minnie sound to young people
+now, as Musidora, as Saccharissa, as Lesbia, as Helena, as Adah and
+Zillah, have all sounded to young people in their time,--ashes of roses
+as they are to us now, and as our endearing Scotch diminutives will be
+to others by and by.
+
+King David Withers, who got his royal prefix partly because he was rich,
+and partly because he wrote hymns occasionally, when he grew too old
+to write love-poems, married the famous beauty before mentioned, Miss
+Judith Pride, and the race came up again in vigor. Their son, Jeremy,
+took for his first wife a delicate, melancholic girl, who matured into a
+sad-eyed woman, and bore him two children, Malachi and Silence.
+
+When she died, he mourned for her bitterly almost a year, and then put
+on a ruffled shirt and went across the river to tell his grief to Miss
+Virginia Wild, there residing. This lady was said to have a few drops of
+genuine aboriginal blood in her veins; and it is certain that her
+cheek had a little of the russet tinge which a Seckel pear shows on its
+warmest cheek when it blushes.--Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a
+knife-blade in its handle, and opens as easily. All the rest followed in
+due order according to Nature's kindly programme.
+
+Captain Charles Hazard, of the ship Orient Pearl, fell desperately in
+love with the daughter of this second wife, married her, and carried her
+to India, where their first and only child was born, and received the
+name of Myrtle, as fitting her cradle in the tropics. So her earliest
+impressions,--it would not be exact to call them recollections,--besides
+the smiles of her father and mother, were of dusky faces, of loose white
+raiment, of waving fans, of breezes perfumed with the sweet exhalations
+of sandal-wood, of gorgeous flowers and glowing fruit, of shady
+verandas, of gliding palanquins, and all the languid luxury of the
+South. The pestilence which has its natural home in India, but has
+journeyed so far from its birth place in these later years, took her
+father and mother away, suddenly, in the very freshness of their early
+maturity. A relation of Myrtle's father, wife of another captain, was
+returning to America on a visit, and the child was sent back, under her
+care, while still a mere infant, to her relatives at the old homestead.
+During the long voyage, the strange mystery of the ocean was wrought
+into her consciousness so deeply, that it seemed to have become a part
+of her being. The waves rocked her, as if the sea had been her mother;
+and, looking over the vessel's side from the arms that held her with
+tender care, she used to watch the play of the waters, until the rhythm
+of their movement became a part of her, almost as much as her own pulse
+and breath.
+
+The instincts and qualities belonging to the ancestral traits which
+predominated in the conflict of mingled lives lay in this child in
+embryo, waiting to come to maturity. It was as when several grafts,
+bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same
+stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her
+father and mother, but all the ancestors who have been mentioned, and
+more or less obscurely many others, came uppermost in their time, before
+the absolute and total result of their several forces had found
+its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an
+individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting,
+some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held
+mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet
+and gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life
+was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own
+free choice siding with one or the other. The formal statement of this
+succession of ripening characteristics need not be repeated, but the
+fact must be borne in mind.
+
+This was the child who was delivered into the hands of Miss Silence
+Withers, her mother's half--sister, keeping house with her brother
+Malachi, a bachelor, already called Old Malachi, though hardly entitled
+by his years to such a venerable prefix. Both these persons had
+inherited the predominant traits of their sad-eyed mother. Malachi,
+the chief heir of the family property, was rich, but felt very poor. He
+owned this fine old estate of some hundreds of acres. He had moneys
+in the bank, shares in various companies, wood-lots in the town; and a
+large tract of Western land, the subject of a lawsuit which seemed as if
+it would never be settled, and kept him always uneasy.
+
+Some said he hoarded gold somewhere about the old house, but nobody knew
+this for a certainty. In spite of his abundant means, he talked much of
+poverty, and kept the household on the narrowest footing of economy.
+One Irishwoman, with a little aid from her husband now and then, did all
+their work; and the only company they saw was Miss Cynthia Badlam, who,
+as a relative, claimed a home with them whenever she was so disposed.
+
+The “little Indian,” as Malachi called her, was an awkward accession to
+the family. Silence Withers knew no more about children and their ways
+and wants than if she had been a female ostrich. Thus it was that she
+found it necessary to send for a woman well known in the place as the
+first friend whose acquaintance many of the little people of the town
+had made in this vale of tears.
+
+Thirty years of practice had taught Nurse Byloe the art of handling the
+young of her species with the soft firmness which one may notice in cats
+with their kittens,--more grandly in a tawny lioness mouthing her cubs.
+Myrtle did not know she was held; she only felt she was lifted, and
+borne up, as a cherub may feel upon a white-woolly cloud, and smiled
+accordingly at the nurse, as if quite at home in her arms.
+
+“As fine a child as ever breathed the breath of life. But where did them
+black eyes come from? Born in Injy,--that 's it, ain't it? No, it's her
+poor mother's eyes to be sure. Does n't it seem as if there was a
+kind of Injin look to 'em? She'll be a lively one to manage, if I know
+anything about childun. See her clinchin' them little fists!”
+
+This was when Miss Silence came near her and brought her rather severe
+countenance close to the child for inspection of its features. The
+ungracious aspect of the woman and the defiant attitude of the child
+prefigured in one brief instant the history of many long coming years.
+
+It was not a great while before the two parties in that wearing conflict
+of alien lives, which is often called education, began to measure
+their strength against each other. The child was bright, observing, of
+restless activity, inquisitively curious, very hard to frighten, and
+with a will which seemed made for mastery, not submission.
+
+The stern spinster to whose care this vigorous life was committed
+was disposed to discharge her duty to the girl faithfully and
+conscientiously; but there were two points in her character and belief
+which had a most important bearing on the manner in which she carried
+out her laudable intentions. First, she was one of that class of human
+beings whose one single engrossing thought is their own welfare,--in the
+next world, it is true, but still their own personal welfare. The Roman
+Church recognizes this class, and provides every form of specific to
+meet their spiritual condition. But in so far as Protestantism
+has thrown out works as a means of insuring future safety, these
+unfortunates are as badly off as nervous patients who have no drops,
+pills, potions, no doctors' rules, to follow. Only tell a poor creature
+what to do, and he or she will do it, and be made easy, were it a
+pilgrimage of a thousand miles, with shoes full of split peas instead of
+boiled ones; but if once assured that doing does no good, the drooping
+Little-faiths are left at leisure to worry about their souls, as
+the other class of weaklings worry about their bodies. The effect
+on character does not seem to be very different in the two classes.
+Metaphysicians may discuss the nature of selfishness at their leisure;
+if to have all her thoughts centring on the one point of her own
+well-being by and by was selfishness, then Silence Withers was supremely
+selfish; and if we are offended with that form of egotism, it is no more
+than ten of the twelve Apostles were, as the reader may see by
+turning to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the twentieth chapter and the
+twenty-fourth verse.
+
+The next practical difficulty was, that she attempted to carry out a
+theory which, whatever might be its success in other cases, did not work
+kindly in the case of Myrtle Hazard, but, on the contrary, developed a
+mighty spirit of antagonism in her nature, which threatened to end in
+utter lawlessness. Miss Silence started from the approved doctrine,
+that all children are radically and utterly wrong in all their motives,
+feelings, thoughts, and deeds, so long as they remain subject to their
+natural instincts. It was by the eradication, and not the education, of
+these instincts, that the character of the human being she was moulding
+was to be determined. The first great preliminary process, so soon
+as the child manifested any evidence of intelligent and persistent
+self-determination, was to break her will.
+
+There is no doubt that this was a legitimate conclusion from the
+teaching of Priest Pemberton, but it required a colder and harder
+nature than his own to carry out many of his dogmas to their practical
+application. He wrought in the pure mathematics, so to speak, of
+theology, and left the working rules to the good sense and good feeling
+of his people.
+
+Miss Silence had been waiting for her opportunity to apply the great
+doctrine, and it came at last in a very trivial way.
+
+“Myrtle does n't want brown bread. Myrtle won't have brown bread. Myrtle
+will have white bread.”
+
+“Myrtle is a wicked child. She will have what Aunt Silence says she
+shall have. She won't have anything but brown bread.”
+
+Thereupon the bright red lip protruded, the hot blood mounted to her
+face, the child untied her little “tire,” got down from the table,
+took up her one forlorn, featureless doll, and went to bed without
+her supper. The next morning the worthy woman thought that hunger and
+reflection would have subdued the rebellious spirit. So there stood
+yesterday's untouched supper waiting for her breakfast. She would not
+taste it, and it became necessary to enforce that extreme penalty of
+the law which had been threatened, but never yet put in execution. Miss
+Silence, in obedience to what she felt to be a painful duty, without any
+passion, but filled with high, inexorable purpose, carried the child up
+to the garret, and, fastening her so that she could not wander about and
+hurt herself, left her to her repentant thoughts, awaiting the moment
+when a plaintive entreaty for liberty and food should announce that the
+evil nature had yielded and the obdurate will was broken.
+
+The garret was an awful place. All the skeleton-like ribs of the roof
+showed in the dim light, naked overhead, and the only floor to be
+trusted consisted of the few boards which bridged the lath and plaster.
+A great, mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,--it was the
+chimney, but it looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into. The
+whole place was festooned with cobwebs,--not light films, such as
+the housewife's broom sweeps away before they have become a permanent
+residence, but vast gray draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with
+yellow powder from the beams where the worms were gnawing day and night,
+the home of old, hairy spiders who had, lived there since they were eggs
+and would leave it for unborn spiders who would grow old and huge like
+themselves in it, long after the human tenants had left the mansion
+for a narrower home. Here this little criminal was imprisoned, six,
+twelve,--tell it not to mothers,--eighteen dreadful hours, hungry until
+she was ready to gnaw her hands, a prey to all childish imaginations;
+and here at her stern guardian's last visit she sat, pallid, chilled,
+almost fainting, but sullen and unsubdued. The Irishwoman, poor stupid
+Kitty Fagan, who had no theory of human nature, saw her over the lean
+shoulders of the spinster, and, forgetting all differences of condition
+and questions of authority, rushed to her with a cry of maternal
+tenderness, and, with a tempest of passionate tears and kisses, bore her
+off to her own humble realm, where the little victorious martyr was fed
+from the best stores of the house, until there was as much danger from
+repletion as there had been from famine. How the experiment might have
+ended but for this empirical and most unphilosophical interference,
+there is no saying; but it settled the point that the rebellious nature
+was not to be subjugated in a brief conflict.
+
+The untamed disposition manifested itself in greater enormities as
+she grew older. At the age of four years she was detected in making a
+cat's-cradle at meeting, during sermon-time, and, on being reprimanded
+for so doing, laughed out loud, so as to be heard by Father Pemberton,
+who thereupon bent his threatening, shaggy brows upon the child, and,
+to his shame be it spoken, had such a sudden uprising of weak, foolish,
+grandfatherly feelings, that a mist came over his eyes, and he left
+out his “ninthly” altogether, thereby spoiling the logical sequence of
+propositions which had kept his large forehead knotty for a week.
+
+At eight years old she fell in love with the high-colored picture of
+Major Gideon Withers in the crimson sash and the red feather of his
+exalted military office. It was then for the first time that her aunt
+Silence remarked a shade of resemblance between the child and the
+portrait. She had always, up to this time, been dressed in sad colors,
+as was fitting, doubtless, for a forlorn orphan; but happening one
+day to see a small negro girl peacocking round in a flaming scarlet
+petticoat, she struck for bright colors in her own apparel, and carried
+her point at last. It was as if a ground-sparrow had changed her gray
+feathers for the burning plumage of some tropical wanderer; and it
+was natural enough that Cyprian Eveleth should have called her the
+fire-hang-bird, and her little chamber the fire-hang-bird's nest,--using
+the country boy's synonyme for the Baltimore oriole.
+
+At ten years old she had one of those great experiences which give new
+meaning to the life of a child.
+
+Her uncle Malachi had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one
+time, but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under
+their influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an
+extravagance. He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more
+and more negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering
+about the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being
+seen flitting from window to window, the story got about that the old
+house was haunted.
+
+One dreary, rainy Friday in November, Myrtle was left alone in the
+house. Her uncle had been gone since the day before. The two women were
+both away at the village. At such times the child took a strange delight
+in exploring all the hiding-places of the old mansion. She had the
+mysterious dwelling-place of so many of the dead and the living all to
+herself. What a fearful kind of pleasure in its silence and loneliness!
+The old clock that Marmaduke Storr made in London more than a hundred
+years ago was clicking the steady pulse-beats of its second century. The
+featured moon on its dial had lifted one eye, as if to watch the child,
+as it had watched so many generations of children, while the
+swinging pendulum ticked them along into youth, maturity, gray hairs,
+deathbeds,--ticking through the prayer at the funeral, ticking without
+grief through all the still or noisy woe of mourning,--ticking without
+joy when the smiles and gayety of comforted heirs had come back again.
+She looked at herself in the tall, bevelled mirror in the best chamber.
+She pulled aside the curtains of the stately bedstead whereon the heads
+of the house had slept until they died and were stretched out upon it,
+and the sheet shaped itself to them in vague, awful breadth of outline,
+like a block of monumental marble the sculptor leaves just hinted by the
+chisel.
+
+She groped her way up to the dim garret, the scene of her memorable
+punishment. A rusty hook projected from one of the joists a little
+higher than a man's head. Something was hanging from it,--an old
+garment, was it? She went bravely up and touched--a cold hand. She
+did what most children of that age would do,--uttered a cry and ran
+downstairs with all her might. She rushed out of the door and called to
+the man Patrick, who was doing some work about the place. What could be
+done was done, but it was too late.
+
+Uncle Malachi had made away with himself. That was plain on the face
+of thing. In due time the coroner's verdict settled it. It was not so
+strange as it seemed; but it made a great talk in the village and all
+the country round about. Everybody knew he had money enough, and yet he
+had hanged himself for fear of starving to death.
+
+For all that, he was found to have left a will, dated some years before,
+leaving his property to his sister Silence, with the exception of a
+certain moderate legacy to be paid in money to Myrtle Hazard when she
+should arrive at the age of twenty years.
+
+The household seemed more chilly than ever after this tragical event.
+Its depressing influence followed the child to school, where she learned
+the common branches of knowledge. It followed her to the Sabbath-day
+catechisings, where she repeated the answers about the federal headship
+of Adam, and her consequent personal responsibilities, and other
+technicalities which are hardly milk for babes, perhaps as well as other
+children, but without any very profound remorse for what she could not
+help, so far as she understood the matter, any more than her sex or
+stature, and with no very clear comprehension of the phrases which the
+New England followers of the Westminster divines made a part of the
+elementary instruction of young people.
+
+At twelve years old she had grown tall and womanly enough to attract the
+eyes of the youth and older boys, several of whom made advances towards
+her acquaintance. But the dreary discipline of the household had sunk
+into her soul, and she had been shaping an internal life for herself,
+which it was hard for friendship to penetrate. Bathsheba Stoker was
+chained to the bedside of an invalid mother. Olive Eveleth, a kind,
+true-hearted girl, belonged to another religious communion; and this
+tended to render their meetings less frequent, though Olive was still
+her nearest friend. Cyprian was himself a little shy, and rather held
+to Myrtle through his sister than by any true intimacy directly with
+herself. Of the other young men of the village Gifted Hopkins was
+perhaps the most fervent of her admirers, as he had repeatedly shown by
+effusions in verse, of which, under the thinnest of disguises, she was
+the object.
+
+William Murray Bradshaw, ten years older than herself, a young man of
+striking aspect and claims to exceptional ability, had kept his eye on
+her of late; but it was generally supposed that he would find a wife
+in the city, where he was in the habit of going to visit a fashionable
+relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place. She, at any rate,
+understood very well that he meant, to use his own phrase, “to go in for
+a corner lot,”--understanding thereby a young lady with possessions and
+without encumbrances. If the old man had only given his money to Myrtle,
+William Murray Bradshaw would have made sure of her; but she was not
+likely ever to get much of it. Miss Silence Withers, it was understood,
+would probably leave her money as the Rev. Mr. Stoker, her spiritual
+director, should indicate, and it seemed likely that most of it would go
+to a rising educational institution where certain given doctrines were
+to be taught through all time, whether disproved or not, and whether
+those who taught them believed them or not, provided only they would say
+they believed them.
+
+Nobody had promised to say masses for her soul if she made this
+disposition of her property, or pledged the word of the Church that she
+should have plenary absolution. But she felt that she would be making
+friends in Influential Quarters by thus laying up her treasure, and that
+she would be safe if she had the good-will of the ministers of her sect.
+
+Myrtle Hazard had nearly reached the age of fourteen, and, though not
+like to inherit much of the family property, was fast growing into a
+large dower of hereditary beauty. Always handsome, her features shaped
+themselves in a finer symmetry, her color grew richer, her figure
+promised a perfect womanly development, and her movements had the grace
+which high-breeding gives the daughter of a queen, and which Nature now
+and then teaches the humblest of village maidens. She could not long
+escape the notice of the lovers and flatterers of beauty, and the time
+of danger was drawing near.
+
+At this period of her life she made two discoveries which changed the
+whole course of her thoughts, and opened for her a new world of ideas
+and possibilities.
+
+Ever since the dreadful event of November, 1854, the garret had been a
+fearful place to think of, and still more to visit. The stories that
+the house was haunted gained in frequency of repetition and detail of
+circumstance. But Myrtle was bold and inquisitive, and explored its
+recesses at such times as she could creep among them undisturbed. Hid
+away close under the eaves she found an old trunk covered with dust and
+cobwebs. The mice had gnawed through its leather hinges, and, as it had
+been hastily stuffed full, the cover had risen, and two or three volumes
+had fallen to the floor. This trunk held the papers and books which her
+great-grandmother, the famous beauty, had left behind her, records of
+the romantic days when she was the belle of the county,--storybooks,
+memoirs, novels, and poems, and not a few love-letters,--a strange
+collection, which, as so often happens with such deposits in old
+families, nobody had cared to meddle with, and nobody had been willing
+to destroy, until at last they had passed out of mind, and waited for a
+new generation to bring them into light again.
+
+The other discovery was of a small hoard of coin. Under one of the
+boards which formed the imperfect flooring of the garret was hidden
+an old leather mitten. Instead of a hand, it had a fat fist of silver
+dollars, and a thumb of gold half-eagles.
+
+Thus knowledge and power found their way to the simple and secluded
+maiden. The books were hers to read as much as any other's; the gold and
+silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by
+and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of
+the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and,
+without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and did eat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. BYLES GRIDLEY, A. M.
+
+The old Master of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment
+as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in
+procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
+solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
+categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement,
+the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
+high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
+calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
+impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
+that gave him a very decided individuality.
+
+He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
+room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
+collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
+from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during
+his long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
+controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
+and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
+represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
+useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
+library, in short; for a library gathered like his is a looking-glass in
+which the owner's mind is reflected.
+
+The common people about the village did not know what to make of such
+a phenomenon. He did not preach, marry, christen, or bury, like the
+ministers, nor jog around with medicines for sick folks, nor carry cases
+into court for quarrelsome neighbors. What was he good for? Not a great
+deal, some of the wiseacres thought,--had “all sorts of sense but common
+sense,”--“smart mahn, but not prahctical.” There were others who read
+him more shrewdly. He knowed more, they said, than all the ministers put
+together, and if he'd stan' for Ripresentative they 'd like to vote for
+him,--they hed n't hed a smart mahn in the Gineral Court sence Squire
+Wibird was thar.
+
+They may have overdone the matter in comparing his knowledge with that
+of all the ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar
+in his special line of study,--as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or
+they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr.
+Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the
+bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they
+gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most of his
+abilities.
+
+In his capacity of schoolmaster he had sharpened his wits against those
+of the lively city boys he had in charge, and made such a reputation
+as “Master” Gridley, that he kept that title even after he had become
+a college tutor and professor. As a tutor he had to deal with many
+of these same boys, and others like them, in the still more vivacious
+period of their early college life. He got rid of his police duties when
+he became a professor, but he still studied the pupils as carefully as
+he used once to watch them, and learned to read character with a skill
+which might have fitted him for governing men instead of adolescents.
+But he loved quiet and he dreaded mingling with the brawlers of the
+market-place, whose stock in trade is a voice and a vocabulary. So
+it was that he had passed his life in the patient mechanical labor
+of instruction, leaving too many of his instincts and faculties in
+abeyance.
+
+The alluvium of all this experience bore a nearer resemblance to worldly
+wisdom than might have been conjectured; much nearer, indeed, than it
+does in many old instructors, whose eyes get fish-like as their blood
+grows cold, and who are not fit to be trusted with anything more
+practical than a gerund or a cosine. Master Gridley not only knew a good
+deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself
+upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies
+of young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very
+confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled
+observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the
+personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him
+in any way, he was like to see into them at least as quickly as any of
+his neighbors who thought themselves most endowed with practical skill.
+
+In leaving the duties of his office he considered himself, as he said
+a little despondently, like an old horse unharnessed and turned out to
+pasture. He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and
+was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be
+numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a
+place where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful
+resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the
+sun lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their
+many-colored counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest.
+It sometimes came over him painfully that he was never more to be of any
+importance to his fellow-creatures. There was nobody living to whom he
+was connected by any very near ties. He felt kindly enough to the good
+woman in whose house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel
+to her son; he was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed
+with great consideration to the Rev. Dr. Pemberton; and he studied with
+no small interest the physiognomy of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker,
+to whose sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a
+nostril dilating with ominous intensity of meaning. But he said sadly to
+himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show
+for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his
+Lord.
+
+He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would
+hold of small significance. Though he had mourned for no lost love,
+at least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang
+of parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and
+griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn
+filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes. He was the father of a dead
+book.
+
+Why “Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A. M.,” had not met
+with an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating
+public, it would take us too long to inquire in detail. Indeed; he
+himself was never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things
+which his bookseller's account made evident to him. He had read and
+re-read his work; and the more familiar he became with it, the less was
+he able to understand the singular want of popular appreciation of what
+he could not help recognizing as its excellences. He had a special copy
+of his work, printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to
+read in this, as people read over the letters of friends who have long
+been dead; and it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed
+from the ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have
+been heard. “That's a thought, now, for you!--See Mr. Thomas Babington
+Macaulay's Essay printed six years after thus book.” “A felicitous
+image! and so everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had
+hit upon it.” “If this is not genuine pathos, where will you find it, I
+should like to know? And nobody to open the book where it stands written
+but one poor old man--in this generation, at least--in this generation!”
+ It may be doubted whether he would ever have loved his book with such
+jealous fondness if it had gone through a dozen editions, and everybody
+was quoting it to his face. But now it lived only for him; and to him it
+was wife and child, parent, friend, all in one, as Hector was all in all
+to his spouse. He never tired of it, and in his more sanguine moods he
+looked forward to the time when the world would acknowledge its merits,
+and his genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more
+than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers
+has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only
+in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of us, dear
+fellow-writer.
+
+It followed from the way in which he lived that he must have some means
+of support upon which he could depend. He was economical, if not over
+frugal in some of his habits; but he bought books, and took newspapers
+and reviews, and had money when money was needed; the fact being, though
+it was not generally known, that a distant relative had not long before
+died, leaving him a very comfortable property.
+
+His money matters had led him to have occasional dealings with the late
+legal firm of Wibird and Penhallow, which had naturally passed into
+the hands of the new partnership, Penhallow and Bradshaw. He had entire
+confidence in the senior partner, but not so much in the young man who
+had been recently associated in the business.
+
+Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was
+the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his
+calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.
+Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent
+good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a
+sharp-cut mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest
+reference to the real condition of his feeling at the moment. This was
+a great convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at
+the small expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as
+winking, and deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and
+carefully enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch
+maker would call a detached movement.
+
+He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as
+by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the
+Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him
+with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he
+were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of
+contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him,
+none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so
+full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on
+to his liking, that few could resist his fascination. He had a way of
+talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were
+the one matter in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly
+trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a
+juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by
+his voluble discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk
+he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an
+interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which
+he would ship the belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight
+pulley. It was done so easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign
+of it. Master Gridley could usually detect the shifting action, but the
+young man's features and voice never betrayed him.
+
+He was a favorite with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as
+he well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in
+such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished
+to please. He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life: he was
+not handicapped with any burdensome ideals. He took everything at its
+marked value. He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for
+to-day, like the broker's list of prices.
+
+His whole plan of life was laid out. He knew that law was the best
+introduction to political life, and he meant to use it for this end.
+He chose to begin his career in the country, so as to feel his way more
+surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of
+burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its
+grass might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed,
+slow-witted graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who
+sit scheming by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps
+and candles are out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every strong
+and every weak point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid
+down on his charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those
+of a navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
+city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
+list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
+provided always that their position and prospects were such as would
+make them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
+William Murray Bradshaw.
+
+Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
+resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
+him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
+after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
+a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him,
+the more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in
+talking with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity,
+and he had found out that under his good-natured manner there often
+lurked some design more or less worth noting, and which might involve
+other interests deserving protection.
+
+For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced
+a certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
+about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
+of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
+kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey,
+her relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
+unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by
+the good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
+creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
+he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a
+decided interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human
+and social sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for
+want of their natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which
+had never lost their life. His liking for the twins may have been an
+illustration of that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay
+down, namely, that at a certain period of life, say from fifty to
+sixty and upward, the grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the
+rhythms of Nature reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions;
+so that when men marry late they love their autumn child with a twofold
+affection,--father's and grandfather's both in one.
+
+However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was
+beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such
+as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books
+and his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in
+for a share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to
+and from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her
+apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind
+of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk
+with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be,
+in talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in
+antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.
+
+“Love will reach her by and by,” he said, “in spite of the dragons up at
+the den yonder.
+
+    “'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat
+     Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'”
+
+But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it
+dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back
+brought about by the system of repression under which she had been
+educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet
+he was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he
+might be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would
+want his help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons,
+and sure to be assailed by foes from without and from within.
+
+He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with
+Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the
+young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some
+special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he
+determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him
+talking.
+
+So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.
+
+“It was a demonish hard case,” he said, “that old Malachi had left
+his money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl
+about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty
+fast. If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The
+doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making
+it. If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure
+enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited
+that property--whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old
+Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,--even chance
+whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker,
+and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to
+take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?”
+
+“Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
+Stoker?” said Mr. Gridley, smiling.
+
+“Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my
+fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot
+into--the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with
+very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that
+business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints--and sinners.
+That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I
+rather guess!”
+
+The old professor smiled again. “So you don't think he believes all the
+mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr. Bradshaw?”
+
+“No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described
+somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe
+when diluted,--about one fifth to four fifths lies,--as the oxygen of
+the air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'”
+
+Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own
+sayings in “Thoughts on the Universe.” But the young man quoted it
+without seeming to suspect its authorship.
+
+“Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?”
+
+“I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good
+things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em. Sounds
+like Coleridge.”
+
+“That's what I call a compliment worth having,” said Byles Gridley to
+himself, when he got home. “Let me look at that passage.”
+
+He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and got so much interested,
+reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell,
+and Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to
+tea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE TWINS.
+
+Miss Suzan Posey knocked timidly at his door and informed him that tea
+was waiting. He rather liked Susan Posey. She was a pretty creature,
+slight, blonde, a little too light, a village beauty of the second or
+third grade, effective at picnics and by moonlight,--the kind of girl
+that very young men are apt to remember as their first love. She had a
+taste for poetry, and an admiration of poets; but, what was better, she
+was modest and simple, and a perfect sister and mother and grandmother
+to the two little forlorn twins who had been stranded on the Widow
+Hopkins's doorstep.
+
+These little twins, a boy and girl, were now between two and three years
+old. A few words will make us acquainted with them. Nothing had ever
+been known of their origin. The sharp eyes of all the spinsters had
+been through every household in the village and neighborhood, and not
+a suspicion fixed itself on any one. It was a dark night when they were
+left; and it was probable that they had been brought from another town,
+as the sound of wheels had been heard close to the door where they were
+found, had stopped for a moment, then been heard again, and lost in the
+distance.
+
+How the good woman of the house took them in and kept them has been
+briefly mentioned. At first nobody thought they would live a day, such
+little absurd attempts at humanity did they seem. But the young doctor
+came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool,
+and the room heated up to keep them warm, and baby-teaspoonfuls of milk
+given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of
+opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did
+not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to
+go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty
+oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is
+reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.
+
+As it was not very likely that the parents who left their offspring
+round on doorsteps were of saintly life, they were not presented for
+baptism like the children of church-members. Still, they must have names
+to be known by, and Mrs. Hopkins was much exercised in the matter. Like
+many New England parents, she had a decided taste for names that were
+significant and sonorous. That which she had chosen for her oldest
+child, the young poet, was either a remarkable prophecy, or it had
+brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her
+own more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had
+given the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, Wealthy
+Amadora.
+
+As for them poor little creturs, she said, she believed they was rained
+down out o' the skies, jest as they say toads and tadpoles come. She
+meant to be a mother to 'em for all that, and give 'em jest as good
+names as if they was the governor's children, or the minister's. If Mr.
+Gridley would be so good as to find her some kind of a real handsome
+Chris'n name for 'em, she'd provide 'em with the other one. Hopkinses
+they shall be bred and taught, and Hopkinses they shall be called. Ef
+their father and mother was ashamed to own 'em, she was n't. Couldn't
+Mr. Gridley pick out some pooty sounding names from some of them great
+books of his. It's jest as well to have 'em pooty as long as they don't
+cost any more than if they was Tom and Sally.
+
+A grim smile passed over the rugged features of Byles Gridley. “Nothing
+is easier than that, Mrs. Hopkins,” he said. “I will give you two very
+pretty names that I think will please you and other folks. They're new
+names, too. If they shouldn't like to keep them, they can change them
+before they're christened, if they ever are. Isosceles will be just the
+name for the boy, and I'm sure you won't find a prettier name for the
+girl in a hurry than Helminthia.”
+
+Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with the dignity and novelty of these two
+names, which were forthwith adopted. As they were rather long for common
+use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy
+and Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive
+mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at
+a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.
+
+This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles
+Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by
+Miss Susan Posey.
+
+“I am coming, my dear,” he said,--which expression quite touched Miss
+Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from
+the delicious page he was reading. It was not the living child that was
+kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial
+use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.
+
+Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his
+eye was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of
+papers. Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him.
+Could that be a copy of “Thoughts on the Universe”? He watched his
+opportunity, and got a hurried sight of the volume. His own treatise,
+sure enough! Leaves Uncut. Opened of itself to the one hundred and
+twentieth page. The axiom Murray Bradshaw had quoted--he did not
+remember from what,--“sounded like Coleridge”--was staring him in the
+face from that very page. When he remembered how he had pleased himself
+with that compliment the other day, he blushed like a school-girl; and
+then, thinking out the whole trick,--to hunt up his forgotten book, pick
+out a phrase or two from it, and play on his weakness with it, to win
+his good opinion,--for what purpose he did not know, but doubtless to
+use him in some way,--he grinned with a contempt about equally divided
+between himself and the young schemer.
+
+“Ah ha!” he muttered scornfully. “Sounds like Coleridge, hey? Niccolo
+Macchiavelli Bradshaw!”
+
+From this day forward he looked on all the young lawyer's doings with
+even more suspicion than before. Yet he would not forego his company and
+conversation; for he was very agreeable and amusing to study; and this
+trick he had played him was, after all, only a diplomatist's way of
+flattering his brother plenipotentiary. Who could say? Some time or
+other he might cajole England or France or Russia into a treaty with
+just such a trick. Shallower men than he had gone out as ministers of
+the great Republic. At any rate, the fellow was worth watching.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE USE OF SPECTACLES.
+
+The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he
+lived for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it;
+and sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady
+and her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One
+thing was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that
+Mr. Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people
+see with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what
+she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been
+sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion;
+but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was
+like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their
+stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?
+
+Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs.
+Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so
+simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all
+there is in it,--not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it.
+It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and
+other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was
+nothing but this: Mr. Byles Gridley wore a pair of formidable spectacles
+with large round glasses. He had often noticed the reflection of objects
+behind him when they caught their images at certain angles, and had got
+the habit of very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the
+other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put
+a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter
+lead to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow
+Hopkins.
+
+A short time before Myrtle Hazard's disappearance, Mr. Byles Gridley had
+occasion to call again at the office of Penhallow and Bradshaw on some
+small matter of business of his own. There were papers to look over, and
+he put on his great round-glassed spectacles. He and Mr. Penhallow sat
+down at the table, and Mr. Bradshaw was at a desk behind them. After
+sitting for a while, Mr. Penhallow seemed to remember something he had
+meant to attend to, for he said all at once: “Excuse me, Mr. Gridley.
+Mr. Bradshaw, if you are not busy, I wish you would look over this
+bundle of papers. They look like old receipted bills and memoranda of no
+particular use; but they came from the garret of the Withers place, and
+might possibly have something that would be of value. Look them over,
+will you, and see whether there is anything there worth saving.”
+
+The young man took the papers, and Mr. Penhallow sat down again at the
+table with Mr. Byles Gridley.
+
+This last-named gentleman felt just then a strong impulse to observe
+the operations of Murray Bradshaw. He could not have given any very good
+reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.
+
+“I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once
+more,” said he. “Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you,
+Mr. Penhallow?”
+
+Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find
+it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were
+just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting
+there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his
+movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the
+shelves before him,--all this time appearing as if he were intent upon
+his own reading.
+
+The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.
+He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a
+careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when
+he had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking
+what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.
+Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found
+something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if
+he was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently
+deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded
+like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way
+that Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon
+it, and noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried
+glance at the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran
+it over with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself.
+With another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were
+observed or like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down
+from the shelves. In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was,
+which he had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very
+silent and as it were stealthy way back in its place. He then gave a
+look at each of the other papers, and said to his partner: “Old bills,
+old leases, and insurance policies that have run out. Malachi seems to
+have kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it.”
+
+“That 's the way with the old misers, always,” said Mr. Penhallow.
+
+Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,--or
+pretending to read it. He took off his spectacles.
+
+“We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow.” Then
+turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,
+
+   “'Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
+     Quaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
+     Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat'
+
+“You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?”
+
+While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly
+as if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man
+steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion. His old habits as a
+teacher made that easy.
+
+Murray Bradshaw's face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on
+his cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of
+excitement.
+
+“Something is going on inside there,” the old man said to himself. He
+waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up
+and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone,
+Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library.
+There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,--the
+fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound in parchment, and thus
+readily distinguishable at a glance from all the books round it. Now
+Mr. Penhallow was not much of a Latin scholar, and knew and cared
+very little about the civil law. He had fallen in with this book at
+an auction, and bought it to place in his shelves with the other
+“properties” of the office, because it would look respectable. Anything
+shut up in one of those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without
+Mr. Penhallow's disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course
+the young man knew it too.
+
+We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in
+the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's
+zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we
+are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's
+cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the
+benefit of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side
+of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it
+back and took a copy of “Fearne on Contingent Remainders,” and looked at
+that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing
+to do. Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the
+shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf
+in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down
+the second volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis, turned the leaves over
+mechanically, as if in search of some title, and replaced it.
+
+He looked round for a moment. Mr. Penhallow was writing hard at his
+table, not thinking of him, it was plain enough. He laid his hand on the
+FIRST volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis. There was a document shut up
+in it. His hand was on the book, whether taking it out or putting
+it back was not evident, when the door opened and Mr. William Murray
+Bradshaw entered.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Gridley,” he said, “you are not studying the civil law, are
+you?” He strode towards him as he spoke, his face white, his eyes fixed
+fiercely on him.
+
+“It always interests me, Mr. Bradshaw,” he answered, “and this is a fine
+edition of it. One may find a great many valuable things in the Corpus
+Juris Civilis.”
+
+He looked impenetrable, and whether or not he had seen more than Mr.
+Bradshaw wished him to see, that gentleman could not tell. But there
+stood the two books in their place, and when, after Master Gridley had
+gone, he looked in the first volume, there was the document he had shut
+up in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. MYRTLE'S LETTER--THE YOUNG MEN'S PURSUIT.
+
+“You know all about it, Olive?” Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister,
+after a brief word of greeting.
+
+“Know of what, Cyprian?”
+
+“Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,--gone!--gone
+nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find
+her?”
+
+Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that
+moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of
+the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years.
+When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,--that was
+all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a
+wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just
+such a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why
+could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,--what shall we do
+now, and as it is?--that is the question.
+
+“Has she left no letter,--no explanation of her leaving in this way?”
+
+“Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.”
+
+“Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I
+think we shall.”
+
+Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled
+her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and
+read as here follows:
+
+MY DEAREST OLIVE:--Think no evil of me for what I have done. The
+fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird
+is flown.
+
+I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the
+life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and
+you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to
+you.
+
+You know where I was born,--under a hot sun and in the midst of strange,
+lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again:
+my heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get
+there,--the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that
+my river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is
+pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only
+fifteen,--a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be
+a child, what is it to be a woman?
+
+I love you dearly,--and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine.
+I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,--yes, and the old man that has
+spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you
+pain,--to leave you all,--but my way of life is killing me, and I am too
+young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that
+I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all
+the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.
+
+I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember
+how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into
+Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in
+our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches
+over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come
+over here when it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others
+of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange dream at any
+rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place.
+Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed
+like an angel's warning.
+
+Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday,
+you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they
+will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt
+Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates
+me, I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry hard. Tell her perhaps I
+shall come back by and by. There is a little box in my room, with some
+keepsakes marked,--one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to the right
+ones. Yours is with them.
+
+Good-by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday. And if you
+never see me again, remember how much I loved you. Never think hardly
+of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how much
+misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl's life. God be
+with you!
+
+MYRTLE HAZARD.
+
+
+Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian.
+“Her secret is as safe with you as with me,” she said. “But this is
+madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.
+
+“What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and
+sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked her. There is
+no time to be lost. She shall not go out into the world in this way,
+child that she is. No; she shall come back, and make her home with us,
+if she cannot be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a cheerful
+home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too,
+Cyprian. But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you
+may find her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him
+your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister. Then
+give her the note I will write, and say I know your heart, Cyprian, and
+I can trust that to tell you what to say.”
+
+In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston. But
+another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.
+
+Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious
+observation of the young lawyer's proceedings at the office, Murray
+Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions
+and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars
+to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal
+of talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had
+wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to
+establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to
+care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him
+quite as much as Olive's brother as for any personal reason. But he
+carefully studied Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so
+that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman,
+and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more
+intimate acquaintance.
+
+Thus, she corresponded with a friend of her mother's in India. She
+talked at times as if it were her ideal home, and showed many tastes
+which might well be vestiges of early Oriental impressions. She made
+herself a rude hammock,--such as are often used in hot climates,--and
+swung it between two elms. Here she would lie in the hot summer days,
+and fan herself with the sandal-wood fan her friend in India had sent
+her,--the perfume of which, the women said, seemed to throw her into
+day-dreams, which were almost like trances.
+
+These circumstances gave a general direction to his ideas, which were
+presently fixed more exactly by two circumstances which he learned for
+himself and kept to himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry,
+and yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away if he could
+help it.
+
+The first fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper
+they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been
+cut out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and
+found that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that
+the A 1 Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for
+Calcutta, on the 20th of June.
+
+The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little
+hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some
+threads of long, black, glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood.
+They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a
+tragedy out of this trivial circumstance,--how she had cast herself
+from the window into the waters beneath it,--how she had been thrust out
+after a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful
+witness,--and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to guess and wonder.
+He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger,
+and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had
+been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a
+mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window.
+Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To
+disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.
+
+The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded
+that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour
+the woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from
+which she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he
+thought on the whole most probable.
+
+Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch
+the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the
+missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive
+inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
+Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had
+attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black
+hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his
+fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,--had he seen anybody answering
+to some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not
+noticed,--was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,--might
+have had such a young man aboard,--there was two or three students one
+day in the car singing college songs,--he did n't care how folks looked
+if they had their tickets ready,--and minded their own business,--and,
+so saying, he poked a young man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was
+reclining with that delightful abandon which the railroad train seems to
+provoke in lovely woman,--“Fare!”
+
+It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, overcrowded hotel, where
+they do not know you, looking dusty, and for the moment shabby, with
+nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, feeling tired, and anything but
+clean, and hungry, and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and
+to undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the office, who,
+while he shoves the book round to you for your name, is making a hasty
+calculation as to how high up he can venture to doom you. But Murray
+Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the
+air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw
+that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book,
+spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,--
+
+“Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n'scarpetbag'n'showhimupt'thirtyone!”
+
+When Cyprian Eveleth reached the same hotel late at night, he appeared
+in his best clothes and with a new valise; but his amiable countenance
+and gentle voice and modest manner sent him up two stories higher, where
+he found himself in a room not much better than a garret, feeling lonely
+enough, for he did not know he had an acquaintance in the same house.
+The two young men were in and out so irregularly that it was not very
+strange that they did not happen to meet each other.
+
+The young lawyer was far more likely to find Myrtle if she were in the
+city than the other, even with the help of his cousin Edward. He was not
+only older, but sharper, better acquainted with the city and its ways,
+and, whatever might be the strength of Cyprian's motives, his own were
+of such intensity that he thought of nothing else by day, and dreamed
+of nothing else by night. He went to work, therefore, in the most
+systematic manner. He first visited the ship Swordfish, lying at her
+wharf, saw her captain, and satisfied himself that as yet nobody at all
+corresponding to the description of Myrtle Hazard had been seen by any
+person on board. He visited all the wharves, inquiring on every vessel
+where it seemed possible she might have been looking about. Hotels,
+thoroughfares, every place where he might hear of her or meet her, were
+all searched. He took some of the police into his confidence, and had
+half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own opened pretty widely, to
+discover the lost girl.
+
+On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged him to think
+he was on the trail of his fugitive. He had gone down again to the wharf
+where the Swordfish, advertised to sail the next day, was lying.
+The captain was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he
+addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of hearing
+anything important, but determined to lose no chance, however small.
+He was startled with a piece of information which gave him such an
+exquisite pang of delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of
+his demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of Myrtle Hazard
+in her probable disguise had been that morning on board the Swordfish,
+making many inquires as to the hour at which she was to sail, and who
+were to be the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all
+over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and saying he
+should return to-morrow before she sailed,--doubtless intending to take
+passage in her, as there was plenty of room on board. There could be
+little question, from the description, who this young person was. It was
+a rather delicate--looking, dark--haired youth, smooth-faced, somewhat
+shy and bashful in his ways, and evidently excited and nervous. He
+had apparently been to look about him, and would come back at the last
+moment, just as the vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be
+beyond the reach of inquiry.
+
+Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to his chamber,
+summoned all his faculties in state council to determine what course he
+should follow, now that he had the object of his search certainly within
+reaching distance. There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the
+grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood face to face with
+her. She must not go,--that was fixed. If she once got off in that ship,
+she might be safe enough; but what would become of certain projects in
+which he was interested,--that was the question. But again, she was no
+child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery, or by any such
+threats as common truants would find sufficient to scare them back to
+their duty. He could tell the facts of her disguise and the manner of
+her leaving home to the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send
+her ashore as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this
+would only make her furious with him; and he must not alienate her from
+himself, at any rate. He might plead with her in the name of duty,
+for the sake of her friends, for the good name of the family. She had
+thought all these things over before she ran away. What if he should
+address her as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity
+him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to the very worst,
+offer to follow her wherever she went, if she would accept him in the
+only relation that would render it possible. Fifteen years old,--he
+nearly ten years older,--but such things had happened before, and this
+was no time to stand on trifles.
+
+He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have
+reasoned out the probabilities in a law case he was undertaking.
+
+1. He would rather risk that than lose all hold upon her. The girl was
+handsome enough for his ambitious future, wherever it might carry him.
+She came of an honorable family, and had the great advantage of being
+free from a tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback
+on many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations were to be
+joined other circumstances which we need not here mention, of a nature
+to add greatly to their force, and which would go far of themselves to
+determine his action.
+
+2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary
+proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne looked upon the advances
+of Richard. She would be startled, perhaps shocked. What then? She could
+not help feeling flattered at such an offer from him,--him, William
+Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at her feet, his
+eyes melting with the love he would throw into them, his tones subdued
+to their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his
+lips which every day beguile women older and more discreet than this
+romantic, long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise
+was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as
+she chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing
+his power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his
+very confidence was a strong promise of success.
+
+3. In case all his entreaties, arguments, and offers made no impression,
+should he make use of that supreme resource, not to be employed save
+in extreme need, but which was of a nature, in his opinion, to shake a
+resolution stronger than this young girl was like to oppose to it? That
+would be like Christian's coming to his weapon called All-prayer, he
+said to himself, with a smile that his early readings of Bunyan should
+have furnished him an image for so different an occasion. The question
+was one he could not settle till the time came,--he must leave it to the
+instinct of the moment.
+
+The next morning found him early waking after a night of feverish
+dreams. He dressed himself with more than usual care, and walked down to
+the wharf where the Swordfish was moored. The ship had left the wharf,
+and was lying out in the stream: A small boat had just reached her,
+and a slender youth, as he appeared at that distance, climbed, not
+over-adroitly, up the vessel's side.
+
+Murray Bradshaw called to a boatman near by and ordered the man to row
+him over as fast as he could to the vessel lying in the stream. He had
+no sooner reached the deck of the Swordfish than he asked for the young
+person who had just been put on board.
+
+“He is in the cabin, sir, just gone down with the captain,” was the
+reply.
+
+His heart beat, in spite of his cool temperament, as he went down the
+steps leading to the cabin. The young person was talking earnestly with
+the captain, and, on his turning round, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had
+the pleasure of recognizing his young friend, Mr. Cyprian Eveleth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. DOWN THE RIVER.
+
+Look at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which
+is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral,
+which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden
+springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber
+of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the
+hand that shall try to hasten the process will only spoil the blossom
+which would have expanded in symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers
+of morning.
+
+We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the flower in dealing with
+young souls, and especially with the souls of young girls, which, from
+their organization and conditions, require more careful treatment than
+those of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach themselves
+for not having enforced their own convictions on their children in the
+face of every inborn antagonism they encountered. Let them not be too
+severe in their self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter
+has sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature would have opened
+kindly enough if it had only been trusted to the sweet influences
+of morning sunshine. In such cases it may be that the state we call
+insanity is not always an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of
+something worse, the wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned, but
+subject to the perpetual interferences of another mind governed by
+laws alien and hostile to its own. Insanity may perhaps be the only
+palliative left to Nature in this extremity. But before she comes to
+that, she has many expedients. The mind does not know what diet it
+can feed on until it has been brought to the starvation point. Its
+experience is like that of those who have been long drifting about
+on rafts or in long-boats. There is nothing out of which it will not
+contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note, long held captive for
+a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason
+to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by
+throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then
+hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until he had found
+it.
+
+Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have
+been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence,
+which in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not
+made a special provision for her mental welfare. She was in that arid
+household as the prophet in the land where there was no dew nor rain
+for these long years. But as he had the brook Cherith, and the bread and
+flesh in the morning and the bread and flesh in the evening which the
+ravens brought him, so she had the river and her secret store of books.
+
+The river was light and life and music and companionship to her. She
+learned to row herself about upon it, to swim boldly in it, for it had
+sheltered nooks but a little way above The Poplars. But there was more
+than that in it,--it was infinitely sympathetic. A river is strangely
+like a human soul. It has its dark and bright days, its troubles from
+within, and its disturbances from without. It often runs over ragged
+rocks with a smooth surface, and is vexed with ripples as it slides over
+sands that are level as a floor. It betrays its various moods by aspects
+which are the commonplaces of poetry, as smiles and dimples and wrinkles
+and frowns. Its face is full of winking eyes, when the scattering
+rain-drops first fall upon it, and it scowls back at the storm-cloud, as
+with knitted brows, when the winds are let loose. It talks, too, in its
+own simple dialect, murmuring, as it were, with busy lips all the way
+to the ocean, as children seeking the mother's breast and impatient of
+delay. Prisoners who know what a flower or an insect has been to them
+in their solitary cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds
+in studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of their
+sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the lonely, imaginative
+creature who used to sit looking into its depths, hour after hour, from
+the airy height of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest.
+
+Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which had given to the
+river the aspect of something more than a friend and a companion. It
+appeared all at once as a Deliverer. Did not its waters lead, after long
+wanderings, to the great highway of the world, and open to her the gates
+of those cities from which she could take her departure unchallenged
+towards the lands of the morning or of the sunset? Often, after a
+freshet, she had seen a child's miniature boat floating down on its side
+past her window, and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook
+flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain in the distance.
+So she now began to follow down the stream the airy shallop that held
+her bright fancies. These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows
+of an enchanted fountain,--the books of adventure, the romances, the
+stories which fortune had placed in her hands,--the same over which the
+heart of the Pride of the County had throbbed in the last century, and
+on the pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still be
+seen.
+
+The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement was chiefly
+of a religious character, and, however interesting and valuable to those
+to whom it was adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its
+fitness for her special conditions. Of what use was it to offer books
+like the “Saint's Rest” to a child whose idea of happiness was in
+perpetual activity? She read “Pilgrim's Progress,” it is true, with
+great delight. She liked the idea of travelling with a pack on one's
+back, the odd shows at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the
+adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which
+was Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for
+the allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck
+of wheat through a bushel measure with the bottom out, without touching.
+
+But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden treasury threw
+the “Pilgrim's Progress” quite into the shade. It was the story of
+a youth who ran away and lived on an island,--one Crusoe,--a homely
+narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures.
+There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson,
+the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a
+portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A
+virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and
+raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of
+them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of
+her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons
+find less entertaining than the “Vicar of Wakefield,” with which it is
+nowadays so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the
+Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing
+forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning
+valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and
+the long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her
+sleeping and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy
+Valley. Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted
+that she selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing
+to the contrary.
+
+There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over
+her constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before
+her disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to
+her growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and
+coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy
+of a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but
+now she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still
+clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
+up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed
+and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the
+sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a
+tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether
+in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often
+been her lullaby,--a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have
+sung.
+
+“You are getting to look like your father,” Aunt Silence said one day;
+“I never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major
+Gideon Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor
+Charles,--or at any rate, that you may be prepared.”
+
+It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world
+at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and
+said, “Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place
+as you say it is?”
+
+“I'm afraid you are not fit for a better.”
+
+She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for
+heaven.
+
+For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been
+an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent
+resident. Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest
+for her soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without
+waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers
+to use for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and
+admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by
+imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be
+over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.
+
+Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,--her own responsibility, and
+the dreadful consequences which would follow to her, Silence, if Myrtle
+should in any way go wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup
+d'etat by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining power
+was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of education had been a
+series of feeble efforts followed by plaintive wails over their utter
+want of success. The face she turned upon the young girl in her solemn
+expostulations looked as if it were inscribed with the epitaphs of hope
+and virtue. Her utterances were pitched in such a forlorn tone, that
+the little bird in his cage, who always began twittering at the sound of
+Myrtle's voice, would stop in his song, and cock his head with a look of
+inquiry full of pathos, as if he wanted to know what was the matter, and
+whether he could do anything to help.
+
+The specialty of Cynthia Badlam was to point out all the dangerous and
+unpardonable trangressions into which young people generally, and this
+young person in particular, were likely to run, to hold up examples of
+those who had fallen into evil ways and come to an evil end, to present
+the most exalted standard of ascetic virtue to the lively girl's
+apprehension, leading her naturally to the conclusion that a bright
+example of excellence stood before her in the irreproachable relative
+who addressed her. Especially with regard to the allurements which the
+world offers to the young and inexperienced female, Miss Cynthia Badlam
+was severe and eloquent. Sometimes poor Myrtle would stare, not seeing
+the meaning of her wise caution, sometimes look at Miss Cynthia with a
+feeling that there was something about her that was false and forced,
+that she had nothing in common with young people, that she had no pity
+for them, only hatred of their sins, whatever these might be,--a hatred
+which seemed to extend to those sources of frequent temptation, youth
+and beauty, as if they were in themselves objectionable.
+
+Both the lone women at The Poplars were gifted with a thin vein of
+music. They gave it expression in psalmody, of course, in which Myrtle,
+who was a natural singer, was expected to bear her part. This would have
+been pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful
+or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a
+love for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste
+of the harmonies of a better world to come. But there is a fondness
+for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants
+of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild,
+implacable “Marseillaise,” and to the favorite tunes of low--spirited
+Christian pessimists. That mournful “China,” which one of our most
+agreeable story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair
+itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter
+misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself,
+and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going
+to die,--for she fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those most
+dismal ululations.
+
+On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her disappearance,
+Myrtle strolled off by the river shore, along its lonely banks, and came
+home with her hands full of leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked
+at them as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of frivolity
+on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that she did not inhale their
+faint fragrance with a certain pleasure, and feel their beauty as none
+whose souls are not wholly shriveled and hardened can help doing, but
+the world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was only by a
+momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved to smile at anything.
+
+Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the habit of crushing
+everything for its moral, until it lost its sweetness and grew almost
+odious, as flower-de-luces do when handled roughly. “There's a worm in
+that leaf, Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself
+from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it is so young and
+fresh. There is a worm in every young soul, Myrtle.”
+
+“But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia. Look,” she said,
+“all these are open, and you can see all over and under them, and there
+is nothing there. Are there never any worms in the leaves after they get
+old and yellow, Miss Cynthia?”
+
+That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen, but perhaps
+she was not so absolutely simple as one might have thought.
+
+It was on the evening of this same day that they were sitting together.
+The sweet season was opening, and it seemed as if the whispering of the
+leaves, the voices of the birds, the softness of the air, the young life
+stirring in everything, called on all creatures to join the universal
+chorus of praise that was going up around them.
+
+“What shall we sing this evening?” said Miss Silence.
+
+“Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence,” said Miss
+Cynthia. “It is Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare
+our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath.”
+
+She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this
+nineteenth century.
+
+“Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a
+tune as any to sing it to.”
+
+The trio began,--
+
+         “With holy fear, and humble song,”
+
+and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the
+second verse:
+
+         “Far in the deep where darkness dwells,
+          The land of horror and despair,
+          Justice has built a dismal hell,
+          And laid her stores of vengeance there.”
+
+Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly
+kept up her part with proper spirit.
+
+“Sing out, Myrtle,” said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third
+verse:
+
+         “Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
+          Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
+          And darts t' inflict immortal pains,
+          Dyed in the blood of damned souls.”
+
+This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while
+it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of
+anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.
+
+“I won't sing such words,” she said, “and I won't stay here to hear them
+sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not
+going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel
+hymn-book!”
+
+She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt
+proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the
+holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her--and had simply irritated
+her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not
+penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her
+character, to her life itself.
+
+Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to
+her hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into
+the stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming,
+almost maddening thought that came over her,--the impulse to fling
+herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these
+dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought
+afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief
+moment, and the paroxysm--just such a paroxysm as throws many a young
+girl into the Thames or the Seine--passed away. She remained looking, in
+a misty dream, into the water far below. Its murmur recalled the whisper
+of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into
+that strange, half--remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and
+dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and
+tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair
+woman,--was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who
+was to her less a recollection than a dream?
+
+Could it have been this vision that soothed her, so that she unclasped
+her hands and lifted her bowed head as if she had heard a voice
+whispering to her from that unknown world where she felt there was a
+spirit watching over her? At any rate, her face was never more serene
+than when she went to meeting with the two maiden ladies on the
+following day, Sunday, and heard the Rev. Mr. Stoker preach a sermon
+from Luke vii. 48, which made both the women shed tears, but especially
+so excited Miss Cynthia that she was in a kind of half-hysteric
+condition all the rest of the day.
+
+After that Myrtle was quieter and more docile than ever before. Could it
+be, Miss Silence thought, that the Rev. Mr. Stoker's sermon had touched
+her hard heart? However that was, she did not once wear the stormy look
+with which she had often met the complaining remonstrances Miss Silence
+constantly directed against all the spontaneous movements of the
+youthful and naturally vivacious subject of her discipline.
+
+June is an uncertain month, as everybody knows, and there were frosts
+in many parts of New England in the June of 1859. But there were also
+beautiful days and nights, and the sun was warm enough to be fast
+ripening the strawberries,--also certain plans which had been in flower
+some little time. Some preparations had been going on in a quiet way, so
+that at the right moment a decisive movement could be made. Myrtle knew
+how to use her needle, and always had a dexterous way of shaping
+any article of dress or ornament,--a natural gift not very rare, but
+sometimes very needful, as it was now.
+
+On the morning of the 15th of June she was wandering by the shores of
+the river, some distance above The Poplars, when a boat came drifting
+along by her, evidently broken loose from its fastenings farther up
+the stream. It was common for such waifs to show themselves after heavy
+rains had swollen the river. They might have run the gauntlet of nobody
+could tell how many farms, and perhaps passed by half a dozen towns
+and villages in the night, so that, if of common, cheap make, they were
+retained without scruple, by any who might find them, until the owner
+called for them, if he cared to take the trouble.
+
+Myrtle took a knife from her pocket, cut down a long, slender sapling,
+and coaxed the boat to the side of the bank. A pair of old oars lay
+in the bottom of the boat; she took one of these and paddled it into
+a little cove, where it could lie hid among the thick alders. Then
+she went home and busied herself about various little matters more
+interesting to her than to us.
+
+She was never more amiable and gracious than on this day. But she looked
+often at the clock, as they remembered afterwards, and studied over
+a copy of the Farmer's Almanac which was lying in the kitchen, with a
+somewhat singular interest. The days were nearly at their longest, the
+weather was mild, the night promised to be clear and bright.
+
+The household was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual early hour.
+When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her lamp, stood before her mirror,
+and untied the string that bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which
+fell in its abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.
+
+She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed it with a strong
+pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction of every wandering curl,
+until she stood so changed by the loss of that outward glory of her
+womanhood, that she felt as if she had lost herself and found a brother
+she had never seen before.
+
+“Good-by, Myrtle!” she said, and, opening her window very gently, she
+flung the shining tresses upon the running water, and watched them for a
+few moments as they floated down the stream. Then she dressed herself in
+the character of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in
+which she had placed what she chose to carry with her, stole softly
+down-stairs, and let herself out of a window on the lower floor,
+shutting it very carefully so as to be sure that nobody should be
+disturbed.
+
+She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she might be seen
+by some curious wanderer, and reached the cove where the boat she had
+concealed was lying. She got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled
+herself into the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that
+it seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes of the oar.
+The lights were not all out in the village, and she trembled lest she
+should see the figure of some watcher looking from the windows in
+sight of which she would have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat
+stealing along at so late an hour might give the clue to the secret of
+her disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied in the
+course of the next day.
+
+Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house lay so still, so
+peaceful,--it would wake to such dismay! The boat slid along beneath her
+own overhanging chamber.
+
+“No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!” she said. So she
+floated by the slumbering village, the flow of the river carrying her
+steadily on, and the careful strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her
+flight.
+
+At last she came to the “Broad Meadows,” and knew that she was alone,
+and felt confident that she had got away unseen. There was nothing,
+absolutely nothing, to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came
+from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got together at different
+times in such a manner as to lead to no suspicion, and not a human being
+ever had the slightest hint that she had planned and meant to carry out
+the enterprise which she had now so fortunately begun.
+
+Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the
+meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading
+far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of
+wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last,
+she drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all
+around her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath
+her. The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy
+reaches. No living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay
+about her. She had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.
+
+She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her
+strong, sweet voice burst into song,--the song of the Jewish maiden when
+she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which
+we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,
+
+    “Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
+     Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!”
+
+The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort
+mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside
+“China,” already mentioned, were “Bangor,” which the worthy old New
+England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city
+called after it, and “Windsor,” and “Funeral Hymn.” But Myrtle was in no
+mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in “Balerma,” and “Arlington,”
+ and “Silver Street,” and at last in that most riotous of devotional
+hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a
+cellar under his chapel,--“Jordan.” So she let her wild spirits run
+loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself
+into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of “Dundee.” And again
+she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the
+wooded region through which the river winds after leaving the “Broad
+Meadows.”
+
+The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty
+was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that
+wonderful June night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as
+if all the jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky.
+The voices of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like
+the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft,
+tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of
+the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then
+came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh
+cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or
+musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered
+off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were
+just coming into bloom,--the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer
+sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like
+those, to float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of
+showy wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed
+upon them. The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the
+stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet
+odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out
+of the tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with
+their faint, mingled suggestions.
+
+By and by the banks of the river grew lower and marshy, and in place of
+the larger forest-trees which had covered them stood slender tamaracks,
+sickly, mossy, looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out
+of their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from
+their spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp out of the
+hiding-places among their dark recesses. The country people about here
+called this region the “Witches' Hollow,” and had many stories about
+the strange things that happened there. The Indians used to hold their
+“powwows,” or magical incantations, upon a broad mound which rose out of
+the common level, and where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark
+grove, which served them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were
+many legends of more recent date connected with this spot, some of them
+hard to account for, and no superstitious or highly imaginative person
+would have cared to pass through it alone in the dead of the night, as
+this young girl was doing.
+
+She knew nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her own singular
+experiences in this enchanted region were certainly not suggested by
+anything she had heard, and may be considered psychologically curious by
+those who would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to them.
+We are at liberty to report many things without attempting to explain
+them, or committing ourselves to anything beyond the fact that so they
+were told us. The reader will find Myrtle's “Vision,” as written out at
+a later period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.
+
+The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away as possible from
+the village she had left, before morning. But the boat, like all craft
+on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing
+it out, before she was ready for another long effort. The old tin
+measure, which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the
+boat, and her task was a tedious one. At last she got it in good trim,
+and sat down to her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long
+as her strength would hold out.
+
+Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends
+where the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the
+opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped
+islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern,
+looking down,--their shape solving the navigator's problem of least
+resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering
+villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young
+plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of
+stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the
+fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty
+of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of
+open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain
+light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.
+Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her
+oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She
+rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of
+herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur,
+so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own
+breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as
+if it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the
+lullaby of her fair young mother.
+
+So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding
+river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and
+the low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept,
+dreaming of the murmuring ocean.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT.
+
+“A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June
+15, 1859. Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections.
+
+“The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told
+since, Witches' Hollow. I had never been there before, and did not know
+that it was called so, or anything about it.
+
+“The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of
+hill or mound that rose out of the low meadows. I saw a burning cross
+lying on the slope of that mound. It burned with a pale greenish light,
+and did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I
+was in moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing.
+
+“I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking
+at this cross. I think my eyes were open when I saw these other
+appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake.
+
+“I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures
+moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were
+outside of myself.
+
+“The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as
+if without any effort. They made many gestures, and seemed to speak,
+but I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in
+some other way.
+
+“I knew the faces of some of these figures. They were the same I have
+seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where
+I was brought up, called The Poplars. I saw my father and my mother as
+they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father
+and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great
+while ago. All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had
+been dead the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows,
+so that the oldest was like one's breath of a frosty morning, but shaped
+like the living figure.
+
+“There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be
+moving as if they were saying, Breath! Breath! Breath! I thought they
+wanted to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I
+seemed to see as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like
+a sponge that has water pressed out of it.
+
+“Presently it seemed to me that I returned to myself, and then those
+others became part of me by being taken up, one by one, and so lost in
+my own life.
+
+“My father and mother came up, hand in hand, looking more real than any
+of the rest. Their figures vanished, and they seemed to have become a
+part of me; for I felt all at once the longing to live over the life
+they had led, on the sea and in strange countries.
+
+“Another figure was just like the one we called the Major, who was a
+very strong, hearty-looking man, and who is said to have drank hard
+sometimes, though there is nothing about it on his tombstone, which I
+used to read in the graveyard. It seemed to me that there was something
+about his life that I did not want to make a part of mine, but that
+there was some right he had in me through my being of his blood, and
+so his health and his strength went all through me, and I was always
+to have what was left of his life in that shadow-like shape, forming a
+portion of mine.
+
+“So in the same way with the shape answering to the portrait of that
+famous beauty who was the wife of my great-grandfather, and used to be
+called the Pride of the County.
+
+“And so too with another figure which had the face of that portrait
+marked on the back, Ruth Bradford, who married one of my ancestors, and
+was before the court, as I have heard, in the time of the witchcraft
+trials.
+
+“There was with the rest a dark, wild-looking woman, with a head-dress
+of feathers. She kept as it were in shadow, but I saw something of my
+own features in her face.
+
+“It was on my mind very strongly that the shape of that woman of our
+blood who was burned long ago by the Papists came very close to me, and
+was in some way made one with mine, and that I feel her presence with me
+since, as if she lived again in me; but not always,--only at times,--and
+then I feel borne up as if I could do anything in the world. I had a
+feeling as if she were my guardian and protector.
+
+“It seems to me that these, and more, whom I have not mentioned, do
+really live over some part of their past lives in my life. I do not
+understand it all, and perhaps it can be accounted for in some way I
+have not thought of. I write it down as nearly as I can give it from
+memory, by request, and if it is printed at this time had rather have
+all the real names withheld.
+
+“MYRTLE HAZARD.”
+
+
+NOTE BY THE FRIEND.
+
+“This statement must be accounted for in some way, or pass into the
+category of the supernatural. Probably it was one of those intuitions,
+with objective projection, which sometimes come to imaginative young
+persons, especially girls, in certain exalted nervous conditions. The
+study of the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history
+of the persons they represented, and the consciousness of instincts
+inherited in all probability from these same ancestors, formed the basis
+of Myrtle's 'Vision.' The lives of our progenitors are, as we know,
+reproduced in different proportions in ourselves. Whether they as
+individuals have any consciousness of it, is another matter. It is
+possible that they do get a second as it were fractional life in us. It
+might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle
+for the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that
+we grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two
+or more are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be
+understood, of a special personality of our own, about which these
+others are grouped. Independently of any possible scientific value,
+this 'Vision' serves to illustrate the above-mentioned fact of common
+experience, which is not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.
+
+“How much it may be granted to certain young persons to see, not in
+virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through those direct channels
+which worldly wisdom may possibly close to the luminous influx, each
+reader must determine for himself by his own standards of faith and
+evidence.
+
+“One statement of the narrative admits of a simple natural explanation,
+which does not allow the lovers of the marvellous to class it with the
+quasi-miraculous appearance seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in
+full by Dr. Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier.
+Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers must have seen
+for themselves. The country people are familiar with the sight of it in
+wild timber-land, and have given it the name of 'Fox-fire.' Two trunks
+of trees in this state, lying across each other, will account for the
+fact observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl's story without
+requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence outside of natural
+laws.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY RECEIVES A LETTER, AND BEGINS HIS ANSWER.
+
+It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank,
+after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that
+nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young
+people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his
+desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read. It was
+written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed
+like a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts. The
+letter was as follows:
+
+OXBOW VILLAGE, June 13, 1859.
+
+MY DEAREST CLEMENT,--You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit
+of a letter,--only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits
+as you used to be. I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but
+no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so
+ambitious! I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a
+great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale
+and lean with thinking so hard. You won't grow pale and lean, I hope;
+for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always
+had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you
+will have to work so very hard to do something great,--you have so much
+genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little
+trouble. You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I
+sent you? Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening
+without stopping! I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,--he is a very
+talented person. I cut out this little piece about him from the paper
+on purpose to show you,--for genius loves genius,--and you would like to
+hear him read his own poetry,--he reads it beautifully. Please send this
+piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under
+his autograph:--
+
+“Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of
+the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his
+head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers
+of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is
+destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters.”
+
+Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was. She is very proud
+of her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes. I
+believe she cries over them every time she reads them. You don't know
+how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to
+you about before. Poor little creatures,--what a cruel thing it was in
+their father and mother not to take care of them! What do you think? Old
+bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and
+castles for them with his big books! “The world's coming to an end,”
+ Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so. He looks so savage with
+that scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in
+general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little
+things come anywhere near him. But he seems to be growing kind to all of
+us and everybody. I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day.
+You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don't you? Myrtle Hazard her name
+is. I wish you could see her. I don't know as I do, though. You would
+want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know. She is so handsome
+that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting. Some
+say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older
+than she is. She is nothing but a girl, though she looks as if she was
+eighteen. She lives up at a place called The Poplars, with an old woman
+that is her aunt or something, and nobody seems to be much acquainted
+with her except Olive Eveleth, who is the minister's daughter at Saint
+Bartholomew's Church. She never has beauxs round her, as some young
+girls do--they say that she is not happy with her aunt and another
+woman that stays with her, and that is the reason she keeps so much to
+herself. The minister came to see me the other day,--Mr. Stoker his name
+is. I was all alone, and it frightened me, for he looks, oh, so solemn
+on Sundays! But he called me “My dear,” and did n't say anything horrid,
+you know, about my being such a dreadful, dreadful sinner, as I have
+heard of his saying to some people,--but he looked very kindly at me,
+and took my hand, and laid his hand on my shoulder like a brother, and
+hoped I would come and see him in his study. I suppose I must go, but I
+don't want to. I don't seem to like him exactly.
+
+I hope you love me as well as ever you did. I can't help feeling
+sometimes as if you was growing away from me,--you know what I
+mean,--getting to be too great a person for such a small person as I am.
+
+I know I can't always understand you when you talk about art, and that
+you know a great deal too much for such a simple girl as I am. Oh, if I
+thought I could never make you happy!... There, now! I am almost ashamed
+to send this paper so spotted. Gifted Hopkins wrote some beautiful
+verses one day on “A Maiden Weeping.” He compared the tears falling from
+her eyes to the drops of dew which one often sees upon the flowers in
+the morning. Is n't it a pretty thought?
+
+I wish I loved art as well as I do poetry; but I am afraid I have not so
+much taste as some girls have. You remember how I liked that picture in
+the illustrated magazine, and you said it was horrid. I have been afraid
+since to like almost anything, for fear you should tell me some time or
+other it was horrid. Don't you think I shall ever learn to know what is
+nice from what is n't?
+
+Oh, dear Clement, I wish you would do one thing to please me. Don't say
+no, for you can do everything you try to,--I am sure you can. I want you
+to write me some poetry,--just three or four little verses TO SUZIE. Oh,
+I should feel so proud to have some lines written all on purpose for me.
+Mr. Hopkins wrote some the other day, and printed them in the paper, “To
+M----e.” I believe he meant them for Myrtle,--the first and last letter
+of her name, you see, “M” and “e.”
+
+Your letter was a dear one, only so short! I wish you would tell me
+all about what you are doing at Alderbank. Have you made that model of
+Innocence that is to have my forehead, and hair parted like mine! Make
+it pretty, do, that is a darling.
+
+Now don't make a face at my letter. It is n't a very good one, I know;
+but your poor little Susie does the best she can, and she loves you so
+much!
+
+Now do be nice and write me one little bit of a mite of a poem,--it will
+make me just as happy!
+
+I am very well, and as happy as I can be when you are away.
+
+Your affectionate SUSIE.
+
+(Directed to Mr. Clement Lindsay, Alderbank.)
+
+The envelope of this letter was unbroken, as was before said, when
+the young man took it from his desk. He did not tear it with the hot
+impatience of some lovers, but cut it open neatly, slowly, one would say
+sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a
+certain tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his
+forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning
+red.
+
+This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He
+was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious
+taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his
+commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of
+thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim
+that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,--the
+strange, divine, dread gift of genius.
+
+This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable
+of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and
+strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but
+trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his
+window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift
+torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak
+and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the
+queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors!
+The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped
+to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest
+possession of manhood,--liberty,--and this bauble was to be his lifelong
+reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle
+and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon
+of loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,--he
+had grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with
+him, and surely he could not reproach her with that.
+
+“No,” he said to himself, “I will never leave her so long as her heart
+clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit.
+And if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she
+cannot share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more
+than all exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of
+mine is to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for
+these divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with
+one more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could
+kindle my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as
+well as feet to creep by my side upon the earth,--what cannot such a
+woman do for a man!
+
+“What! cast away the flower I took in the bud because it does not show
+as I hoped it would when it opened? I will stand by my word; I will be
+all as a man that I promised as a boy. Thank God, she is true and
+pure and sweet. My nest will be a peaceful one; but I must take wing
+alone,--alone.”
+
+He drew one long sigh, and the cloud passed from his countenance. He
+must answer that letter now, at once. There were reasons, he thought,
+which made it important. And so, with the cheerfulness which it was
+kind and becoming to show, so far as possible, and yet with a little
+excitement on one particular point, which was the cause of his writing
+so promptly, he began his answer.
+
+ALDERBANK, Thursday morning, June 16, 1859.
+
+MY DEAR SUSIE,--I have just been reading your pleasant letter; and if
+I do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a
+little bit of advice, which will do just as well,--won't it, my dear?
+I was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow
+Village. I am very glad you find young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a
+friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the
+village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and
+tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of
+writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen
+it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental,
+and frivolous,--perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much
+of his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can
+write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his
+benefit, dear, and you must skilfully apply it.
+
+Now about yourself. My dear Susie, there was something in your letter
+that did not please me. You speak of a visit from the Rev. Mr. Stoker,
+and of his kind, brotherly treatment, his cordiality of behavior, and
+his asking you to visit him in his study. I am very glad to hear you say
+that you “don't seem to like him.” He is very familiar, it seems to me,
+for so new an acquaintance. What business had he to be laying his hand
+on your shoulder? I should like to see him try these free-and-easy ways
+in my presence! He would not have taken that liberty, my dear! No, he
+was alone with you, and thought it safe to be disrespectfully familiar.
+I want you to maintain your dignity always with such persons, and I beg
+you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend
+goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must
+speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister
+has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some
+mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would
+have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life
+are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that
+you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to
+any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in
+your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the
+subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that
+relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which--
+
+     HELP!  HELP!  HELP!
+
+A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the
+direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart,
+and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber
+window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank
+of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a
+little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.
+
+Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which
+break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift,
+and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought
+and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in
+a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits,
+plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into
+the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.
+
+A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock
+which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded
+a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support
+a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it,
+but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.
+
+A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the
+fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth
+of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat
+dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go
+over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive
+if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to
+shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at
+least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was
+settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down
+the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same
+fatal plunge.
+
+There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank,
+flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap
+into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked
+nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock,
+thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat
+until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet
+upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He
+seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and
+with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its
+second doomed passenger.
+
+There was but an instant for thought.
+
+“Sit still,” he said, “and, just as we go over, put your arms round me
+under mine, and don't let go for your life!”
+
+He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought
+the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest,
+and would plunge them into the deepest pool.
+
+“Hold your breath! God save us! Now!”
+
+They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of
+the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.
+
+A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as
+the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a
+mighty, awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of
+water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into
+the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and
+swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful
+need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing.
+
+The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load
+of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned
+crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a
+one as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many
+seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough,
+as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in
+memory--Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and,
+taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of
+the boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few
+strokes brought him to the shore, dragging his senseless burden with
+him.
+
+He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the
+slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the
+grass. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck,
+he tore open the checked shirt--
+
+The story of Myrtle Hazard's sex was told; but she was deaf to his cry
+of surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps,
+to save her,--not too late to try to save her, at least!
+
+He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his
+own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping,
+doubting, despairing,--once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost
+ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her
+eyes wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life.
+
+He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa,
+and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and
+lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words,
+
+“He is gone.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY FINISHES HIS LETTER--WHAT CAME OF IT.
+
+The first thing Clement Lindsay did, when he was fairly himself again,
+was to finish his letter to Susan Posey. He took it up where it left
+off, “with an affection which----” and drew a long dash, as above. It
+was with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got
+an ugly blow on the forehead, and his eyes were “in mourning,” as the
+gentlemen of the ring say, with unbecoming levity.
+
+“An adventure! Just as I was writing these last words, I heard the
+cry of a young person, as it sounded, for help. I ran to the river and
+jumped in, and had the pleasure of saving a life. I got some bruises
+which have laid me up for a day or two; but I am getting over them very
+well now, and you need not worry about me at all. I will write again
+soon; so pray do not fret yourself, for I have had no hurt that will
+trouble me for any time.”
+
+Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart
+would break. Oh dear! Oh dear! what should she do! He was almost killed,
+she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. Oh dear! Oh dear!
+She would go and see him, there!--she must and would. He would die, she
+knew he would,--and so on.
+
+It was a singular testimony to the evident presence of a human element
+in Mr. Bytes Gridley that the poor girl, on her extreme trouble, should
+think of him as a counsellor. But the wonderful relenting kind of look
+on his grave features as he watched the little twins tumbling about his
+great books, and certain marks of real sympathy he had sometimes shown
+for her in her lesser woes, encouraged her, and she went straight to his
+study, letter in hand. She gave a timid knock at the door of that awful
+sanctuary.
+
+“Come in, Susan Posey,” was its answer, in a pleasant tone. The old
+master knew her light step and the maidenly touch of her small hand on
+the panel.
+
+What a sight! 'there were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol
+which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible
+Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the
+most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum
+at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would
+certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door
+opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants'
+eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.
+
+She almost forgot her errand, grave as it was, in astonishment at this
+manifestation. The old man had emptied his shelves of half their folios
+to build up the fort, in the midst of which he had seated the two
+delighted and uproarious babes. There was his Cave's “Historia
+Literaria,” and Sir Walter Raleigh's “History of the World,” and a whole
+array of Christian Fathers, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Stanley's book
+of Philosophers, with Effigies, and the Junta Galen, and the Hippocrates
+of Foesius, and Walton's Polyglot, supported by Father Sanchez on one
+side and Fox's “Acts and Monuments” on the other,--an odd collection, as
+folios from lower shelves are apt to be.
+
+The besieger discharged his sugar-plum, which was so well aimed that
+it fell directly into the lap of Minthy, who acted with it as if the
+garrison had been on short rations for some time.
+
+He saw at once, on looking up, that there was trouble. “What now, Susan
+Posey, my dear?”
+
+“O Mr. Gridley, I am in such trouble! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
+
+She turned back the name and the bottom of the letter in such a way
+that Mr. Gridley could read nothing but the few lines relating their
+adventure.
+
+“So Mr. Clement Lindsay has been saving a life, has he, and got some
+hard knocks doing it, hey, Susan Posey? Well, well, Clement Lindsay is a
+brave fellow, and there is no need of hiding his name, my child. Let
+me take the letter again a moment, Susan Posey. What is the date of it?
+June 16th. Yes,--yes,--yes!”
+
+He read the paragraph over again, and the signature too, if he wanted
+to; for poor Susan had found that her secret was hardly opaque to those
+round spectacles and the eyes behind them, and, with a not unbecoming
+blush, opened the fold of the letter before she handed it back.
+
+“No, no, Susan Posey. He will come all right. His writing is steady, and
+if he had broken any bones he would have mentioned it. It's a thing his
+wife will be proud of, if he is ever married, Susan Posey,” (blushes,)
+“and his children too,” (more blushes running up to her back hair,) “and
+there 's nothing to be worried about. But I'll tell you what, my dear,
+I've got a little business that calls me down the river tomorrow, and
+I shouldn't mind stopping an hour at Alderbank and seeing how our young
+friend Clement Lindsay is; and then, if he was going to have a long
+time of it, why we could manage it somehow that any friend who had
+any special interest in him could visit him, just to while away the
+tiresomeness of being sick. That's it, exactly. I'll stop at Alderbank,
+Susan Posey. Just clear up these two children for me, will you, my dear?
+Isosceles, come now,--that 's a good child. Helminthia, carry these
+sugar-plums down--stairs for me, and take good care of them, mind!”
+
+It was a case of gross bribery and corruption, for the fortress was
+immediately, evacuated on the receipt of a large paper of red and white
+comfits, and the garrison marched down--stairs much like conquerors,
+under the lead of the young lady, who was greatly eased in mind by the
+kind words and the promise of Mr. Byles Gridley.
+
+But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. “A
+young person,” he said to himself,--“why a young person? Why not say a
+boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?--'June
+16th, Thursday morning!'--About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I
+should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made
+a raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got
+shipwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the
+river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate.”
+
+On Saturday morning, therefore, Mr. Byles Gridley set forth to procure
+a conveyance to make a visit, as he said, down the river, and perhaps be
+gone a day or two. He went to a stable in the village, and asked if they
+could let him have a horse.
+
+The man looked at him with that air of native superiority which the
+companionship of the generous steed confers on all his associates, down
+to the lightest weight among the jockeys.
+
+“Wal, I hain't got nothin' in the shape of a h'oss, Mr. Gridley. I've
+got a mare I s'pose I could let y' have.”
+
+“Oh, very well,” said the old master, with a twinkle in his eye as sly
+as the other's wink,--he had parried a few jokes in his time,--“they
+charge half-price for mares always, I believe.”
+
+That was a new view of the subject. It rather took the wind out of the
+stable-keeper, and set a most ammoniacal fellow, who stood playing with
+a currycomb, grinning at his expense. But he rallied presently.
+
+“Wal, I b'lieve they do for some mares, when they let 'em to some folks;
+but this here ain't one o' them mares, and you ain't one o' them folks.
+All my cattle's out but this critter, 'n' I don't jestly want to
+have nobody drive her that ain't pretty car'ful,--she's faast, I tell
+ye,--don't want no whip.--How fur d' d y' want t' go?”
+
+Mr. Gridley was quite serious now, and let the man know that he wanted
+the mare and a light covered wagon, at once, to be gone for one or two
+days, and would waive the question of sex in the matter of payment.
+
+Alderbank was about twenty miles down the river by the road. On arriving
+there, he inquired for the house where a Mr. Lindsay lived. There was
+only one Lindsay family in town,--he must mean Dr. William Lindsay. His
+house was up there a little way above the village, lying a few rods back
+from the river.
+
+He found the house without difficulty, and knocked at the door. A
+motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if
+to ask him to speak and move softly.
+
+“Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?”
+
+“He is staying here for the present. He is a nephew of ours. He is in
+his bed from an injury.”
+
+“Nothing very serious, I hope?”
+
+“A bruise on his head,--not very bad, but the doctor was afraid of
+erysipelas. Seems to be doing well enough now.”
+
+“Is there a young person here, a stranger?”
+
+“There is such a young person here. Do you come with any authority to
+make inquiries?”
+
+“I do. A young friend of mine is missing, and I thought it possible I
+might learn something here about it. Can I see this young person?”
+
+The matron came nearer to Byles Gridley, and said: “This person is a
+young woman disguised as a boy. She was rescued by my nephew at the risk
+of his life, and she has been delirious ever since she has recovered
+her consciousness. She was almost too far gone to be resuscitated,
+but Clement put his mouth to hers and kept her breathing until her own
+breath returned and she gradually came to.”
+
+“Is she violent in her delirium?”
+
+“Not now. No; she is quiet enough, but wandering,--wants to know where
+she is, and whose the strange faces are,--mine and my husband's,--that
+'s Dr. Lindsay,--and one of my daughters, who has watched with her.”
+
+“If that is so, I think I had better see her. If she is the person I
+suspect her to be, she will know me; and a familiar face may bring back
+her recollections and put a stop to her wanderings. If she does not know
+me, I will not stay talking with her. I think she will, if she is the
+one I am seeking after. There is no harm in trying.”
+
+Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at the old man. There was no
+mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice
+was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just
+what a scholar's should be,--old, not untidy, a little shiny at the
+elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the
+cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come
+to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had
+moulded itself to a broad, noble head, that held nothing but what was
+true and fair, with a few harmless crotchets just to fill in with, and
+it seemed to know it.
+
+The good woman gave him her confidence at once. “Is the person you are
+seeking a niece or other relative of yours?”
+
+(Why did not she ask if the girl was his daughter? What is that look of
+paternity and of maternity which observing and experienced mothers and
+old nurses know so well in men and in women?)
+
+“No, she is not a relative. But I am acting for those who are.”
+
+“Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right.”
+
+She returned presently. “Follow me softly, if you please. She is
+asleep,--so beautiful,--so innocent!”
+
+Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years
+old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks
+of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary
+venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but
+accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked
+upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against
+a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face
+act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a
+brief stand against this invasion. “A weakness,--a weakness!” he said to
+himself. “What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty
+years! Poor child! poor child!--Excuse me, madam,” he said, after a
+little interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal
+might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking
+upon such a face,--so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent
+suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling
+in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a
+slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry
+escaped from them,--how heart-breaking when there is none to answer
+it,--“Mother!”
+
+Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to
+that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was
+answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the
+embrace of caressing arms!
+
+“It is better to wake her,” Mrs. Lindsay said; “she is having a troubled
+dream. Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you.”
+
+She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead. Myrtle opened her
+eyes, but they were vacant as yet.
+
+“Are we dead?” she said. “Where am I? This is n't heaven--there are
+no angels--Oh, no, no, no! don't send me to the other place--fifteen
+years,--only fifteen years old--no father, no mother--nobody loved
+me. Was it wicked in me to live?” Her whole theological training was
+condensed in that last brief question.
+
+The old man took her hand and looked her in the face, with a wonderful
+tenderness in his squared features. “Wicked to live, my dear? No
+indeed! Here! look at me, my child; don't you know your old friend Byles
+Gridley?”
+
+She was awake now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a
+natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything
+that had happened since Thursday morning.
+
+“Where is the boat I was in?” she said. “I have just been in the water,
+and I was dreaming that I was drowned. Oh! Mr. Gridley, is that you? Did
+you pull me out of the water?”
+
+“No, my dear, but you are out of it, and safe and sound: that is the
+main point. How do you feel now you are awake?”
+
+She yawned, and stretched her arms and looked round, but did not answer
+at first. This was all natural, and a sign that she was coming right.
+She looked down at her dress. It was not inappropriate to her sex, being
+a loose gown that belonged to one of the girls in the house.
+
+“I feel pretty well,” she answered, “but a little confused. My boat will
+be gone, if you don't run and stop it now. How did you get me into dry
+clothes so quick?”
+
+Master Byles Gridley found himself suddenly possessed by a large and
+luminous idea of the state of things, and made up his mind in a moment
+as to what he must do. There was no time to be lost. Every day, every
+hour, of Myrtle's absence was not only a source of anxiety and a cause
+of useless searching but it gave room for inventive fancies to imagine
+evil. It was better to run some risk of injury to health, than to have
+her absence prolonged another day.
+
+“Has this adventure been told about in the village, Mrs. Lindsay?”
+
+“No, we thought it best to wait until she could tell her own story,
+expecting her return to consciousness every hour, and thinking there
+might be some reason for her disguise which it would be kinder to keep
+quiet about.”
+
+“You know nothing about her, then?”
+
+“Not a word. It was a great question whether to tell the story and make
+inquiries; but she was safe, and could hardly bear disturbance, and, my
+dear sir, it seemed too probable that there was some sad story behind
+this escape in disguise, and that the poor child might need shelter and
+retirement. We meant to do as well as we could for her.”
+
+“All right, Mrs. Lindsay. You do not know who she is, then?”
+
+“No, sir, and perhaps it is as well that I should not know. Then I shall
+not have to answer any questions about it.”
+
+“Very good, madam,--just as it should be. And your family, are they as
+discreet as yourself?”
+
+“Not one word of the whole story has been or will be told by any one of
+us. That was agreed upon among us.”
+
+“Now then, madam. My name, as you heard me say, is Byles Gridley. Your
+husband will know it, perhaps; at any rate I will wait until he comes
+back. This child is of good family and of good name. I know her well,
+and mean, with your kind help, to save her from the consequences which
+her foolish adventure might have brought upon her. Before the bells ring
+for meeting to-morrow morning this girl must be in her bed at her home,
+at Oxbow Village, and we must keep her story to ourselves as far as may
+be. It will all blow over, if we do. The gossips will only know that she
+was upset in the river and cared for by some good people,--good people
+and sensible people too, Mrs. Lindsay. And now I want to see the young
+man that rescued my friend here,--Clement Lindsay, I have heard his name
+before.”
+
+Clement was not a beauty for the moment, but Master Gridley saw well
+enough that he was a young man of the right kind. He knew them at sight,
+fellows with lime enough in their bones and iron enough in their blood
+to begin with,--shapely, large-nerved, firm-fibred and fine-fibred, with
+well-spread bases to their heads for the ground-floor of the faculties,
+and well-vaulted arches for the upper range of apprehensions and
+combinations. “Plenty of basements,” he used to say, “without attics
+and skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough
+below.” But here was “a three-story brain,” he said to himself as he
+looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in
+our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty,
+but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and
+sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the “heft” of a baby the
+moment she fixed her old eyes on it.
+
+Clement was well acquainted with Byles Gridley, though he had never seen
+him, for Susan's letters had had a good deal to say about him of late.
+It was agreed between them that the story should be kept as quiet
+as possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her
+deliverer,--it might save awkward complications. It was not likely
+that she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so
+disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon die out.
+
+The effect of the violent shock she had experienced was to change the
+whole nature of Myrtle for the time. Her mind was unsettled: she
+could hardly recall anything except the plunge over the fall. She was
+perfectly docile and plastic,--was ready to go anywhere Mr. Gridley
+wanted her to go, without any sign of reluctance. And so it was agreed
+that he should carry her back in his covered wagon that very night. All
+possible arrangements were made to render her journey comfortable. The
+fast mare had to trot very gently, and the old master would stop and
+adjust the pillows from time to time, and administer the restoratives
+which the physician had got ready, all as naturally and easily as if he
+had been bred a nurse, vastly to his own surprise, and with not a little
+gain to his self-appreciation. He was a serviceable kind of body on
+occasion, after all, was he not, hey, Mr. Byles Gridley? he said to
+himself.
+
+At half past four o'clock on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the
+stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars, and roused the slumbering
+household to receive back the wanderer.
+
+It was the Irishwoman, Kitty Fagan, huddled together in such amorphous
+guise, that she looked as if she had been fitted in a tempest of
+petticoats and a whirlwind of old shawls, who presented herself at the
+door.
+
+But there was a very warm heart somewhere in that queer-looking bundle
+of clothes, and it was not one of those that can throb or break in
+silence. When she saw the long covered wagon, and the grave face of the
+old master, she thought it was all over with the poor girl she loved,
+and that this was the undertaker's wagon bringing back only what had
+once been Myrtle Hazard. She screamed aloud,--so wildly that Myrtle
+lifted her head from the pillow against which she had rested it, and
+started forward.
+
+The Irishwoman looked at her for a moment to assure herself that it was
+the girl she loved, and not her ghost. Then it all came over her,--she
+had been stolen by thieves, who had carried her off by night, and been
+rescued by the brave old man who had brought her back. What crying and
+kisses and prayers and blessings were poured forth, in a confusion
+of which her bodily costume was a fitting type, those who know the
+vocabulary and the enthusiasm of her eloquent race may imagine better
+than we could describe it.
+
+The welcome of the two other women was far less demonstrative. There
+were awful questions to be answered before the kind of reception she was
+to have could be settled. What they were, it is needless to suggest; but
+while Miss Silence was weeping, first with joy that her “responsibility”
+ was removed, then with a fair share of pity and kindness, and other
+lukewarm emotions,--while Miss Badlam waited for an explanation before
+giving way to her feelings,--Mr. Gridley put the essential facts before
+them in a few words. She had gone down the river some miles in her boat,
+which was upset by a rush of the current, and she had come very near
+being drowned. She was got out, however, by a person living near by,
+and cared for by some kind women in a house near the river, where he had
+been fortunate enough to discover her.--Who cut her hair off? Perhaps
+those good people,--she had been out of her head. She was alive and
+unharmed, at any rate, wanting only a few days' rest. They might be very
+thankful to get her back, and leave her to tell the rest of her story
+when she had got her strength and memory, for she was not quite herself
+yet, and might not be for some days.
+
+And so there she was at last laid in her own bed, listening again to
+the ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side
+looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look;
+the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow
+for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying herself about
+house-matters, not unwilling to avoid the necessity of displaying her
+conflicting emotions.
+
+Before he left the house, Mr. Gridley repeated the statement in the
+most precise manner,--some miles down the river--upset and nearly
+drowned--rescued almost dead--brought to and cared for by kind women in
+the house where he, Byles Gridley, found her. These were the facts, and
+nothing more than this was to be told at present. They had better be
+made known at once, and the shortest and best way would be to have
+it announced by the minister at meeting that forenoon. With their
+permission, he would himself write the note for Mr. Stoker to read, and
+tell the other ministers that they might announce it to their people.
+
+The bells rang for meeting, but the little household at The Poplars did
+not add to the congregation that day. In the mean time Kitty Fagan had
+gone down with Mr. Byles Gridley's note, to carry it to the Rev. Mr.
+Stoker. But, on her way, she stopped at the house of one Mrs. Finnegan,
+a particular friend of hers; and the great event of the morning
+furnishing matter for large discourse, and various social allurements
+adding to the fascination of having a story to tell, Kitty Fagan forgot
+her note until meeting had begun and the minister had read the text of
+his sermon. “Bless my soul! and sure I 've forgot ahl about the letter!”
+ she cried all at once, and away she tramped for the meeting-house. The
+sexton took the note, which was folded, and said he would hand it up to
+the pulpit after the sermon,--it would not do to interrupt the preacher.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, as was said, a somewhat remarkable gift in
+prayer,--an endowment by no means confined to profoundly spiritual
+persons,--in fact, not rarely owing much of its force to a strong animal
+nature underlying the higher attributes. The sweet singer of Israel
+would never have written such petitions and such hymns if his manhood
+had been less complete; the flavor of remembered frailties could not
+help giving a character to his most devout exercises, or they would not
+have come quite home to our common humanity. But there is no gift more
+dangerous to the humility and sincerity of a minister. While his spirit
+ought to be on its knees before the throne of grace, it is too apt to be
+on tiptoe, following with admiring look the flight of its own rhetoric.
+The essentially intellectual character of an extemporaneous composition
+spoken to the Creator with the consciousness that many of his creatures
+are listening to criticise or to admire, is the great argument for set
+forms of prayer.
+
+The congregation on this particular Sunday was made up chiefly of women
+and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard. Mr. Byles
+Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his
+notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the
+questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it
+was wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When
+he came to pray for “our youthful sister, missing from her pious home,
+perhaps nevermore to return to her afflicted relatives,” and the women
+and old men began crying, Byles Gridley was on the very point of getting
+up and cutting short the whole matter by stating the simple fact that
+she had got back, all right, and suggesting that he had better pray for
+some of the older and tougher sinners before him. But on the whole it
+would be more decorous to wait, and perhaps he was willing to hear what
+the object of his favorite antipathy had to say about it. So he waited
+through the prayer. He waited through the hymn, “Life is the time”--He
+waited to hear the sermon.
+
+The minister gave out his text from the Book of Esther, second chapter,
+seventh verse: “For she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was
+fair and beautiful.” It was to be expected that the reverend gentleman,
+who loved to produce a sensation, would avail himself of the excitable
+state of his audience to sweep the key-board of their emotions, while,
+as we may, say, all the stops were drawn out. His sermon was from notes;
+for, though absolutely extemporaneous composition may be acceptable to
+one's Maker, it is not considered quite the thing in speaking to one's
+fellow-mortals. He discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on
+the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of
+the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural
+guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction
+on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the
+“fair and beautiful” women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with
+lover-like devotion. He brought Esther before his audience, bathed and
+perfumed for the royal presence of Ahasuerus. He showed them the sweet
+young Ruth, lying down in her innocence at the feet of the lord of the
+manor. He dwelt with special luxury on the charms which seduced the
+royal psalmist,--the soldier's wife for whom he broke the commands of
+the decalogue, and the maiden for whose attentions, in his cooler years,
+he violated the dictates of prudence and propriety. All this time Byles
+Gridley had his stern eyes on him. And while he kindled into passionate
+eloquence on these inspiring themes, poor Bathsheba, whom her mother had
+sent to church that she might get a little respite from her home duties,
+felt her blood growing cold in her veins, as the pallid image of the
+invalid wife, lying on her bed of suffering, rose in the midst of
+the glowing pictures which borrowed such warmth from her husband's
+imagination.
+
+The sermon, with its hinted application to the event of the past week,
+was over at last. The shoulders of the nervous women were twitching with
+sobs. The old men were crying in their vacant way. But all the while
+the face of Byles Gridley, firm as a rock in the midst of this lachrymal
+inundation, was kept steadily on the preacher, who had often felt the
+look that came through the two round glasses searching into the very
+marrow of his bones.
+
+As the sermon was finished, the sexton marched up through the broad
+aisle and handed the note over the door of the pulpit to the clergyman,
+who was wiping his face after the exertion of delivering his discourse.
+Mr. Stoker looked at it, started, changed color,--his vision of “The
+Dangers of Beauty, a Sermon printed by Request,” had vanished,--and
+passed the note to Father Pemberton, who sat by him in the pulpit. With
+much pains he deciphered its contents, for his eyes were dim with
+years, and, having read it, bowed his head upon his hands in silent
+thanksgiving. Then he rose in the beauty of his tranquil and noble old
+age, so touched with the message he had to proclaim to his people, that
+the three deep furrows on his forehead, which some said he owed to
+the three dogmas of original sin, predestination, and endless torment,
+seemed smoothed for the moment, and his face was as that of an angel
+while he spoke.
+
+“Sisters and Brethren,--Rejoice with us, for we have found our lamb
+which had strayed from the fold. This our daughter was dead and is alive
+again; she was lost and is found. Myrtle Hazard, rescued from great
+peril of the waters, and cared for by good Samaritans, is now in her
+home. Thou, O Lord, who didst let the water-flood overflow her, didst
+not let the deep swallow her up, nor the pit shut its mouth upon her.
+Let us return our thanks to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the
+God of Jacob, who is our God and Father, and who hath wrought this great
+deliverance.”
+
+After his prayer, which it tried him sorely to utter in unbroken tones,
+he gave out the hymn,
+
+    “Lord, thou hast heard thy servant cry,
+     And rescued from the grave;”
+
+but it was hardly begun when the leading female voice trembled and
+stopped,--and another,--and then a third,--and Father Pemberton, seeing
+that they were all overcome, arose and stretched out his arms, and
+breathed over them his holy benediction.
+
+The village was soon alive with the news. The sexton forgot the
+solemnity of the Sabbath, and the bell acted as if it was crazy,
+tumbling heels over head at such a rate, and with such a clamor, that a
+good many thought there was a fire, and, rushing out from every quarter,
+instantly caught the great news with which the air was ablaze.
+
+A few of the young men who had come back went even further in their
+demonstrations. They got a small cannon in readiness, and without
+waiting for the going down of the sun, began firing rapidly, upon which
+the Rev. Mr. Stoker sallied forth to put a stop to this violation of
+the Sabbath. But in the mean time it was heard on all the hills, far and
+near. Some said they were firing in the hope of raising the corpse;
+but many who heard the bells ringing their crazy peals guessed what had
+happened. Before night the parties were all in, one detachment bearing
+the body of the bob-tailed catamount swung over a pole, like the
+mighty cluster of grapes from Eshcol, and another conveying with wise
+precaution that monstrous snapping-turtle which those of our friends who
+wish to see will find among the specimens marked Chelydra, Serpentine in
+the great collection at Cantabridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. VEXED WITH A DEVIL.
+
+It was necessary at once to summon a physician to advise as to the
+treatment of Myrtle, who had received a shock, bodily and mental, not
+lightly to be got rid of, and very probably to be followed by serious
+and varied disturbances. Her very tranquillity was suspicious, for there
+must be something of exhaustion in it, and the reaction must come sooner
+or later.
+
+Old Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut, at the age of ninety-two, very deaf, very nearly
+blind, very feeble, liable to odd lapses of memory, was yet a wise
+counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases, and on rare occasions was
+still called upon to exercise his ancient skill. Here was a case in
+which a few words from him might soothe the patient and give confidence
+to all who were interested in her. Miss Silence Withers went herself to
+see him.
+
+“Miss Withers, father, wants to talk with you about her niece, Miss
+Hazard,” said Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut.
+
+“Miss Withers, Miss Withers?--Oh, Silence Withers,--lives up at The
+Poplars. How's the Deacon, Miss Withers?” [Ob. 1810.]
+
+“My grandfather is not living, Dr. Hurlbut,” she screamed into his ear.
+
+“Dead, is he? Well, it isn't long since he was with us; and they come
+and go,--they come and go. I remember his father, Major Gideon Withers.
+He had a great red feather on training-days,--that was what made me
+remember him. Who did you say was sick and wanted to see me, Fordyce?”
+
+“Myrtle Hazard, father,--she has had a narrow escape from drowning, and
+it has left her in a rather nervous state. They would like to have you
+go up to The Poplars and take a look at her. You remember Myrtle Hazard?
+She is the great-granddaughter of your old friend the Deacon.”
+
+He had to wait a minute before his thoughts would come to order; with
+a little time, the proper answer would be evolved by the slow automatic
+movement of the rusted mental machinery.
+
+After the silent moment: “Myrtle Hazard, Myrtle Hazard,--yes, yes, to
+be sure! The old Withers stock,--good constitutions,--a little apt to be
+nervous, one or two of 'em. I've given 'em a good deal of valerian and
+assafoetida,--not quite so much since the new blood came in. There is
+n't the change in folks people think,--same thing over and over again.
+I've seen six fingers on a child that had a six-fingered great-uncle,
+and I've seen that child's grandchild born with six fingers. Does this
+girl like to have her own way pretty well, like the rest of the family?”
+
+“A little too well, I suspect, father. You will remember all about her
+when you come to see her and talk with her. She would like to talk with
+you, and her aunt wants to see you too; they think there's nobody like
+the 'old Doctor'.”
+
+He was not too old to be pleased with this preference, and said he was
+willing to go when they were ready. With no small labor of preparation
+he was at last got to the house, and crept with his son's aid up to the
+little room over the water, where his patient was still lying.
+
+There was a little too much color in Myrtle's cheeks and a glistening
+lustre in her eyes that told of unnatural excitement. It gave a strange
+brilliancy to her beauty, and might have deceived an unpractised
+observer. The old man looked at her long and curiously, his imperfect
+sight excusing the closeness of his scrutiny.
+
+He laid his trembling hand upon her forehead, and then felt her pulse
+with his shriveled fingers. He asked her various questions about
+herself, which she answered with a tone not quite so calm as natural,
+but willingly and intelligently. They thought she seemed to the old
+Doctor to be doing very well, for he spoke cheerfully to her, and
+treated her in such a way that neither she nor any of those around her
+could be alarmed. The younger physician was disposed to think she was
+only suffering from temporary excitement, and that it would soon pass
+off.
+
+They left the room to talk it over.
+
+“It does not amount to much, I suppose, father,” said Dr. Fordyce
+Hurlbut. “You made the pulse about ninety,--a little hard,--did n't you;
+as I did? Rest, and low diet for a day or two, and all will be right,
+won't it?”
+
+Was it the feeling of sympathy, or was it the pride of superior
+sagacity, that changed the look of the old man's wrinkled features?
+“Not so fast,--not so fast, Fordyce,” he said. “I've seen that look on
+another face of the same blood,--it 's a great many years ago, and she
+was dead before you were born, my boy,--but I've seen that look, and
+it meant trouble then, and I'm afraid it means trouble now. I see some
+danger of a brain fever. And if she doesn't have that, then look out for
+some hysteric fits that will make mischief. Take that handkerchief off
+of her head, and cut her hair close, and keep her temples cool, and put
+some drawing plasters to the soles of her feet, and give her some of my
+pilulae compositae, and follow them with some doses of sal polychrest.
+I've been through it all before--in that same house. Live folks are only
+dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's face, Handsome
+Judith, to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's mother,--there
+'s where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the black-eyed woman
+with the Indian blood in her,--look out for that,--look out for that.
+And--and--my son, do you remember Major Gideon Withers?” [Ob. 1780.]
+
+“Why no, father, I can't say that I remember the Major; but I know the
+picture very well. Does she remind you of him?”
+
+He paused again, until the thoughts came slowly straggling, up to the
+point where the question left him. He shook his head solemnly, and
+turned his dim eyes on his son's face.
+
+“Four generations--four generations; man and wife,--yes, five
+generations, for old Selah Withers took me in his arms when I was a
+child, and called me 'little gal,' for I was in girl's clothes,--five
+generations before this Hazard child I 've looked on with these old
+eyes. And it seems to me that I can see something of almost every one
+of 'em in this child's face, it's the forehead of this one, and it's
+the eyes of that one, and it's that other's mouth, and the look that
+I remember in another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard that same
+voice before--yes, yes as long ago as when I was first married; for I
+remember Rachel used to think I praised Handsome Judith's voice more
+than it deserved,--and her face too, for that matter. You remember
+Rachel, my first wife,--don't you, Fordyce?”
+
+“No, father, I don't remember her, but I know her portrait.” (As he was
+the son of the old Doctor's second wife, he could hardly be expected to
+remember her predecessor.)
+
+The old Doctor's sagacity was not in fault about the somewhat
+threatening aspect of Myrtle's condition. His directions were followed
+implicitly; for with the exception of the fact of sluggishness rather
+than loss of memory, and of that confusion of dates which in slighter
+degrees is often felt as early as middle-life, and increases in most
+persons from year to year, his mind was still penetrating, and his
+advice almost as trustworthy, as in his best days.
+
+It was very fortunate that the old Doctor ordered Myrtle's hair to be
+cut, and Miss Silence took the scissors and trimmed it at once. So,
+whenever she got well and was seen about, there would be no mystery
+about the loss of her locks,--the Doctor had been afraid of brain fever,
+and ordered them to cut her hair.
+
+Many things are uncertain in this world, and among them the effect of
+a large proportion of the remedies prescribed by physicians. Whether it
+was by the use of the means ordered by the old Doctor, or by the
+efforts of nature, or by both together, at any rate the first danger was
+averted, and the immediate risk from brain fever soon passed over.
+But the impression upon her mind and body had been too profound to be
+dissipated by a few days' rest. The hysteric stage which the wise old
+man had apprehended began to manifest itself by its usual signs, if
+anything can be called usual in a condition the natural order of which
+is disorder and anomaly.
+
+And now the reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute
+independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent
+total responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous
+action and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down
+this narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all
+patience with the writer who tells her story.
+
+The mental excitement so long sustained, followed by a violent shock to
+the system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise
+to that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral
+perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the
+influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady
+which they call hysteria. Few households have ripened a growth of
+womanhood without witnessing some of its manifestations, and its
+phenomena are largely traded in by scientific pretenders and religious
+fanatics. Into this cloud, with all its risks and all its humiliations,
+Myrtle Hazard is about to enter. Will she pass through it unharmed,
+or wander from her path, and fall over one of those fearful precipices
+which lie before her?
+
+After the ancient physician had settled the general plan of treatment,
+its details and practical application were left to the care of his son.
+Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut was a widower, not yet forty years old, a man of a
+fine masculine aspect and a vigorous nature. He was a favorite with his
+female patients,--perhaps many of them would have said because he was
+good-looking and pleasant in his manners, but some thought in virtue of
+a special magnetic power to which certain temperaments were impressible,
+though there was no explaining it. But he himself never claimed any
+such personal gift, and never attempted any of the exploits which some
+thought were in his power if he chose to exercise his faculty in that
+direction. This girl was, as it were, a child to him, for he had seen
+her grow up from infancy, and had often held her on his knee in her
+early years. The first thing he did was to get her a nurse, for he saw
+that neither of the two women about her exercised a quieting influence
+upon her nerves. So he got her old friend, Nurse Byloe, to come and take
+care of her.
+
+The old nurse looked calm enough at one or two of his first visits, but
+the next morning her face showed that something had been going wrong.
+“Well, what has been the trouble, Nurse?” the Doctor said, as soon as he
+could get her out of the room.
+
+“She's been attackted, Doctor, sence you been here, dreadful. It's them
+high stirricks, Doctor, 'n' I never see 'em higher, nor more of 'em.
+Laughin' as ef she would bust. Cryin' as ef she'd lost all her friends,
+'n' was a follerin' their corpse to their graves. And spassums,--sech
+spassums! And ketchin' at her throat, 'n' sayin' there was a great ball
+a risin' into it from her stommick. One time she had a kind o' lockjaw
+like. And one time she stretched herself out 'n' laid jest as stiff as
+ef she was dead. And she says now that her head feels as ef a nail had
+been driv' into it,--into the left temple, she says, and that's what
+makes her look so distressed now.”
+
+The Doctor came once more to her bedside. He saw that her forehead
+was contracted, and that she was evidently suffering from severe pain
+somewhere.
+
+“Where is your uneasiness, Myrtle?” he asked.
+
+She moved her hand very slowly, and pressed it on her left temple.
+He laid his hand upon the same spot, kept it there a moment, and then
+removed it. She took it gently with her own, and placed it on her temple
+again. As he sat watching her, he saw that her features were growing
+easier, and in a short time her deep, even breathing showed that she was
+asleep.
+
+“It beats all,” the old nurse said. “Why, she's been a complainin' ever
+sence daylight, and she hain't slep' not a wink afore, sence twelve
+o'clock las' night! It's j es' like them magnetizers,--I never heerd you
+was one o' them kind, Dr. Hurlbut.”
+
+“I can't say how it is, Nurse,--I have heard people say my hand was
+magnetic, but I never thought of its quieting her so quickly. No sleep
+since twelve o'clock last night, you say?”
+
+“Not a wink, 'n' actin' as ef she was possessed a good deal o' the time.
+You read your Bible, Doctor, don't you? You're pious? Do you remember
+about that woman in Scriptur' out of whom the Lord cast seven devils?
+Well, I should ha' thought there was seventy devils in that gal last
+night, from the way she carr'd on. And now she lays there jest as
+peaceful as a new-born babe,--that is, accordin' to the sayin' about
+'em; for as to peaceful new-born babes, I never see one that come t'
+anything, that did n't screech as ef the haouse was afire 'n' it wanted
+to call all the fire-ingines within ten mild.”
+
+The Doctor smiled, but he became thoughtful in a moment. Did he possess
+a hitherto unexercised personal power, which put the key of this young
+girl's nervous system into his hands? The remarkable tranquillizing
+effect of the contact of his hand with her forehead looked like an
+immediate physical action.
+
+It might have been a mere coincidence, however. He would not form an
+opinion until his next visit.
+
+At that next visit it did seem as if some of Nurse Byloe's seventy
+devils had possession of the girl. All the strange spasmodic movements,
+the chokings, the odd sounds, the wild talk, the laughing and crying,
+were in full blast. All the remedies which had been ordered seemed to
+have been of no avail. The Doctor could hardly refuse trying his quasi
+magnetic influence, and placed the tips of his fingers on her forehead.
+The result was the same that had followed the similar proceeding the
+day before,--the storm was soon calmed, and after a little time she fell
+into a quiet sleep, as in the first instance.
+
+Here was an awkward affair for the physician, to be sure! He held
+this power in his hands, which no remedy and no other person seemed to
+possess. How long would he be chained to her; and she to him, and
+what would be the consequence of the mysterious relation which must
+necessarily spring up between a man like him, in the plenitude of vital
+force, of strongly attractive personality, and a young girl organized
+for victory over the calmest blood and the steadiest resistance?
+
+Every day after this made matters worse. There was something almost
+partaking of the miraculous in the influence he was acquiring over her.
+His “Peace, be still!” was obeyed by the stormy elements of this young
+soul, as if it had been a supernatural command. How could he resist the
+dictate of humanity which called him to make his visits more frequent,
+that her intervals of rest might be more numerous? How could he refuse
+to sit at her bedside for a while in the evening, that she might be
+quieted, instead of beginning the night sleepless and agitated?
+
+The Doctor was a man of refined feeling as well as of principle, and he
+had besides a sacred memory in the deepest heart of his affections. It
+was the common belief in the village that he would never marry again,
+but that his first and only love was buried in the grave of the wife
+of his youth. It did not easily occur to him to suspect himself of any
+weakness with regard to this patient of his, little more than a child
+in years. It did not at once suggest itself to him that she, in her
+strange, excited condition, might fasten her wandering thoughts upon
+him, too far removed by his age, as it seemed, to strike the fancy of a
+young girl under almost any conceivable conditions.
+
+Thus it was that many of those beautiful summer evenings found him
+sitting by his patient, the river rippling and singing beneath them, the
+moon shining over them, sweet odors from the thickets on the banks
+of the stream stealing in on the soft air that came through the open
+window, and every time they were thus together, the subtile influence
+which bound them to each other bringing them more and more into
+inexplicable harmonies and almost spiritual identity.
+
+But all this did not hinder the development of new and strange
+conditions in Myrtle Hazard. Her will was losing its power. “I cannot
+help it”--the hysteric motto--was her constant reply. It is not pleasant
+to confess the truth, but she was rapidly undergoing a singular change
+of her moral nature. She had been a truthful child. If she had kept
+her secret about what she had found in the garret, she thought she was
+exercising her rights, and she had never been obliged to tell any lies
+about it.
+
+But now she seemed to have lost the healthy instincts for veracity and
+honesty. She feigned all sorts of odd symptoms, and showed a wonderful
+degree of cunning in giving an appearance of truth to them. It became
+next to impossible to tell what was real and what was simulated. At
+one time she could not be touched ever so lightly without shrinking and
+crying out. At another time she would squint, and again she would be
+half paralyzed for a time. She would pretend to fast for days, living on
+food she had concealed and took secretly in the night.
+
+The nurse was getting worn out. Kitty Fagan would have had the priest
+come to the house and sprinkle it with holy water. The two women
+were beginning to get nervous themselves. The Rev. Mr. Stoker said in
+confidence to Miss Silence, that there was reason to fear she might have
+been given over for a time to the buffetings of Satan, and that perhaps
+his (Mr. Stoker's) personal attentions might be useful in that case. And
+so it appeared that the “young doctor” was the only being left with whom
+she had any complete relations and absolute sympathy. She had become so
+passive in his hands that it seemed as if her only healthy life was, as
+it were, transmitted through him, and that she depended on the transfer
+of his nervous power, as the plant upon the light for its essential
+living processes.
+
+The two young men who had met in so unexpected a manner on board
+the ship Swordfish had been reasonably discreet in relating their
+adventures. Myrtle Hazard may or may not have had the plan they
+attributed to her; however that was, they had looked rather foolish when
+they met, and had not thought it worth while to be very communicative
+about the matter when they returned. It had at least given them a chance
+to become a little better acquainted with each other, and it was an
+opportunity which the elder and more artful of the two meant to turn to
+advantage.
+
+Of all Myrtle's few friends only one was in the habit of seeing her
+often during this period, namely, Olive Eveleth, a girl so quiet and
+sensible that she, if anybody, could be trusted with her. But Myrtle's
+whole character seemed to have changed, and Olive soon found that she
+was in some mystic way absorbed into another nature. Except when the
+physician's will was exerted upon her, she was drifting without any
+self-directing power, and then any one of those manifold impulses which
+would in some former ages have been counted as separate manifestations
+on the part of distinct demoniacal beings might take possession of her.
+Olive did little, therefore, but visit Myrtle from time to time to learn
+if any change had occurred in her condition. All this she reported to
+Cyprian, and all this was got out of him by Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
+
+That gentleman was far from being pleased with the look of things as
+they were represented. What if the Doctor, who was after all in the
+prime of life and younger-looking than some who were born half a dozen
+years after him, should get a hold on this young woman,--girl now, if
+you will, but in a very few years certain to come within possible, nay,
+not very improbable, matrimonial range of him? That would be pleasant,
+wouldn't it? It had happened sometimes, as he knew, that these
+magnetizing tricks had led to infatuation on the part of the subjects
+of the wonderful influence. So he concluded to be ill and consult the
+younger Dr. Hurlbut, and incidentally find out how the land lay.
+
+The next question was, what to be ill with. Some not ungentlemanly
+malady, not hereditary, not incurable, not requiring any obvious change
+in habits of life. Dyspepsia would answer the purpose well enough: so
+Mr. Murray Bradshaw picked up a medical book and read ten minutes or
+more for that complaint. At the end of this time he was an accomplished
+dyspeptic; for lawyers half learn a thing quicker than the members of
+any other profession.
+
+He presented himself with a somewhat forlorn countenance to Dr. Fordyce
+Hurlbut, as suffering from some of the less formidable symptoms of
+that affection. He got into a very interesting conversation with him,
+especially about some nervous feelings which had accompanied his attack
+of indigestion. Thence to nervous complaints in general. Thence to the
+case of the young lady at The Poplars whom he was attending. The Doctor
+talked with a certain reserve, as became his professional relations with
+his patient; but it was plain enough that, if this kind of intercourse
+went on much longer, it would be liable to end in some emotional
+explosion or other, and there was no saying how it would at last turn
+out.
+
+Murray Bradshaw was afraid to meddle directly. He knew something more
+about the history of Myrtle's adventure than any of his neighbors,
+and, among other things, that it had given Mr. Byles Gridley a peculiar
+interest in her, of which he could take advantage. He therefore artfully
+hinted his fears to the old man, and left his hint to work itself out.
+
+However suspicious Master Gridley was of him and his motives, he thought
+it worth while to call up at The Poplars and inquire for himself of the
+nurse what was this new relation growing up between the physician and
+his young patient.
+
+She imparted her opinion to him in a private conversation with great
+freedom. “Sech doin's! sech doin's! The gal's jest as much bewitched as
+ever any gal was sence them that was possessed in Scriptur'. And every
+day it 's wus and wus. Ef that Doctor don't stop comin', she won't
+breathe without his helpin' her to before long. And, Mr. Gridley, I
+don't like to say so,--but I can't help thinkin' he's gettin' a little
+bewitched too. I don't believe he means to take no kind of advantage of
+her; but, Mr. Gridley, you've seen them millers fly round and round a
+candle, and you know how it ginerally comes out. Men is men and gals is
+gals. I would n't trust no man, not ef he was much under a hundred year
+old,--and as for a gal--!”
+
+“Mulieri ne mortuae quidem credendum est,” said Mr. Gridley. “You
+wouldn't trust a woman even if she was dead, hey, Nurse?”
+
+“Not till she was buried, 'n' the grass growin' a foot high over her,”
+ said Nurse Byloe, “unless I'd know'd her sence she was a baby. I've
+know'd this one sence she was two or three year old; but this gal ain't
+Myrtle Hazard no longer,--she's bewitched into somethin' different. I'll
+tell ye what, Mr. Gridley; you get old Dr. Hurlbut to come and see her
+once a day for a week, and get the young doctor to stay away. I'll resk
+it. She 'll have some dreadful tantrums at fust, but she'll come to it
+in two or three, days.”
+
+Master Byles Gridley groaned in spirit. He had come to this village to
+end his days in peace, and here he was just going to make a martyr
+of himself for the sake of a young person to whom he was under no
+obligation, except that he had saved her from the consequences of her
+own foolish act, at the expense of a great overturn of all his domestic
+habits. There was no help for it. The nurse was right, and he must
+perform the disagreeable duty of letting the Doctor know that he was
+getting into a track which might very probably lead to mischief, and
+that he must back out as fast as he could.
+
+At 2 P. M. Gifted Hopkins presented the following note at the Doctor's
+door:
+
+“Mr. Byles Gridley would be much obliged to Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut if he
+would call at his study this evening.”
+
+“Odd, is n't it, father, the old man's asking me to come and see him?
+Those old stub-twist constitutions never want patching.”
+
+“Old man! old man! Who's that you call old,--not Byles Gridley, hey?
+Old! old! Sixty year, more or less! How old was Floyer when he died,
+Fordyce? Ninety-odd, was n't it? Had the asthma though, or he'd have
+lived to be as old as Dr. Holyoke,--a hundred year and over. That's old.
+But men live to be a good deal more than that sometimes. What does Byles
+Gridley want of you, did you say?”
+
+“I'm sure I can't tell, father; I'll go and find out.” So he went over
+to Mrs. Hopkins's in the evening, and was shown up into the study.
+
+Master Gridley treated the Doctor to a cup of such tea as bachelors
+sometimes keep hid away in mysterious caddies. He presently began asking
+certain questions about the grand climacteric, which eventful period of
+life he was fast approaching. Then he discoursed of medicine, ancient
+and modern, tasking the Doctor's knowledge not a little, and evincing a
+good deal of acquaintance with old doctrines and authors.
+
+He had a few curious old medical books in his library, which he said he
+should like to show Dr. Hurlbut.
+
+“There, now! What do you say to this copy of Joannes de Ketam, Venice,
+1522? Look at these woodcuts,--the first anatomical pictures ever
+printed, Doctor, unless these others of Jacobus Berengarius are older!
+See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his
+pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young
+nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old
+burial-hag behind her, shoving her forward, a very curious book, Doctor,
+and has the first phrenological picture in it ever made. Take a look,
+too, at my Vesalius,--not the Leyden edition, Doctor, but the one with
+the grand old original figures,--so good that they laid them to Titian.
+And look here, Doctor, I could n't help getting this great
+folio Albinus, 1747,--and the nineteenth century can't touch it,
+Doctor,--can't touch it for completeness and magnificence, so all the
+learned professors tell me! Brave old fellows, Doctor, and put their
+lives into their books as you gentlemen don't pretend to do nowadays.
+And good old fellows, Doctor,--high-minded, scrupulous, conscientious,
+punctilious,--remembered their duties to man and to woman, and felt all
+the responsibilities of their confidential relation to families. Did you
+ever read the oldest of medical documents,--the Oath of Hippocrates?”
+
+The Doctor thought he had read it, but did not remember much about it.
+
+“It 's worth reading, Doctor,--it's worth remembering; and, old as it
+is, it is just as good to-day as it was when it was laid down as a
+rule of conduct four hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount was
+delivered. Let me read it to you, Dr. Hurlbut.”
+
+There was something in Master Gridley's look that made the Doctor feel a
+little nervous; he did not know just what was coming.
+
+Master Gridley took out his great Hippocrates, the edition of Foesius,
+and opened to the place. He turned so as to face the Doctor, and read
+the famous Oath aloud, Englishing it as he went along. When he came
+to these words which follow, he pronounced them very slowly and with
+special emphasis.
+
+“My life shall be pure and holy.”
+
+“Into whatever house I enter, I will go for the good of the patient:
+
+“I will abstain from inflicting any voluntary injury, and from leading
+away any, whether man or woman, bond or free.”
+
+The Doctor changed color as he listened, and the moisture broke out on
+his forehead.
+
+Master Gridley saw it, and followed up his advantage. “Dr. Fordyce
+Hurlbut, are you not in danger of violating the sanctities of your
+honorable calling, and leading astray a young person committed to your
+sacred keeping?”
+
+While saying these words, Master Gridley looked full upon him, with a
+face so charged with grave meaning, so impressed with the gravity of his
+warning accents, that the Doctor felt as if he were before some dread
+tribunal, and remained silent. He was a member of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
+church, and the words he had just listened to were those of a sinful old
+heathen who had never heard a sermon in his life; but they stung
+him, for all that, as the parable of the prophet stung the royal
+transgressor.
+
+He spoke at length, for the plain honest words had touched the right
+spring of consciousness at the right moment; not too early, for he now
+saw whither he was tending,--not too late, for he was not yet in the
+inner spirals of the passion which whirls men and women to their doom in
+ever-narrowing coils, that will not unwind at the command of God or man.
+
+He spoke as one who is humbled by self-accusation, yet in a manly way,
+as became his honorable and truthful character.
+
+“Master Gridley,” he said, “I stand convicted before you. I know
+too well what you are thinking of. It is true, I cannot continue my
+attendance on Myrtle--on Miss Hazard, for you mean her--without peril
+to both of us. She is not herself. God forbid that I should cease to be
+myself! I have been thinking of a summer tour, and I will at once set
+out upon it, and leave this patient in my father's hands. I think he
+will find strength to visit her under the circumstances.”
+
+The Doctor went off the next morning without saying a word to Myrtle
+Hazard, and his father made the customary visit in his place.
+
+That night the spirit tare her, as may well be supposed, and so the
+second night. But there was no help for it: her doctor was gone, and the
+old physician, with great effort, came instead, sat by her, spoke kindly
+to her, left wise directions to her attendants, and above all assured
+them that, if they would have a little patience, they would see all this
+storm blow over.
+
+On the third night after his visit, the spirit rent her sore, and came
+out of her, or, in the phrase of to-day, she had a fierce paroxysm,
+after which the violence of the conflict ceased, and she might be called
+convalescent so far as that was concerned.
+
+But all this series of nervous disturbances left her in a very
+impressible and excitable condition. This was just the state to invite
+the spiritual manipulations of one of those theological practitioners
+who consider that the treatment of all morbid states of mind short
+of raving madness belongs to them and not to the doctors. This same
+condition was equally favorable for the operations of any professional
+experimenter who would use the flame of religious excitement to light
+the torch of an earthly passion. So many fingers that begin on the black
+keys stray to the white ones before the tune is played out!
+
+If Myrtle Hazard was in charge of any angelic guardian, the time was at
+hand when she would need all celestial influences; for the Rev. Joseph
+Bellamy Stoker was about to take a deep interest in her spiritual
+welfare.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. SKIRMISHING.
+
+“So the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has called upon you, Susan Posey, has
+he? And wants you to come and talk religion with him in his study, Susan
+Posey, does he? Religion is a good thing, my dear, the best thing in the
+world, and never better than when we are young, and no young people need
+it more than young girls. There are temptations to all, and to them as
+often as to any, Susan Posey. And temptations come to them in places
+where they don't look for them, and from persons they never thought
+of as tempters. So I am very glad to have your thoughts called to the
+subject of religion. 'Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.'
+
+“But Susan Posey, my dear, I think you hard better not break in upon
+the pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker in his private
+study. A monk's cell and a minister's library are hardly the places for
+young ladies. They distract the attention of these good men from their
+devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go, you had better
+take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes religious conversation, and it
+will do her good too, and save a great deal of time for the minister,
+conversing with two at once. She is of discreet age, and will tell you
+when it is time to come away,--you might stay too long, you know. I've
+known young persons stay a good deal too long at these interviews,--a
+great deal too long, Susan Posey!”
+
+Such was the fatherly counsel of Master Byles Gridley.
+
+Susan was not very quick of apprehension, but she could not help seeing
+the justice of Master Gridley's remark, that for a young person to go
+and break in on the hours that a minister requires for his studies,
+without being accompanied by a mature friend who would remind her when
+it was time to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness
+in asking her to call upon him. She promised, therefore, that she would
+never go without having Mrs. Hopkins as her companion, and with this
+assurance her old friend rested satisfied.
+
+It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason for his advice
+than those with which he satisfied the simple nature of Susan Posey.
+Of that it will be easier to judge after a glance at the conditions and
+character of the minister and his household.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal advantages already
+alluded to, some other qualities which might prove attractive to many
+women. He had, in particular, that art of sliding into easy intimacy
+with them which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and, above
+all, confidence in one's powers. There was little doubt, the gossips
+maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been
+willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his
+yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the burden.
+
+That lady must have been some years older than her husband,--how many we
+need not inquire too curiously,--but in vitality she had long passed
+the prime in which he was still flourishing. She had borne him five
+children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
+Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life
+wearied her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister's
+wife; she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and
+her thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to
+increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the
+spirit.
+
+But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious
+depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her
+husband what she had been to him, and felt it with something of
+self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true
+and tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling,
+which had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought,
+but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking
+consciousness.
+
+The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual
+matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who
+came with such intent. Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill,
+in great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous
+voice, who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two
+horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not
+settled to his mind in Scott's Commentary. The minister was always very
+busy at such times, and made short work of his deacon's doubts. Or it
+might be that an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel,
+came with her questions and her perplexities to her pastor; and it was
+pretty certain that just at that moment he was very deep in his next
+sermon, or had a pressing visit to make.
+
+But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs
+of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd. Poor
+Mrs. Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more
+leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet
+and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was apt to be longer; and
+the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the
+parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young
+people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it
+as hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over
+a running stream. More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an
+errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks,
+flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone
+back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the
+bitterness of death in her soul.
+
+The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister's
+wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only
+women, who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as
+telegraph-wires, can experience.
+
+The doctor did not know what to make of her case,--whether she would
+live or die,--whether she would languish for years, or, all at once,
+roused by some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained
+movement of the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her bed
+had become her home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism.
+There she lay, a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking
+resigned, patient, serene, except when the one deeper grief was stirred,
+always arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens
+that showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful
+affection. She did not know, nobody could know, how steadily, how
+silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching
+the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing
+angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets
+us into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to
+everybody's verses.
+
+Bathsheba's devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was
+not in the shape of outward commendation. Some of the more censorious
+members of her father's congregation were severe in their remarks upon
+her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It seems that this had
+prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more
+imperative. They did n't see why she shouldn't keep a Sabbath-school
+as well as the rest, and as to her not comin' to meetin' three times
+on Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn't account for it, except
+because she calculated that she could get along without the means of
+grace, bein' a minister's daughter. Some went so far as to doubt if she
+had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor. There was
+a good many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her life of
+utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties towards her mother
+as some evidence of Christian character. But old Deacon Rumrill put down
+that heresy by showing conclusively from Scott's Commentary on Romans
+xi. 1-6, that this was altogether against her chance of being called,
+and that the better her disposition to perform good works, the more
+unlikely she was to be the subject of saving grace. Some of these severe
+critics were good people enough themselves, but they loved active work
+and stirring companionship, and would have found their real cross if
+they had been called to sit at an invalid's bedside.
+
+As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow him to give so
+much time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly
+have prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great
+reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited
+not only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness
+which, born with some of God's creatures, is, if not “grace,” at least a
+manifestation of native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.
+
+The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single
+point. There was one subject on which no word ever passed between them.
+The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle
+to cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and
+father, and no word ever passed between them implying a suspicion of the
+loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
+tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother
+only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, “I should think you were
+in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter.”
+
+This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange
+suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams
+and reveries. The thought once admitted that another's life is becoming
+superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul.
+Woe to the man or woman whose days are passed in watching the hour-glass
+through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a
+skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors
+of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
+was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with
+those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly,
+or some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an
+idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.
+
+It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to
+some fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to
+yield to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but
+he did not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more
+desperate sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of
+emotional relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name
+of religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on
+the territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and yet be so
+near, the pleasant garden of the Adversary, that his dangerous fruits
+and flowers are within easy reach. Once tasted, the next step is like
+to be the scaling of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond of this
+border land. His imagination was wandering over it too often when his
+pen was travelling almost of itself along the weary parallels of the
+page before him. All at once a blinding flash would come over him the
+lines of his sermon would run together, the fresh manuscript would
+shrivel like a dead leaf, and the rows of hard-hearted theology on the
+shelves before him, and the broken-backed Concordance, and the Holy Book
+itself, would fade away as he gave himself up to the enchantment of his
+delirious dream.
+
+The reader will probably consider it a discreet arrangement that pretty
+Susan Posey should seek her pastor in grave company. Mrs. Hopkins
+willingly consented to the arrangement which had been proposed, and
+agreed to go with the young lady on her visit to the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
+study. They were both arrayed in their field-day splendors on this
+occasion. Susan was lovely in her light curls and blue ribbons, and the
+becoming dress which could not help betraying the modestly emphasized
+crescendos and gently graded diminuendos of her figure. She was as round
+as if she had been turned in a lathe, and as delicately finished as if
+she had been modelled for a Flora. She had naturally an airy toss of the
+head and a springy movement of the joints, such as some girls study in
+the glass (and make dreadful work of it), so that she danced all over
+without knowing it, like a little lively bobolink on a bulrush. In
+short, she looked fit to spoil a homily for Saint Anthony himself.
+
+Mrs. Hopkins was not less perfect in her somewhat different style. She
+might be called impressive and imposing in her grand-costume, which she
+wore for this visit. It was a black silk dress, with a crape shawl, a
+firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with a stern-looking and
+decided knob presiding as its handle. The dried-leaf rustle of her silk
+dress was suggestive of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those
+golden fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers of
+mankind so justly prefer to the idle blossoms of adolescence.
+
+It is needless to say that the visit was conducted with the most perfect
+propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins was disposed to take upon
+herself a large share of the conversation. The minister, on the other
+hand, would have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan, but,
+with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good woman drew his
+fire so constantly that few of his remarks, and hardly any of his
+insinuating looks, reached the tender object at which they were aimed.
+It is probable that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at
+having thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins thought he
+looked all the time as if he wanted to get rid of her. The three parted,
+therefore, not in the best humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she'd
+see the minister in Jericho before she'd fix herself up as if she was
+goin' to a weddin' to go and see him again. Why, he did n't make any
+more of her than if she'd been a tabby-cat. She believed some of these
+ministers thought women's souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time
+they was forty year old; anyhow, they did n't seem to care any great
+about 'em, except while they was green and tender. It was all Miss
+Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might
+jest as well have gone with her apron on, for any notice he took of
+her. She did n't care, she was n't goin' to be left out when there was
+talkin' goin' on, anyhow.
+
+Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n't like him a bit. He looked
+so sweet at her, and held his head on one side,--law! just as if he had
+been a young beau! And,--don't tell,--but he whispered that he wished
+the next time I came I wouldn't bring that Hopkins woman!
+
+It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to himself; but we
+may own as much as this, that, if worthy Mrs. Hopkins had heard it,
+she would have treated him to a string of adjectives which would have
+greatly enlarged his conceptions of the female vocabulary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. BATTLE.
+
+In tracing the history of a human soul through its commonplace nervous
+perturbations, still more through its spiritual humiliations, there is
+danger that we shall feel a certain contempt for the subject of such
+weakness. It is easy to laugh at the erring impulses of a young girl;
+but you who remember when_______ _________, only fifteen years old,
+untouched by passion, unsullied in name, was found in the shallow brook
+where she had sternly and surely sought her death,--(too true! too
+true!--ejus animae Jesu miserere!--but a generation has passed since
+then,)--will not smile so scornfully.
+
+Myrtle Hazard no longer required the physician's visits, but her mind
+was very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She
+was of a good natural constitution and a fine temperament; but she
+had been overwrought by all that she had passed through, and, though
+happening to have been born in another land, she was of American
+descent. Now, it has long been noticed that there is something in the
+influences, climatic or other, here prevailing, which predisposes to
+morbid religious excitement. The graver reader will not object to
+seeing the exact statement of a competent witness belonging to a by-gone
+century, confirmed as it is by all that we see about us.
+
+“There is no Experienced Minister of the Gospel who hath not in the
+Cases of Tempted Souls often had this Experience, that the ill Cases of
+their distempered Bodies are the frequent Occasion and Original of their
+Temptations.” “The Vitiated Humours in many Persons, yield the Steams
+whereinto Satan does insinuate himself, till he has gained a sort of
+Possession in them, or at least an Opportunity to shoot into the Mind as
+many Fiery Darts as may cause a sad Life unto them; yea, 't is well if
+Self-Murder be not the sad end into which these hurried. People are
+thus precipitated. New England, a country where Splenetic Maladies
+are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded
+Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these
+Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or
+Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent
+Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the unsearchable
+Judgments of God!”
+
+Such are the words of the Rev. Cotton Mather.
+
+The minister had hardly recovered from his vexatious defeat in the
+skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he
+received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and
+more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he
+would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and
+impressible condition, and who might perhaps be easily brought under
+those influences which she had resisted from her early years, through
+inborn perversity of character.
+
+When the Rev. Mr. Stoker received this note, he turned very pale,--which
+was a bad sign. Then he drew a long breath or two, and presently a flush
+tingled up to his cheek, where it remained a fixed burning glow. This
+may have been from the deep interest he felt in Myrtle's spiritual
+welfare; but he had often been sent for by aged sinners in more
+immediate peril, apparently, without any such disturbance of the
+circulation.
+
+To know whether a minister, young or still in flower; is in safe or
+dangerous paths, there are two psychometers, a comparison between
+which will give as infallible a return as the dry and wet bulbs of the
+ingenious “Hygrodeik.” The first is the black broadcloth forming the
+knees of his pantaloons; the second, the patch of carpet before his
+mirror. If the first is unworn and the second is frayed and threadbare,
+pray for him. If the first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps its
+pattern and texture, get him to pray for you.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker should have gone down on his knees then and there,
+and sought fervently for the grace which he was like to need in the
+dangerous path just opening before him. He did not do this; but he stood
+up before his looking-glass and parted his hair as carefully as if he
+had been separating the saints of his congregation from the sinners, to
+send the list to the statistical columns of a religious newspaper. He
+selected a professional neckcloth, as spotlessly pure as if it had been
+washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the
+white rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the
+handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a buttercup
+from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous
+disturbances through which she had been passing, and that she must be in
+a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish
+intimate spiritual relations with her by drawing out her repressed
+sympathies, by feeding the fires of her religious imagination, by
+exercising all those lesser arts of fascination which are so familiar to
+the Don Giovannis, and not always unknown to the San Giovannis.
+
+As for the hard doctrines which he used to produce sensations with in
+the pulpit, it would have been a great pity to worry so lovely a girl,
+in such a nervous state, with them. He remembered a savory text
+about being made all things to all men, which would bear application
+particularly well to the case of this young woman. He knew how to weaken
+his divinity, on occasion, as well as an old housewife to weaken her
+tea, lest it should keep people awake.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker was a man of emotions. He loved to feel his heart
+beat; he loved all the forms of non-alcoholic drunkenness, which are so
+much better than the vinous, because they taste themselves so keenly,
+whereas the other (according to the statement of experts who are
+familiar with its curious phenomena) has a certain sense of unreality
+connected with it. He delighted in the reflex stimulus of the excitement
+he produced in others by working on their feelings. A powerful preacher
+is open to the same sense of enjoyment--an awful, tremulous, goose-flesh
+sort of state, but still enjoyment--that a great tragedian feels when he
+curdles the blood of his audience.
+
+Mr. Stoker was noted for the vividness of his descriptions of the
+future which was in store for the great bulk of his fellow-townsmen and
+fellow-worlds-men. He had three sermons on this subject, known to all
+the country round as the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and
+the convulsion-fit sermon, from the various effects said to have been
+produced by them when delivered before large audiences. It might be
+supposed that his reputation as a terrorist would have interfered with
+his attempts to ingratiate himself with his young favorites. But the
+tragedian who is fearful as Richard or as Iago finds that no hindrance
+to his success in the part of Romeo. Indeed, women rather take to
+terrible people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals,
+Grand Turks, and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the sex;
+your virgin has a natural instinct to saddle your lion. The fact,
+therefore, that the young girl had sat under his tremendous pulpitings,
+through the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit
+sermon, did not secure her against the influence of his milder
+approaches.
+
+Myrtle was naturally surprised at receiving a visit from him; but she
+was in just that unbalanced state in which almost any impression is
+welcome. He showed so much interest, first in her health, then in her
+thoughts and feelings, always following her lead in the conversation,
+that before he left her she felt as if she had made a great discovery;
+namely, that this man, so formidable behind the guns of his wooden
+bastion, was a most tenderhearted and sympathizing person when he
+came out of it unarmed. How delightful he was as he sat talking in the
+twilight in low and tender tones, with respectful pauses of listening,
+in which he looked as if he too had just made a discovery,--of an angel,
+to wit, to whom he could not help unbosoming his tenderest emotions, as
+to a being from another sphere!
+
+It was a new experience to Myrtle. She was all ready for the spiritual
+manipulations of an expert. The excitability which had been showing
+itself in spasms and strange paroxysms had been transferred to those
+nervous centres, whatever they may be, cerebral or ganglionic, which
+are concerned in the emotional movements of the religious nature. It was
+taking her at an unfair disadvantage, no doubt. In the old communion,
+some priest might have wrought upon her while in this condition, and
+we might have had at this very moment among us another Saint Theresa or
+Jacqueline Pascal. She found but a dangerous substitute in the spiritual
+companionship of a saint like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
+
+People think the confessional is unknown in our Protestant churches.
+It is a great mistake. The principal change is, that there is no screen
+between the penitent and the father confessor. The minister knew his
+rights, and very soon asserted them. He gave aunt Silence to understand
+that he could talk more at ease if he and his young disciple were left
+alone together. Cynthia Badlam did not like this arrangement. She was
+afraid to speak about it; but she glared at them aslant, with the look
+of a biting horse when his eyes follow one sideways until they are all
+white but one little vicious spark of pupil.
+
+It was not very long before the Rev. Mr. Stoker had established pretty
+intimate relations with the household at The Poplars. He had reason to
+think, he assured Miss Silence, that Myrtle was in a state of mind which
+promised a complete transformation of her character. He used the phrases
+of his sect, of course, in talking with the elderly lady; but the
+language which he employed with the young girl was free from those
+mechanical expressions which would have been like to offend or disgust
+her.
+
+As to his rougher formulae, he knew better than to apply them to a
+creature of her fine texture. If he had been disposed to do so, her
+simple questions and answers to his inquiries would have made it
+difficult. But it was in her bright and beautiful eyes, in her handsome
+features, and her winning voice, that he found his chief obstacle. How
+could he look upon her face in its loveliness, and talk to her as if
+she must be under the wrath and curse of God for the mere fact of
+her existence? It seemed more natural and it certainly was more
+entertaining, to question her in such a way as to find out what kind of
+theology had grown up in her mind as the result of her training in the
+complex scheme of his doctrinal school. And as he knew that the merest
+child, so soon as it begins to think at all, works out for itself
+something like a theory of human nature, he pretty soon began sounding
+Myrtle's thoughts on this matter.
+
+What was her own idea; he would be pleased to know, about her natural
+condition as one born of a sinful race, and her inherited liabilities on
+that account?
+
+Myrtle smiled like a little heathen, as she was, according to the
+standard of her earlier teachings. That kind of talk used to worry her
+when she was a child, sometimes. Yes, she remembered its coming back to
+her in a dream she had, when--when--(She did not finish her sentence.)
+Did he think she hated every kind of goodness and loved every kind of
+evil? Did he think she was hateful to the Being who made her?
+
+The minister looked straight into the bright, brave, tender eyes, and
+answered, “Nothing in heaven or on earth could help loving you, Myrtle!”
+
+Pretty well for a beginning!
+
+Myrtle saw nothing but pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as
+she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which
+seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without
+bringing his flattering assertion to the test of another question.
+
+Did he suppose, she asked, that any persons could be Christians, who
+could not tell the day or the year of their change from children of
+darkness to children of light.
+
+The shrewd clergyman, whose creed could be lax enough on occasion, had
+provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward
+questions in casuistical divinity. He had hunted up recipes for
+spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just
+as doctors do for their bodily counterparts.
+
+To be sure they could. Why, what did the great Richard Baxter say in his
+book on Infant Baptism? That at a meeting of many eminent Christians,
+some of them very famous ministers, when it was desired that every one
+should give an account of the time and manner of his conversion, there
+was but one of them all could do it. And as for himself, Mr. Baxter
+said, he could not remember the day or the year when he began to be
+sincere, as he called it. Why, did n't President Wheelock say to a
+young man who consulted him, that some persons might be true Christians
+without suspecting it?
+
+All this was so very different from the uncompromising way in which
+religious doctrines used to be presented to the young girl from the
+pulpit, that it naturally opened her heart and warmed her affections.
+Remember, if she needs excuse, that the defeated instincts of a strong
+nature were rushing in upon her, clamorous for their rights, and that
+she was not yet mature enough to understand and manage them. The paths
+of love and religion are at the fork of a road which every maiden
+travels. If some young hand does not open the turnpike gate of the
+first, she is pretty sure to try the other, which has no toll-bar. It is
+also very commonly noticed that these two paths, after diverging awhile,
+run into each other. True love leads many wandering souls into the
+better way. Nor is it rare to see those who started in company for the
+gates of pearl seated together on the banks that border the avenue to
+that other portal, gathering the roses for which it is so famous.
+
+It was with the most curious interest that the minister listened to
+the various heresies into which her reflections had led her. Somehow or
+other they did not sound so dangerous coming from her lips as when they
+were uttered by the coarser people of the less rigorous denominations,
+or preached in the sermons of heretical clergymen. He found it
+impossible to think of her in connection with those denunciations of
+sinners for which his discourses had been noted. Some of the sharp old
+church-members began to complain that his exhortations were losing their
+pungency. The truth was, he was preaching for Myrtle Hazard. He was
+getting bewitched and driven beside himself by the intoxication of his
+relations with her.
+
+All this time she was utterly unconscious of any charm that she was
+exercising, or of being herself subject to any personal fascination.
+She loved to read the books of ecstatic contemplation which he furnished
+her. She loved to sing the languishing hymns which he selected for
+her. She loved to listen to his devotional rhapsodies, hardly knowing
+sometimes whether she were in the body, or out of the body, while he
+lifted her upon the wings of his passion-kindled rhetoric. The time came
+when she had learned to listen for his step, when her eyes glistened at
+meeting him, when the words he uttered were treasured as from something
+more than a common mortal, and the book he had touched was like a
+saintly relic. It never suggested itself to her for an instant that this
+was anything more than such a friendship as Mercy might have cultivated
+with Great-Heart. She gave her confidence simply because she was very
+young and innocent. The green tendrils of the growing vine must wind
+round something.
+
+The seasons had been changing their scenery while the events we have
+told were occurring, and the loveliest days of autumn were now shining.
+To those who know the “Indian summer” of our Northern States, it is
+needless to describe the influence it exerts on the senses and the
+soul. The stillness of the landscape in that beautiful time is as if
+the planet were sleeping, like a top, before it begins to rock with the
+storms of autumn. All natures seem to find themselves more truly in
+its light; love grows more tender, religion more spiritual, memory sees
+farther back into the past, grief revisits its mossy marbles, the poet
+harvests the ripe thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verses by his
+winter fireside.
+
+The minister had got into the way of taking frequent walks with Myrtle,
+whose health had seemed to require the open air, and who was fast
+regaining her natural look. Under the canopy of the scarlet, orange,
+and crimson leaved maples, of the purple and violet clad oaks, of the
+birches in their robes of sunshine, and the beeches in their clinging
+drapery of sober brown, they walked together while he discoursed of
+the joys of heaven, the sweet communion of kindred souls, the ineffable
+bliss of a world where love would be immortal and beauty should never
+know decay. And while she listened, the strange light of the leaves
+irradiated the youthful figure of Myrtle, as when the stained window
+let in its colors on Madeline, the rose-bloom and the amethyst and the
+glory.
+
+“Yes! we shall be angels together,” exclaimed the Rev. Mr. Stoker. “Our
+souls were made for immortal union. I know it; I feel it in every throb
+of my heart. Even in this world you are as an angel to me, lifting me
+into the heaven where I shall meet you again, or it will not be heaven.
+Oh, if on earth our communion could have been such as it must be
+hereafter! O Myrtle, Myrtle!”
+
+He stretched out his hands as if to clasp hers between them in the
+rapture of his devotion. Was it the light reflected from the glossy
+leaves of the poison sumach which overhung the path that made his cheek
+look so pale? Was he going to kneel to her?
+
+Myrtle turned her dark eyes on him with a simple wonder that saw an
+excess of saintly ardor in these demonstrations, and drew back from it.
+
+“I think of heaven always as the place where I shall meet my mother,”
+ she said calmly.
+
+These words recalled the man to himself for a moment and he was silent.
+Presently he seated himself on a stone. His lips were tremulous as he
+said, in a low tone, “Sit down by me, Myrtle.”
+
+“No,” she answered, with something which chilled him in her voice, “we
+will not stay here any longer; it is time to go home.”
+
+“Full time!” muttered Cynthia Badlam, whose watchful eyes had been upon
+them, peering through a screen of yellow leaves, that turned her face
+pale as if with deadly passion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. FLANK MOVEMENT.
+
+Miss Cynthia Badlam was in the habit of occasionally visiting the Widow
+Hopkins. Some said but then people will talk, especially in the country,
+where they have not much else to do, except in haying-time. She had
+always known the widow, long before Mr. Gridley came there to board, or
+any other special event happened in her family. No matter what people
+said.
+
+Miss Badlam called to see Mrs. Hopkins, then, and the two had a long
+talk together, of which only a portion is on record. Here are such
+fragments as have been preserved.
+
+“What would I do about it? Why, I'd put a stop to such carry'n's on,
+mighty quick, if I had to tie the girl to the bedpost, and have a
+bulldog that world take the seat out of any pair of black pantaloons
+that come within forty rod of her,--that's what I'd do about it! He
+undertook to be mighty sweet with our Susan one while, but ever sence
+he's been talkin' religion with Myrtle Hazard he's let us alone. Do as
+I did when he asked our Susan to come to his study,--stick close to your
+girl and you 'll put a stop to all this business. He won't make love to
+two at once, unless they 're both pretty young, I 'll warrant. Follow
+her round, Miss Cynthy, and keep your eyes on her.”
+
+“I have watched her like a cat, Mrs. Hopkins, but I can't follow her
+everywhere,--she won't stand what Susan Posey 'll stand. There's no use
+our talking to her,--we 've done with that at our house. You never know
+what that Indian blood of hers will make her do. She's too high-strung
+for us to bit and bridle. I don't want to see her name in the paper
+again, alongside of that” (She did not finish the sentence.) “I'd rather
+have her fished dead out of the river, or find her where she found her
+uncle Malachi!”
+
+“You don't think, Miss Cynthy, that the man means to inveigle the girl
+with the notion of marryin' her by and by, after poor Mrs. Stoker's dead
+and gone?”
+
+“The Lord in heaven forbid!” exclaimed Miss Cynthia, throwing up her
+hands. “A child of fifteen years old, if she is a woman to look at!”
+
+“It's too bad,--it's too bad to think of, Miss Cynthy; and there's that
+poor woman dyin' by inches, and Miss Bathsheby settin' with her day
+and night, she has n't got a bit of her father in her, it's all her
+mother,--and that man, instead of bein' with her to comfort her as any
+man ought to be with his wife, in sickness and in health, that's what he
+promised. I 'm sure when my poor husband was sick.... To think of that
+man goin' about to talk religion to all the prettiest girls he can find
+in the parish, and his wife at home like to leave him so soon,--it's a
+shame,--so it is, come now! Miss Cynthy, there's one of the best men and
+one of the learnedest men that ever lived that's a real friend of Myrtle
+Hazard, and a better friend to her than she knows of,--for ever sence he
+brought her home, he feels jest like a father to her,--and that man is
+Mr. Gridley, that lives in this house. It's him I 'll speak to about the
+minister's carry'in's on. He knows about his talking sweet to our Susan,
+and he'll put things to rights! He's a master hand when he does once
+take hold of anything, I tell you that! Jest get him to shet up them
+books of his, and take hold of anybody's troubles, and you'll see how he
+'ll straighten 'em out.”
+
+There was a pattering of little feet on the stairs, and the two small
+twins, “Sossy” and “Minthy,” in the home dialect, came hand in hand
+into the room, Miss Susan leaving them at the threshold, not wishing to
+interrupt the two ladies, and being much interested also in listening to
+Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who was reading some of his last poems to her, with
+great delight to both of them.
+
+The good woman rose to take them from Susan, and guide their uncertain
+steps. “My babies, I call 'em, Miss Cynthy. Ain't they nice children?
+Come to go to bed, little dears? Only a few minutes, Miss Cynthy.”
+
+She took them into the bedroom on the same floor, where they slept,
+and, leaving the door open, began undressing them. Cynthia turned her
+rocking-chair round so as to face the open door. She looked on while
+the little creatures were being undressed; she heard the few words they
+lisped as their infant prayer, she saw them laid in their beds, and
+heard their pretty good-night.
+
+A lone woman to whom all the sweet cares of maternity have been denied
+cannot look upon a sight like this without feeling the void in her
+own heart where a mother's affection should have nestled. Cynthia sat
+perfectly still, without rocking, and watched kind Mrs. Hopkins at her
+quasi parental task. A tear stole down her rigid face as she saw the
+rounded limbs of the children bared in their white beauty, and their
+little heads laid on the pillow. They were sleeping quietly when Mrs.
+Hopkins left the room for a moment on some errand of her own. Cynthia
+rose softly from her chair, stole swiftly to the bedside, and printed a
+long, burning kiss on each of their foreheads.
+
+When Mrs. Hopkins came back, she found the maiden lady sitting in her
+place just as she left her, but rocking in her chair and sobbing as one
+in sudden pangs of grief.
+
+“It is a great trouble, Miss Cynthy,” she said,--“a great trouble to
+have such a child as Myrtle to think of and to care for. If she was
+like our Susan Posey, now!--but we must do the best we can; and if Mr.
+Gridley once sets himself to it, you may depend upon it he 'll make it
+all come right. I wouldn't take on about it if I was you. You let me
+speak to our Mr. Gridley. We all have our troubles. It is n't everybody
+that can ride to heaven in a C-spring shay, as my poor husband used to
+say; and life 's a road that 's got a good many thank-you-ma'ams to go
+bumpin' over, says he.”
+
+Miss Badlam acquiesced in the philosophical reflections of the late Mr.
+Ammi Hopkins, and left it to his widow to carry out her own suggestion
+in reference to consulting Master Gridley. The good woman took the first
+opportunity she had to introduce the matter, a little diffusely, as is
+often the way of widows who keep boarders.
+
+“There's something going on I don't like, Mr. Gridley. They tell me that
+Minister Stoker is following round after Myrtle Hazard, talking religion
+at her jest about the same way he'd have liked to with our Susan, I
+calculate. If he wants to talk religion to me or Silence Withers,--well,
+no, I don't feel sure about Silence,--she ain't as young as she used
+to be, but then ag'in she ain't so fur gone as some, and she's got
+money,--but if he wants to talk religion with me, he may come and
+welcome. But as for Myrtle Hazard, she's been sick, and it's left her
+a little flighty by what they say, and to have a minister round her all
+the time ravin' about the next world as if he had a latch-key to the
+front door of it, is no way to make her come to herself again. I 've
+seen more than one young girl sent off to the asylum by that sort of
+work, when, if I'd only had 'em, I'd have made 'em sweep the stairs, and
+mix the puddin's, and tend the babies, and milk the cow, and keep 'em
+too busy all day to be thinkin' about themselves, and have 'em dress up
+nice evenin's and see some young folks and have a good time, and go to
+meetin' Sundays, and then have done with the minister, unless it was
+old Father Pemberton. He knows forty times as much about heaven as that
+Stoker man does, or ever 's like to,--why don't they run after him, I
+should like to know? Ministers are men, come now; and I don't want to
+say anything against women, Mr. Gridley, but women are women, that's the
+fact of it, and half of 'em are hystericky when they're young; and I've
+heard old Dr. Hurlbut say many a time that he had to lay in an extra
+stock of valerian and assafaetida whenever there was a young minister
+round,--for there's plenty of religious ravin', says he, that's nothin'
+but hysterics.”
+
+[Mr. Fronde thinks that was the trouble with Bloody Queen Mary, but the
+old physician did not get the idea from him.]
+
+“Well, and what do you propose to do about the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
+Stoker and his young proselyte, Miss Myrtle Hazard?” said Mr. Gridley,
+when Mrs. Hopkins at last gave him a chance to speak.
+
+“Mr. Gridley,”--Mrs. Hopkins looked full upon him as she spoke,--“people
+used to say that you was a good man and a great man and one of the
+learnedest men alive, but that you didn't know much nor care for much
+except books. I know you used to live pretty much to yourself when you
+first came to board in this house. But you've been very good to my son;
+... and if Gifted lives till you... till you are in... your grave... he
+will write a poem--I know he will--that will tell your goodness to babes
+unborn.”
+
+[Here Master Gridley groaned, and repeated to himself silently,
+
+    “Scindentur vestes gemmae frangentur et aurum,
+     Carmina quam tribuent fama perennis erit.”
+
+All this inwardly, and without interrupting the worthy woman's talk.]
+
+“And if ever Gifted makes a book,--don't say anything about it, Mr.
+Gridley, for goodness' sake, for he wouldn't have anybody know it, only
+I can't help thinking that some time or other he will print a book,--and
+if he does, I know whose name he'll put at the head of it,--'Dedicated
+to B. G., with the gratitude and respect--' There, now, I had n't any
+business to say a word about it, and it's only jest in case he does, you
+know. I'm sure you deserve it all. You've helped him with the best of
+advice. And you've been kind to me when I was in trouble. And you've
+been like a grandfather” [Master Gridley winced,--why could n't the
+woman have said father?--that grand struck his ear like a spade
+going into the gravel] “to those babes, poor little souls! left on my
+door-step like a couple of breakfast rolls,--only you know it's the
+baker left then. I believe in you, Mr. Gridley, as I believe in my Maker
+and in Father Pemberton,--but, poor man, he's old, and you won't be old
+these twenty years yet.”
+
+[Master Gridley shook his head as if to say that was n't so, but felt
+comforted and refreshed.]
+
+“You've got to help Myrtle Hazard again. You brought her home when she
+come so nigh drowning. You got the old doctor to go and see her when she
+come so nigh being bewitched with the magnetism and nonsense, whatever
+they call it, and the young doctor was so nigh bein' crazy, too. I know,
+for Nurse Byloe told me all about it. And now Myrtle's gettin' run away
+with by that pesky Minister Stoker. Cynthy Badlam was here yesterday
+crying and sobbing as if her heart would break about it. For my part, I
+did n't think Cynthy cared so much for the girl as all that, but I saw
+her takin' on dreadfully with my own eyes. That man's like a hen-hawk
+among the chickens, first he picks up one, and then he picks up another.
+I should like to know if nobody but young folks has souls to be saved,
+and specially young women!”
+
+“Tell me all you know about Myrtle Hazard and Joseph Bellamy Stoker,”
+ said Master Gridley.
+
+Thereupon that good lady related all that Miss Badlam had imparted to
+her, of which the reader knows the worst, being the interview of which
+the keen spinster had been a witness, having followed them for the
+express purpose of knowing, in her own phrase, what the minister was up
+to.
+
+It is not to be supposed that Myrtle had forgotten the discreet kindness
+of Master Gridley in bringing her back and making the best of her
+adventure. He, on his part, had acquired a kind of right to consider
+himself her adviser, and had begun to take a pleasure in the thought
+that he, the worn-out and useless old pedant, as he had been in the way
+of considering himself, might perhaps do something even more important
+than his previous achievement to save this young girl from the dangers
+that surrounded her. He loved his classics and his old books; he took
+an interest, too, in the newspapers and periodicals that brought the
+fermenting thought and the electric life of the great world into his
+lonely study; but these things just about him were getting strong hold
+on him, and most of all the fortunes of this beautiful young woman. How
+strange! For a whole generation he had lived in no nearer relation to
+his fellow-creatures than that of a half-fossilized teacher; and all at
+once he found himself face to face with the very most intense form of
+life, the counsellor of threatened innocence, the champion of imperilled
+loveliness. What business was it of his? growled the lower nature, of
+which he had said in “Thoughts on the Universe,”--“Every man leads or is
+led by something that goes on four legs.”
+
+Then he remembered the grand line of the African freedman, that makes
+all human interests everybody's business, and had a sudden sense of
+dilatation and evolution, as it were, in all his dimensions, as if he
+were a head taller, and a foot bigger round the chest, and took in an
+extra gallon of air at every breath, Then--you who have written a book
+that holds your heart-leaves between its pages will understand the
+movement--he took down “Thoughts on the Universe” for a refreshing
+draught from his own wellspring. He opened as chance ordered it, and his
+eyes fell on the following passage:
+
+“The true American formula was well phrased by the late Samuel Patch,
+the Western Empedocles, 'Some things can be done as well as others.'
+A homely utterance, but it has virtue to overthrow all dynasties and
+hierarchies. These were all built up on the Old-World dogma that some
+things can NOT be done as well as others.”
+
+“There, now!” he said, talking to himself in his usual way, “is n't that
+good? It always seems to me that I find something to the point when I
+open that book. 'Some things can be done as well as others,' can they?
+Suppose I should try what I can do by visiting Miss Myrtle Hazard? I
+think I may say I am old and incombustible enough to be trusted. She
+does not seem to be a safe neighbor to very inflammable bodies?”
+
+Myrtle was sitting in the room long known as the Study, or the Library,
+when Master Byles Gridley called at The Poplars to see her. Miss
+Cynthia, who received him, led him to this apartment and left him alone
+with Myrtle. She welcomed him very cordially, but colored as she did
+so,--his visit was a surprise. She was at work on a piece of embroidery.
+Her first instinctive movement was to thrust it out of sight with the
+thought of concealment; but she checked this, and before the blush of
+detection had reached her cheek, the blush of ingenuous shame for her
+weakness had caught and passed it, and was in full possession. She sat
+with her worsted pattern held bravely in sight, and her cheek as bright
+as its liveliest crimson.
+
+“Miss Cynthia has let me in upon you,” he said, “or I should not have
+ventured to disturb you in this way. A work of art, is it, Miss Myrtle
+Hazard?”
+
+“Only a pair of slippers, Mr. Gridley,--for my pastor.”
+
+“Oh! oh! That is well. A good old man. I have a great regard for the
+Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton. I wish all ministers were as good and simple
+and pure-hearted as the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton. And I wish all the
+young people thought as much about their elders as you do, Miss Myrtle
+Hazard. We that are old love little acts of kindness. You gave me
+more pleasure than you knew of, my dear, when you worked that handsome
+cushion for me. The old minister will be greatly pleased,--poor old
+man!”
+
+“But, Mr. Gridley, I must not let you think these are for Father
+Pemberton. They are for--Mr. Stoker.”
+
+“The Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker! He is not an old man, the Rev. Joseph
+Bellamy Stoker. He may perhaps be a widower before a great while.--Does
+he know that you are working those slippers for him?”
+
+“Dear me! no, Mr. Gridley. I meant them for a surprise to him. He has
+been so kind to me, and understands me so much better than I thought
+anybody did. He is so different from what I thought; he makes religion
+so perfectly simple, it seems as if everybody would agree with him, if
+they could only hear him talk.”
+
+“Greatly interested in the souls of his people, is n't he?”
+
+“Too much, almost, I am afraid. He says he has been too hard in his
+sermons sometimes, but it was for fear he should not impress his hearers
+enough.”
+
+“Don't you think he worries himself about the souls of young women
+rather more than for those of old ones, Myrtle?”
+
+There was something in the tone of this question that helped its
+slightly sarcastic expression. Myrtle's jealousy for her minister's
+sincerity was roused.
+
+“How can you ask that, Mr. Gridley? I am sure I wish you or anybody
+could have heard him talk as I have. There is no age in souls, he says;
+and I am sure that it would do anybody good to hear him, old or young.”
+
+“No age in souls,--no age in souls. Souls of forty as young as souls of
+fifteen; that 's it.” Master Gridley did not say this loud. But he did
+speak as follows: “I am glad to hear what you say of the Rev. Joseph
+Bellamy Stoker's love of being useful to people of all ages. You have
+had comfort in his companionship, and there are others who might be very
+glad to profit by it. I know a very excellent person who has had trials,
+and is greatly interested in religious conversation. Do you think he
+would be willing to let this friend of mine share in the privileges of
+spiritual intercourse which you enjoy?”
+
+There was but one answer possible. Of course he would.
+
+“I hope it is so, my dear young lady. But listen to me one moment.
+I love you, my dear child, do you know, as if I were your
+own--grandfather.” (There was moral heroism in that word.) “I love you
+as if you were of my own blood; and so long as you trust me, and suffer
+me, I mean to keep watch against all dangers that threaten you in mind,
+body, or estate. You may wonder at me, you may sometimes doubt me; but
+until you say you distrust me, when any trouble comes near you, you
+will find me there. Now, my dear child, you ought to know that the
+Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has the reputation of being too fond of
+prosecuting religious inquiries with young and handsome women.”
+
+Myrtle's eyes fell,--a new suspicion seemed to have suggested itself.
+
+“He wanted to get up a spiritual intimacy with our Susan Posey,--a very
+pretty girl, as you know.”
+
+Myrtle tossed her head almost imperceptibly, and bit her lip.
+
+“I suppose there are a dozen young people that have been talked about
+with him. He preaches cruel sermons in his pulpit, cruel as death, and
+cold-blooded enough to freeze any mother's blood if nature did not tell
+her he lied, and then smooths it all over with the first good-looking
+young woman he can get to listen to him.”
+
+Myrtle had dropped the slipper she was working on.
+
+“Tell me, my dear, would you be willing to give up meeting this man
+alone, and gratify my friend, and avoid all occasion of reproach?”
+
+“Of course I would,” said Myrtle, her eyes flashing, for her doubts, her
+shame, her pride, were all excited. “Who is your friend, Mr. Gridley?”
+
+“An excellent woman,--Mrs. Hopkins. You know her, Gifted Hopkins's
+mother, with whom I am residing. Shall the minister be given to
+understand that you will see him hereafter in her company?”
+
+Myrtle came pretty near a turn of her old nervous perturbations. “As you
+say,” she answered. “Is there nobody that I can trust, or is everybody
+hunting me like a bird?” She hid her face in her hands.
+
+“You can trust me, my dear,” said Byles Gridley. “Take your needle, my
+child, and work at your pattern,--it will come out a rose by and by.
+Life is like that, Myrtle, one stitch at a time, taken patiently, and
+the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. You can trust
+me. Good-by, my dear.”
+
+“Let her finish the slippers,” the old man said to himself as he trudged
+home, “and make 'em big enough for Father Pemberton. He shall have his
+feet in 'em yet, or my name is n't Byles Gridley!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS.
+
+Myrtle Hazard waited until the steps of Master Byles Gridley had ceased
+to be heard, as he walked in his emphatic way through the long entry of
+the old mansion. Then she went to her little chamber and sat down in
+a sort of revery. She could not doubt his sincerity, and there was
+something in her own consciousness which responded to the suspicions
+he had expressed with regard to the questionable impulses of the Rev.
+Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
+
+It is not in the words that others say to us, but in those other words
+which these make us say to ourselves, that we find our gravest lessons
+and our sharpest rebukes. The hint another gives us finds whole trains
+of thought which have been getting themselves ready to be shaped in
+inwardly articulated words, and only awaited the touch of a burning
+syllable, as the mottoes of a pyrotechnist only wait for a spark to
+become letters of fire.
+
+The artist who takes your photograph must carry you with him into his
+“developing” room, and he will give you a more exact illustration of
+the truth just mentioned. There is nothing to be seen on the glass
+just taken from the camera. But there is a potential, though invisible,
+picture hid in the creamy film which covers it. Watch him as he pours a
+wash over it, and you will see that miracle wrought which is at once a
+surprise and a charm,--the sudden appearance of your own features where
+a moment before was a blank without a vestige of intelligence or beauty.
+
+In some such way the grave warnings of Master Byles Gridley had called
+up a fully shaped, but hitherto unworded, train of thought in the
+consciousness of Myrtle Hazard. It was not merely their significance,
+it was mainly because they were spoken at the fitting time. If they
+had been uttered a few weeks earlier, when Myrtle was taking the first
+stitch on the embroidered slippers, they would have been as useless as
+the artist's developing solution on a plate which had never been exposed
+in the camera. But she had been of late in training for her lesson in
+ways that neither she nor anybody else dreamed of. The reader who has
+shrugged his (or her) shoulders over the last illustration will perhaps
+hear this one which follows more cheerfully. The physician in the
+Arabian Nights made his patient play at ball with a bat, the hollow
+handle of which contained drugs of marvellous efficacy. Whether it was
+the drugs that made the sick man get well, or the exercise, is not of so
+much consequence as the fact that he did at any rate get well.
+
+These walks which Myrtle had taken with her reverend counsellor had
+given her a new taste for the open air, which was what she needed just
+now more than confessions of faith or spiritual paroxysms. And so it
+happened that, while he had been stimulating all those imaginative and
+emotional elements of her nature which responded to the keys he loved
+to play upon, the restoring influences of the sweet autumnal air, the
+mellow sunshine, the soothing aspects of the woods and fields and sky,
+had been quietly doing their work. The color was fast returning to
+her cheek, and the discords of her feelings and her thoughts gradually
+resolving themselves into the harmonious and cheerful rhythms of bodily
+and mental health. It needed but the timely word from the fitting lips
+to change the whole programme of her daily mode of being. The word
+had been spoken. She saw its truth; but how hard it is to tear away
+a cherished illusion, to cast out an unworthy intimate! How hard for
+any!--but for a girl so young, and who had as yet found so little to
+love and trust, how cruelly hard!
+
+She sat, still and stony, like an Egyptian statue. Her eyes were fixed
+on a vacant chair opposite the one on which she was sitting. It was a
+very singular and fantastic old chair, said to have been brought over by
+the first emigrant of her race. The legs and arms were curiously
+turned in spirals, the suggestions of which were half pleasing and half
+repulsive. Instead of the claw-feet common in furniture of a later
+date, each of its legs rested on a misshapen reptile, which it seemed
+to flatten by its weight, as if it were squeezing the breath out of
+the ugly creature. Over this chair hung the portrait of her beautiful
+ancestress, her neck and arms, the specialty of her beauty, bare, except
+for a bracelet on the left wrist, and her shapely figure set off by the
+ample folds of a rich crimson brocade. Over Myrtle's bed hung that other
+portrait, which was to her almost as the pictures of the Mater Dolorosa
+to trustful souls of the Roman faith. She had longed for these pictures
+while she was in her strange hysteric condition, and they had been hung
+up in her chamber.
+
+The night was far gone, as she knew by the declining of the
+constellations which she had seen shining brightly almost overhead in
+the early evening, when she awoke, and found herself still sitting in
+the very attitude in which she was sitting hours before. Her lamp had
+burned out, and the starlight but dimly illuminated her chamber. She
+started to find herself sitting there, chilled and stiffened by long
+remaining in one posture; and as her consciousness returned, a great
+fear seized her, and she sprang for a match. It broke with the quick
+movement she made to kindle it, and she snatched another as if a fiend
+were after her. It flashed and went out. Oh the terror, the terror! The
+darkness seemed alive with fearful presences. The lurid glare of her own
+eyeballs flashed backwards into her brain. She tried one more match; it
+kindled as it should, and she lighted another lamp. Her first impulse
+was to assure herself that nothing was changed in the familiar objects
+around her. She held the lamp up to the picture of Judith Pride. The
+beauty looked at her, it seemed as if with a kind of lofty recognition
+in her eyes; but there she was, as always. She turned the light upon the
+pale face of the martyr-portrait. It looked troubled and faded, as it
+seemed to Myrtle, but still it was the same face she remembered from her
+childhood. Then she threw the light on the old chair, and, shuddering,
+caught up a shawl and flung it over the spiral-wound arms and legs, and
+the flattened reptiles on which it stood.
+
+In those dead hours of the night which had passed over her sitting
+there, still and stony, as it should seem, she had had strange visitors.
+Two women had been with her, as real as any that breathed the breath of
+life,--so it appeared to her,--yet both had long been what is called,
+in our poor language, dead. One came in all the glory of her ripened
+beauty, bare-necked, bare-armed, full dressed by nature in that splendid
+animal equipment which in its day had captivated the eyes of all the
+lusty lovers of complete muliebrity. The other,--how delicate, how
+translucent, how aerial she seemed! yet real and true to the lineaments
+of her whom the young girl looked upon as her hereditary protector.
+
+The beautiful woman turned, and, with a face full of loathing and scorn,
+pointed to one of the reptiles beneath the feet of the chair. And while
+Myrtle's eyes followed hers, the flattened and half-crushed creature
+seemed to swell and spread like his relative in the old fable, like
+the black dog in Faust, until he became of tenfold size, and at last of
+colossal proportions. And, fearful to relate, the batrachian features
+humanized themselves as the monster grew, and, shaping themselves more
+and more into a remembered similitude, Myrtle saw in them a hideous
+likeness of--No! no! it was too horrible, was that the face which had
+been so close to hers but yesterday? were those the lips, the breath
+from which had stirred her growing curls as he leaned over her while
+they read together some passionate stanza from a hymn that was as
+much like a love-song as it dared to be in godly company? A shadow of
+disgust--the natural repugnance of loveliness for deformity-ran all
+through her, and she shrieked, as she thought, and threw herself at the
+feet of that other figure. She felt herself lifted from the floor, and
+then a cold thin hand seemed to take hers. The warm life went out of
+her, and she was to herself as a dimly conscious shadow that glided with
+passive acquiescence wherever it was led. Presently she found herself in
+a half-lighted apartment, where there were books on the shelves around,
+and a desk with loose manuscripts lying on it, and a little mirror with
+a worn bit of carpet before it. And while she looked, a great serpent
+writhed in through the half-open door, and made the circuit of the room,
+laying one huge ring all round it, and then, going round again, laid
+another ring over the first, and so on until he was wound all round the
+room like the spiral of a mighty cable, leaving a hollow in the centre;
+and then the serpent seemed to arch his neck in the air, and bring his
+head close down to Myrtle's face; and the features were not those of
+a serpent, but of a man, and it hissed out the words she had read that
+very day in a little note which said, “Come to my study to-morrow, and
+we will read hymns together.”
+
+Again she was back in her little chamber, she did not know how, and the
+two women were looking into her eyes with strange meaning in their own.
+Something in them seemed to plead with her to yield to their influence,
+and her choice wavered which of them to follow, for each would have
+led her her own way,--whither she knew not. It was the strife of her
+“Vision,” only in another form,--the contest of two lives her blood
+inherited for the mastery of her soul. The might of beauty conquered.
+Myrtle resigned herself to the guidance of the lovely phantom, which
+seemed so much fuller of the unextinguished fire of life, and so like
+herself as she would grow to be when noon should have ripened her into
+maturity.
+
+Doors opened softly before them; they climbed stairs, and threaded
+corridors, and penetrated crypts, strange yet familiar to her eyes,
+which seemed to her as if they could see, as it were, in darkness. Then
+came a confused sense of eager search for something that she knew was
+hidden, whether in the cleft of a rock, or under the boards of a floor,
+or in some hiding-place among the skeleton rafters, or in a forgotten
+drawer, or in a heap of rubbish, she could not tell; but somewhere there
+was something which she was to find, and which, once found, was to be
+her talisman. She was in the midst of this eager search when she awoke.
+
+The impression was left so strongly on her mind that with all her fears
+she could not resist the desire to make an effort to find what meaning
+there was in this frightfully real dream. Her courage came back as her
+senses assured her that all around her was natural, as when she left it.
+She determined to follow the lead of the strange hint her nightmare had
+given her.
+
+In one of the upper chambers of the old mansion there stood a tall,
+upright desk of the ancient pattern, with folding doors above and large
+drawers below. “That desk is yours, Myrtle,” her uncle Malachi had once
+said to her; “and there is a trick or two about it that it will pay you
+to study.” Many a time Myrtle had puzzled herself about the mystery of
+the old desk. All the little drawers, of which there were a considerable
+number, she had pulled out, and every crevice, as she thought, she had
+carefully examined. She determined to make one more trial. It was the
+dead of the night, and this was a fearful old place to be wandering
+about; but she was possessed with an urgent feeling which would not let
+her wait until daylight.
+
+She stole like a ghost from her chamber. She glided along the narrow
+entries as she had seemed to move in her dream. She opened the folding
+doors of the great upright desk. She had always before examined it by
+daylight, and though she had so often pulled all the little drawers out,
+she had never thoroughly explored the recesses which received them.
+But in her new-born passion of search, she held her light so as to
+illuminate all these deeper spaces. At once she thought she saw the
+marks of pressure with a finger. She pressed her own finger on this
+place, and, as it yielded with a slight click, a small mahogany pilaster
+sprang forward, revealing its well-kept secret that it was the mask of a
+tall, deep, very narrow drawer. There was something heavy in it, and,
+as Myrtle turned it over, a golden bracelet fell into her hand. She
+recognized it at once as that which had been long ago the ornament of
+the fair woman whose portrait hung in her chamber. She clasped it upon
+her wrist, and from that moment she felt as if she were the captive of
+the lovely phantom who had been with her in her dream.
+
+“The old man walked last night, God save us!” said Kitty Fagan to Biddy
+Finnegan, the day after Myrtle's nightmare and her curious discovery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. VICTORY.
+
+It seems probable enough that Myrtle's whole spiritual adventure was an
+unconscious dramatization of a few simple facts which her imagination
+tangled together into a kind of vital coherence. The philosopher who
+goes to the bottom of things will remark that all the elements of her
+fantastic melodrama had been furnished her while waking. Master Byles
+Gridley's penetrating and stinging caution was the text, and the
+grotesque carvings and the portraits furnished the “properties” with
+which her own mind had wrought up this scenic show.
+
+The philosopher who goes to the bottom of things might not find it so
+easy to account for the change which came over Myrtle Hazard from the
+hour when she clasped the bracelet of Judith Pride upon her wrist. She
+felt a sudden loathing of the man whom she had idealized as a saint.
+A young girl's caprice? Possibly. A return of the natural instincts of
+girlhood with returning health? Perhaps so. An impression produced by
+her dream? An effect of an influx from another sphere of being? The
+working of Master Byles Gridley's emphatic warning? The magic of her new
+talisman?
+
+We may safely leave these questions for the present. As we have to tell,
+not what Myrtle Hazard ought to have done, and why she should have done
+it, but what she did do, our task is a simpler one than it would be
+to lay bare all the springs of her action. Until this period, she had
+hardly thought of herself as a born beauty. The flatteries she had
+received from time to time were like the chips and splinters under the
+green wood, when the chill women pretended to make a fire in the best
+parlor at The Poplars, which had a way of burning themselves out, hardly
+warming, much less kindling, the fore-stick and the back-log.
+
+Myrtle had a tinge of what some call superstition, and she began to
+look upon her strange acquisition as a kind of amulet. Its suggestions
+betrayed themselves in one of her first movements. Nothing could be
+soberer than the cut of the dresses which the propriety of the severe
+household had established as the rule of her costume. But the girl was
+no sooner out of bed than a passion came over her to see herself in that
+less jealous arrangement of drapery which the Beauty of the last century
+had insisted on as presenting her most fittingly to the artist. She
+rolled up the sleeves of her dress, she turned down its prim collar and
+neck, and glanced from her glass to the portrait, from the portrait back
+to the glass. Myrtle was not blind nor dull, though young, and in many
+things untaught. She did not say in so many words, “I too am a beauty,”
+ but she could mot help seeing that she had many of the attractions of
+feature and form which had made the original of the picture before her
+famous. The same stately carriage of the head, the same full-rounded
+neck, the same more than hinted outlines of figure, the same finely
+shaped arms and hands, and something very like the same features
+startled her by their identity in the permanent image of the canvas and
+the fleeting one of the mirror.
+
+The world was hers then,--for she had not read romances and love-letters
+without finding that beauty governs it in all times and places. Who was
+this middle-aged minister that had been hanging round her and talking to
+her about heaven, when there was not a single joy of earth that she had
+as yet tasted? A man that had been saying all his fine things to Miss
+Susan Posey, too, had he, before he had bestowed his attentions on her?
+And to a dozen other girls, too, nobody knows who!
+
+The revulsion was a very sadden one. Such changes of feeling are apt
+to be sudden in young people whose nerves have been tampered with, and
+Myrtle was not of a temperament or an age to act with much deliberation
+where a pique came in to the aid of a resolve. Master Gridley guessed
+sagaciously what would be the effect of his revelation, when he told her
+of the particular attentions the minister had paid to pretty Susan Posey
+and various other young women.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker had parted his hair wonderfully that morning, and
+made himself as captivating as his professional costume allowed. He had
+drawn down the shades of his windows so as to let in that subdued light
+which is merciful to crow's-feet and similar embellishments, and wheeled
+up his sofa so that two could sit at the table and read from the same
+book.
+
+At eleven o'clock he was pacing the room with a certain feverish
+impatience, casting a glance now and then at the mirror as he passed
+it. At last the bell rang, and he himself went to answer it, his heart
+throbbing with expectation of meeting his lovely visitor.
+
+Myrtle Hazard appeared by an envoy extraordinary, the bearer of sealed
+despatches. Mistress Kitty Fagan was the young lady's substitute, and
+she delivered into the hand of the astonished clergyman the following
+missive:
+
+TO THE REV. MR. STOKER.
+
+Reverend Sir,--I shall not come to your study this day. I do not feel
+that I have any more need of religious counsel at this time, and I am
+told by a friend that there are others who will be glad to hear you talk
+on this subject. I hear that Mrs. Hopkins is interested in religious
+subjects, and would have been glad to see you in my company. As I cannot
+go with her, perhaps Miss Susan Posey will take my place. I thank you
+for all the good things you have said to me, and that you have given me
+so much of your company. I hope we shall sing hymns together in heaven
+some time, if we are good enough, but I want to wait for that awhile,
+for I do not feel quite ready. I am not going to see you any more alone,
+reverend sir. I think this is best, and I have good advice. I want
+to see more of young people of my own age, and I have a friend, Mr.
+Gridley, who I think is older than you are, that takes an interest in
+me; and as you have many others that you must be interested in, he can
+take the place of a father better than you can do. I return to you the
+hymn-book, I read one of those you marked, and do not care to read any
+more.
+
+Respectfully yours,
+
+MYRTLE HAZARD.
+
+
+The Rev. Mr. Stoker uttered a cry of rage as he finished this awkwardly
+written, but tolerably intelligible letter. What could he do about it?
+It would hardly do to stab Myrtle Hazard, and shoot Byles Gridley,
+and strangle Mrs. Hopkins, every one of which homicides he felt at
+the moment that he could have committed. And here he was in a frantic
+paroxysm, and the next day was Sunday, and his morning's discourse was
+unwritten. His savage mediaeval theology came to his relief, and
+he clutched out of a heap of yellow manuscripts his well-worn
+“convulsion-fit” sermon. He preached it the next day as if it did his
+heart good, but Myrtle Hazard did not hear it, for she had gone to St.
+Bartholomew's with Olive Eveleth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. SAINT AND SINNER
+
+It happened a little after this time that the minister's invalid
+wife improved--somewhat unexpectedly in health, and, as Bathsheba was
+beginning to suffer from imprisonment in her sick-chamber, the physician
+advised very strongly that she should vary the monotony of her life by
+going out of the house daily for fresh air and cheerful companionship.
+She was therefore frequently at the house of Olive Eveleth; and as
+Myrtle wanted to see young people, and had her own way now as never
+before, the three girls often met at the parsonage. Thus they became
+more and more intimate, and grew more and more into each other's
+affections.
+
+These girls presented three types of spiritual character which are to be
+found in all our towns and villages. Olive had been carefully trained,
+and at the proper age confirmed. Bathsheba had been prayed for, and in
+due time startled and converted. Myrtle was a simple daughter of Eve,
+with many impulses like those of the other two girls, and some that
+required more watching. She was not so safe, perhaps, as either of the
+other girls, for this world or the next; but she was on some accounts
+more interesting, as being a more genuine representative of that
+inexperienced and too easily deluded, yet always cherished, mother of
+our race, whom we must after all accept as embodying the creative idea
+of woman, and who might have been alive and happy now (though at a great
+age) but for a single fatal error.
+
+The Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, Rector of Saint Bartholomew's, Olive's father,
+was one of a class numerous in the Anglican Church, a cultivated man,
+with pure tastes, with simple habits, a good reader, a neat writer, a
+safe thinker, with a snug and well-fenced mental pasturage, which his
+sermons kept cropped moderately close without any exhausting demand upon
+the soil. Olive had grown insensibly into her religious maturity, as
+into her bodily and intellectual developments, which one might
+suppose was the natural order of things in a well-regulated
+Christian--household, where the children are brought up in the nurture
+and admonition of the Lord.
+
+Bathsheba had been worried over and perplexed and depressed with vague
+apprehensions about her condition, conveyed in mysterious phrases and
+graveyard expressions of countenance, until about the age of fourteen
+years, when she had one of those emotional paroxysms very commonly
+considered in some Protestant sects as essential to the formation of
+religious character. It began with a shivering sense of enormous guilt,
+inherited and practised from her earliest infancy. Just as every breath
+she ever drew had been malignantly poisoning the air with carbonic acid,
+so her every thought and feeling had been tainting the universe with
+sin. This spiritual chill or rigor had in due order been followed by the
+fever-flush of hope, and that in its turn had ushered in the last stage,
+the free opening of all the spiritual pores in the peaceful relaxation
+of self-surrender.
+
+Good Christians are made by many very different processes. Bathsheba had
+taken her religion after the fashion of her sect; but it was genuine, in
+spite of the cavils of the formalists, who could not understand that the
+spirit which kept her at her mother's bedside was the same as that which
+poured the tears of Mary of Magdala on the feet of her Lord, and led her
+forth at early dawn with the other Mary to visit his sepulchre.
+
+Myrtle was a child of nature, and of course, according to the out-worn
+formulae which still shame the distorted religion of humanity, hateful
+to the Father in Heaven who made her. She had grown up in antagonism
+with all that surrounded her. She had been talked to about her corrupt
+nature and her sinful heart, until the words had become an offence and
+an insult. Bathsheba knew her father's fondness for young company too
+well to suppose that his intercourse with Myrtle had gone beyond the
+sentimental and poetical stage, and was not displeased when she found
+that there was some breach between them. Myrtle herself did not profess
+to have passed through the technical stages of the customary spiritual
+paroxysm. Still, the gentle daughter of the terrible preacher loved her
+and judged her kindly. She was modest enough to think that perhaps the
+natural state of some girls might be at least as good as her own after
+the spiritual change of which she had been the subject. A manifest
+heresy, but not new, nor unamiable, nor inexplicable.
+
+The excellent Bishop Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of
+Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace
+in the election of a wife; because, saith he, “it will be a hard Task,
+where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire
+Conquest whilst Life lasteth.” An opinion apparently entertained by many
+modern ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging
+to those young ladies of the politer circles who have a fancy for
+marrying bishops and other fashionable clergymen. Not of course that
+“grace” is so rare a gift among the young ladies of the upper social
+sphere; but they are in the habit of using the word with a somewhat
+different meaning from that which the good Bishop attached to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. VILLAGE POET.
+
+It was impossible for Myrtle to be frequently at Olive's without often
+meeting Olive's brother, and her reappearance with the bloom on her
+cheek was a signal which her other admirers were not likely to overlook
+as a hint to recommence their flattering demonstrations; and so it was
+that she found herself all at once the centre of attraction to three
+young men with whom we have made some acquaintance, namely, Cyprian
+Eveleth, Gifted Hopkins, and Murray Bradshaw.
+
+When the three girls were together at the house of Olive, it gave
+Cyprian a chance to see something of Myrtle in the most natural way.
+Indeed, they all became used to meeting him in a brotherly sort of
+relation; only, as he was not the brother of two of them, it gave him
+the inside track, as the sporting men say, with reference to any rivals
+for the good-will of either of these. Of course neither Bathsheba nor
+Myrtle thought of him in any other light than as Olive's brother, and
+would have been surprised with the manifestation on his part of any
+other feeling, if it existed. So he became very nearly as intimate with
+them as Olive was, and hardly thought of his intimacy as anything more
+than friendship, until one day Myrtle sang some hymns so sweetly that
+Cyprian dreamed about her that night; and what young person does not
+know that the woman or the man once idealized and glorified in the
+exalted state of the imagination belonging to sleep becomes dangerous
+to the sensibilities in the waking hours that follow? Yet something drew
+Cyprian to the gentler and more subdued nature of Bathsheba, so that
+he often thought, like a gayer personage than himself, whose divided
+affections are famous in song, that he could have been blessed to share
+her faithful heart, if Myrtle had not bewitched him with her unconscious
+and innocent sorceries. As for poor, modest Bathsheba, she thought
+nothing of herself, but was almost as much fascinated by Myrtle as if
+she had been one of the sex she was born to make in love with her.
+
+The first rival Cyprian was to encounter in his admiration of Myrtle
+Hazard was Mr. Gifted Hopkins. This young gentleman had the enormous
+advantage of that all-subduing accomplishment, the poetical endowment.
+No woman, it is pretty generally understood, can resist the youth or
+man who addresses her in verse. The thought that she is the object of a
+poet's love is one which fills a woman's ambition more completely than
+all that wealth or office or social eminence can offer. Do the young
+millionnaires and the members of the General Court get letters from
+unknown ladies, every day, asking for their autographs and photographs?
+Well, then!
+
+Mr. Gifted Hopkins, being a poet, felt that it was so, to the very depth
+of his soul. Could he not confer that immortality so dear to the human
+heart? Not quite yet, perhaps,--though the “Banner and Oracle” gave
+him already “an elevated niche in the Temple of Fame,” to quote its own
+words,--but in that glorious summer of his genius, of which these spring
+blossoms were the promise. It was a most formidable battery, then, which
+Cyprian's first rival opened upon the fortress of Myrtle's affections.
+
+His second rival, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, had made a half-playful
+bet with his fair relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, that he would bag
+a girl within twelve months of date who should unite three desirable
+qualities, specified in the bet, in a higher degree than any one of the
+five who were on the matrimonial programme which she had laid out for
+him,--and Myrtle was the girl with whom he meant to win the bet. When a
+young fellow like him, cool and clever, makes up his mind to bring down
+his bird, it is no joke, but a very serious and a tolerably
+certain piece of business. Not being made a fool of by any boyish
+nonsense,--passion and all that,--he has a great advantage. Many a
+woman rejects a man because he is in love with her, and accepts another
+because he is not. The first is thinking too much of himself and his
+emotions,--the other makes a study of her and her friends, and learns
+what ropes to pull. But then it must be remembered that Murray Bradshaw
+had a poet for his rival, to say nothing of the brother of a bosom
+friend.
+
+The qualities of a young poet are so exceptional, and such interesting
+objects of study, that a narrative like this can well afford to linger
+awhile in the delineation of this most envied of all the forms of
+genius. And by contrasting the powers and limitations of two such young
+persons as Gifted Hopkins and Cyprian Eveleth, we may better appreciate
+the nature of that divine inspiration which gives to poetry the
+superiority it claims over every other form of human expression.
+
+Gifted Hopkins had shown an ear for rhythm, and for the simpler forms of
+music, from his earliest childhood. He began beating with his heels
+the accents of the psalm tunes sung at meeting at a very tender age,--a
+habit, indeed, of which he had afterwards to correct himself, as,
+though it shows a sensibility to rhythmical impulses like that which
+is beautifully illustrated when a circle join hands and emphasize by
+vigorous downward movements the leading syllables in the tune of Auld
+Lang Syne, yet it is apt to be too expressive when a large number of
+boots join in the performance. He showed a remarkable talent for playing
+on one of the less complex musical instruments, too limited in compass
+to satisfy exacting ears, but affording excellent discipline to those
+who wish to write in the simpler metrical forms,--the same which summons
+the hero from his repose and stirs his blood in battle.
+
+By the time he was twelve years old he was struck with the pleasing
+resemblance of certain vocal sounds which, without being the same,
+yet had a curious relation which made them agree marvellously well
+in couples; as eyes with skies; as heart with art, also with part and
+smart; and so of numerous others, twenty or thirty pairs, perhaps, which
+number he considerably increased as he grew older, until he may have had
+fifty or more such pairs at his command.
+
+The union of so extensive a catalogue of words which matched each other,
+and of an ear so nice that it could tell if there were nine or eleven
+syllables in an heroic line, instead of the legitimate ten, constituted
+a rare combination of talents in the opinion of those upon whose
+judgment he relied. He was naturally led to try his powers in the
+expression of some just thought or natural sentiment in the shape of
+verse, that wonderful medium of imparting thought and feeling to his
+fellow-creatures which a bountiful Providence had made his rare and
+inestimable endowment.
+
+It was at about this period of his life, that is to say, when he was of
+the age of thirteen, or we may perhaps say fourteen years, for we do
+not wish to overstate his precocity, that he experienced a sensation so
+entirely novel, that, to the best of his belief, it was such as no other
+young person had ever known, at least in anything like the same degree.
+This extraordinary emotion was brought on by the sight of Myrtle Hazard,
+with whom he had never before had any near relations, as they had been
+at different schools, and Myrtle was too reserved to be very generally
+known among the young people of his age.
+
+Then it was that he broke forth in his virgin effort, “Lines to M----e,”
+ which were published in the village paper, and were claimed by all
+possible girls but the right one; namely, by two Mary Annes, one
+Minnie, one Mehitable, and one Marthie, as she saw fit to spell the name
+borrowed from her who was troubled about many things.
+
+The success of these lines, which were in that form of verse known to
+the hymn-books as “common metre,” was such as to convince the youth
+that, whatever occupation he might be compelled to follow for a time to
+obtain a livelihood or to assist his worthy parent, his true destiny was
+the glorious career of a poet. It was a most pleasing circumstance,
+that his mother, while she fully recognized the propriety of his being
+diligent in the prosaic line of business to which circumstances had
+called him, was yet as much convinced as he himself that he was destined
+to achieve literary fame. She had read Watts and Select Hymns all
+through, she said, and she did n't see but what Gifted could make the
+verses come out jest as slick, and the sound of the rhymes jest as
+pooty, as Izik Watts or the Selectmen, whoever they was,--she was sure
+they couldn't be the selectmen of this town, wherever they belonged.
+It is pleasant to say that the young man, though favored by nature with
+this rarest of talents, did not forget the humbler duties that Heaven,
+which dresses few singing-birds in the golden plumes of fortune, had
+laid upon him. After having received a moderate amount of instruction
+at one of the less ambitious educational institutions of the town,
+supplemented, it is true, by the judicious and gratuitous hints of
+Master Gridley, the young poet, in obedience to a feeling which did him
+the highest credit, relinquished, at least for the time, the Groves of
+Academus, and offered his youth at the shrine of Plutus, that is, left
+off studying and took to business. He became what they call a “clerk” in
+what they call a “store” up in the huckleberry districts, and kept such
+accounts as were required by the business of the establishment. His
+principal occupation was, however, to attend to the details of commerce
+as it was transacted over the counter. This industry enabled him, to
+his great praise be it spoken, to assist his excellent parent, to clothe
+himself in a becoming manner, so that he made a really handsome figure
+on Sundays and was always of presentable aspect, likewise to purchase
+a book now and then, and to subscribe for that leading periodical which
+furnishes the best models to the youth of the country in the various
+modes of composition.
+
+Though Master Gridley was very kind to the young man, he was rather
+disposed to check the exuberance of his poetical aspirations. The truth
+was, that the old classical scholar did not care a great deal for modern
+English poetry. Give him an Ode of Horace, or a scrap from the Greek
+Anthology, and he would recite it with great inflation of spirits; but
+he did not think very much of “your Keatses, and your Tennysons, and the
+whole Hasheesh crazy lot,” as he called the dreamily sensuous idealists
+who belong to the same century that brought in ether and chloroform.
+He rather shook his head at Gifted Hopkins for indulging so largely in
+metrical composition.
+
+“Better stick to your ciphering, my young friend,” he said to him, one
+day. “Figures of speech are all very well, in their way; but if you
+undertake to deal much in them, you'll figure down your prospects into
+a mighty small sum. There's some danger that it will take all the
+sense out of you, if you keep writing verses at this rate. You young
+scribblers think any kind of nonsense will do for the public, if it
+only has a string of rhymes tacked to it. Cut off the bobs of your kite,
+Gifted Hopkins, and see if it does n't pitch, and stagger, and come down
+head-foremost. Don't write any stuff with rhyming tails to it that won't
+make a decent show for itself after you've chopped all the rhyming tails
+off. That's my advice, Gifted Hopkins. Is there any book you would like
+to have out of my library? Have you ever read Spenser's Faery Queen?”
+
+He had tried, the young man answered, on the recommendation of Cyprian
+Eveleth, but had found it rather hard reading.
+
+Master Gridley lifted his eyebrows very slightly, remembering that some
+had called Spenser the poet's poet. “What a pity,” he said to himself,
+“that this Gifted Hopkins has n't got the brains of that William Murray
+Bradshaw! What's the reason, I wonder, that all the little earthen pots
+blow their covers off and froth over in rhymes at such a great rate,
+while the big iron pots keep their lids on, and do all their simmering
+inside?”
+
+That is the way these old pedants will talk, after all their youth and
+all their poetry, if they ever had any, are gone. The smiles of woman,
+in the mean time, encouraged the young poet to smite the lyre. Fame
+beckoned him upward from her templed steep. The rhymes which rose before
+him unbidden were as the rounds of Jacob's ladder, on which he would
+climb to a heaven of-glory.
+
+Master Gridley threw cold water on the young man's too sanguine
+anticipations of success. “All up with the boy, if he's going to take to
+rhyming when he ought to be doing up papers of brown sugar and weighing
+out pounds of tea. Poor-house,--that 's what it'll end in. Poets, to be
+sure! Sausage-makers! Empty skins of old phrases,--stuff 'em with odds
+and ends of old thoughts that never were good for anything,--cut 'em up
+in lengths and sell'em to fools! “And if they ain't big fools enough to
+buy 'em, give'em away; and if you can't do that, pay folks to take'em.
+Bah! what a fine style of genius common-sense is! There's a passage in
+the book that would fit half these addle-headed rhymesters. What is
+that saying of mine about “squinting brains?”
+
+He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and read:--
+
+                    “Of Squinting Brains.
+
+“Where there is one man who squints with his eyes, there are a dozen who
+squint with their brains. It is an infirmity in one of the eyes, making
+the two unequal in power, that makes men squint. Just so it is an
+inequality in the two halves of the brain that makes some men idiots and
+others rascals. I knows a fellow whose right half is a genius, but his
+other hemisphere belongs to a fool; and I had a friend perfectly
+honest on one side, but who was sent to jail because the other had
+an inveterate tendency in the direction of picking pockets and
+appropriating aes alienum.”
+
+All this, talking and reading to himself in his usual fashion.
+
+The poetical faculty which was so freely developed in Gifted Hopkins had
+never manifested itself in Cyprian Eveleth, whose look and voice might,
+to a stranger, have seemed more likely to imply an imaginative nature.
+Cyprian was dark, slender, sensitive, contemplative, a lover of lonely
+walks,--one who listened for the whispers of Nature and watched her
+shadows, and was alive to the symbolisms she writes over everything.
+But Cyprian had never shown the talent or the inclination for writing in
+verse.
+
+He was on the pleasantest terms with the young poet, and being somewhat
+older, and having had the advantage of academic and college culture,
+often gave him useful hints as to the cultivation of his powers, such
+as genius frequently requires at the hands of humbler intelligences.
+Cyprian was incapable of jealousy; and although the name of Gifted
+Hopkins was getting to be known beyond the immediate neighborhood, and
+his autograph had been requested by more than one young lady living in
+another county, he never thought of envying the young poet's spreading
+popularity.
+
+That the poet himself was flattered by these marks of public favor may
+be inferred from the growing confidence with which he expressed himself
+in his conversations with Cyprian, more especially in one which was held
+at the “store” where he officiated as “clerk.”
+
+“I become more and more assured, Cyprian,” he said, leaning over the
+counter, “that I was born to be a poet. I feel it in my marrow. I must
+succeed. I must win the laurel of fame. I must taste the sweets of”--
+
+“Molasses,” said a bareheaded girl of ten who entered at that moment,
+bearing in her hand a cracked pitcher, “ma wants three gills of
+molasses.”
+
+Gifted Hopkins dropped his subject and took up a tin measure. He served
+the little maid with a benignity quite charming to witness, made an
+entry on a slate of .08, and resumed the conversation.
+
+“Yes, I am sure of it, Cyprian. The very last piece I wrote was copied
+in two papers. It was 'Contemplations in Autumn,' and--don't think I am
+too vain--one young lady has told me that it reminded her of Pollok. You
+never wrote in verse, did you, Cyprian?”
+
+“I never wrote at all, Gifted, except school and college exercises, and
+a letter now and then. Do you find it an easy and pleasant exercise to
+make rhymes?”
+
+Pleasant! Poetry is to me a delight and a passion. I never know what
+I am going to write when I sit down. And presently the rhymes begin
+pounding in my brain,--it seems as if there were a hundred couples of
+them, paired like so many dancers,--and then these rhymes seem to take
+possession of me, like a surprise party, and bring in all sorts of
+beautiful thoughts, and I write and write, and the verses run measuring
+themselves out like”--
+
+“Ribbins,--any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins? Five eighths of a yard,
+if you please, Mr. Hopkins. How's your folks?” Then, in a lower tone,
+“Those last verses of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty.”
+
+Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of
+certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal,
+for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain
+on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of
+infinitesimals which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.
+
+The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of those bewitching
+glances which the young poet--let us rather say the poet, without making
+odious distinctions--is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear
+woman.
+
+Mr. Gifted Hopkins resumed: “I do not know where this talent, as my
+friends call it, of mine, comes from. My father used to carry a chain
+for a surveyor sometimes, and there is a ten-foot pole in the house he
+used to measure land with. I don't see why that should make me a poet.
+My mother was always fond of Dr. Watts's hymns; but so are other young
+men's mothers, and yet they don't show poetical genius. But wherever I
+got it, it comes as easy to me to write in verse as to write in prose,
+almost. Don't you ever feel a longing to send your thoughts forth in
+verse, Cyprian?”
+
+“I wish I had a greater facility of expression very often,” Cyprian
+answered; “but when I have my best thoughts I do not find that I have
+words that seem fitting to clothe them. I have imagined a great many
+poems, Gifted, but I never wrote a rhyming verse, or verse of any kind.
+Did you ever hear Olive play 'Songs without Words'? If you have ever
+heard her, you will know what I mean by unrhymed and unversed poetry.”
+
+“I am sure I don't know what you mean, Cyprian, by poetry without rhyme
+or verse, any more than I should if you talked about pictures that were
+painted on nothing, or statues that were made out of nothing. How can
+you tell that anything is poetry, I should like to know, if there is
+neither a regular line with just so many syllables, nor a rhyme? Of
+course you can't. I never have any thoughts too beautiful to put in
+verse: nothing can be too beautiful for it.”
+
+Cyprian left the conversation at this point. It was getting more
+suggestive than interpenetrating, and he thought he might talk the
+matter over better with Olive. Just then a little boy came in, and
+bargained with Gifted for a Jews-harp, which, having obtained, he placed
+against his teeth, and began playing upon it with a pleasure almost
+equal to that of the young poet reciting his own verses.
+
+“A little too much like my friend Gifted Hopkins's poetry,” Cyprian
+said, as he left the “store.” “All in one note, pretty much. Not a great
+many tunes, 'Hi Betty Martin,' 'Yankee Doodle,' and one or two more
+like them. But many people seem to like them, and I don't doubt it is as
+exciting to Gifted to write them as it is to a great genius to express
+itself in a poem.”
+
+Cyprian was, perhaps, too exacting. He loved too well the sweet
+intricacies of Spenser, the majestic and subtly interwoven harmonies
+of Milton. These made him impatient of the simpler strains of Gifted
+Hopkins.
+
+Though he himself never wrote verses, he had some qualities which his
+friend the poet may have undervalued in comparison with the talent of
+modelling the symmetries of verse and adjusting the correspondences
+of rhyme. He had kept in a singular degree all the sensibilities of
+childhood, its simplicity, its reverence. It seemed as if nothing of all
+that he met in his daily life was common or unclean to him, for there
+was no mordant in his nature for what was coarse or vile, and all else
+he could not help idealizing into its own conception of itself, so to
+speak. He loved the leaf after its kind as well as the flower, and the
+root as well as the leaf, and did not exhaust his capacity of affection
+or admiration on the blossom or bud upon which his friend the poet
+lavished the wealth of his verse. Thus Nature took him into her
+confidence. She loves the men of science well, and tells them all her
+family secrets,--who is the father of this or that member of the group,
+who is brother, sister, cousin, and so on, through all the circle of
+relationship. But there are others to whom she tells her dreams; not
+what species or genus her lily belongs to, but what vague thought it has
+when it dresses in white, or what memory of its birthplace that is
+which we call its fragrance. Cyprian was one of these. Yet he was not
+a complete nature. He required another and a wholly different one to
+be the complement of his own. Olive came as near it as a sister could,
+but--we must borrow an old image--moonlight is no more than a cold and
+vacant glimmer on the sun-dial, which only answers to the great flaming
+orb of day. If Cyprian could but find some true, sweet-tempered,
+well-balanced woman, richer in feeling than in those special imaginative
+gifts which made the outward world at times unreal to him in the
+intense reality of his own inner life, how he could enrich and adorn her
+existence,--how she could direct and chasten and elevate the character
+of all his thoughts and actions!
+
+“Bathsheba,” said Olive, “it seems to me that Cyprian is getting more
+and more fascinated with Myrtle Hazard. He has never got over the fancy
+he took to her when he first saw her in her red jacket, and called
+her the fire-hang-bird. Wouldn't they suit each other by and by, after
+Myrtle has come to herself and grown into a beautiful and noble woman,
+as I feel sure she will in due time?”
+
+“Myrtle is very lovely,” Bathsheba answered, “but is n't she a little
+too--flighty--for one like your brother? Cyprian isn't more like
+other young men than Myrtle is like other young girls. I have thought
+sometimes--I wondered whether out-of-the-way people and common ones do
+not get along best together. Does n't Cyprian want some more
+every-day kind of girl to keep him straight? Myrtle is beautiful,
+beautiful,--fascinates everybody. Has Mr. Bradshaw been following after
+her lately? He is taken with her too. Didn't you ever think she would
+have to give in to Murray Bradshaw at last? He looks to me like a man
+that would hold on desperately as a lover.”
+
+If Myrtle Hazard, instead of being a half-finished school-girl, hardly
+sixteen years old, had been a young woman of eighteen or nineteen, it
+would have been plain sailing enough for Murray Bradshaw. But he knew
+what a distance their ages seemed just now to put between them,--a
+distance which would grow practically less and less with every year,
+and he did not wish to risk anything so long as there was no danger of
+interference. He rather encouraged Gifted Hopkins to write poetry to
+Myrtle. “Go in, Gifted,” he said, “there's no telling what may come of
+it,” and Gifted did go in at a great rate.
+
+Murray Bradshaw did not write poetry himself, but he read poetry with
+a good deal of effect, and he would sometimes take a hint from one of
+Gifted Hopkins's last productions to recite a passionate lyric of Byron
+or Moore, into which he would artfully throw so much meaning that Myrtle
+was almost as much puzzled, in her simplicity, to know what it meant, as
+she had been by the religious fervors of the Rev. Mr. Stoker.
+
+He spoke well of Cyprian Eveleth. A good young man,--limited, but
+exemplary. Would succeed well as rector of a small parish. That required
+little talent, but a good deal of the humbler sort of virtue. As for
+himself, he confessed to ambition,--yes, a great deal of ambition.
+A failing, he supposed, but not the worst of failings. He felt the
+instinct to handle the larger interests of society. The village would
+perhaps lose sight of him for a time; but he meant to emerge sooner or
+later in the higher spheres of government or diplomacy. Myrtle must keep
+his secret. Nobody else knew it. He could not help making a confidant of
+her,--a thing he had never done before with any other person as to his
+plans in life. Perhaps she might watch his career with more interest
+from her acquaintance with him. He loved to think that there was
+one woman at least who would be pleased to hear of his success if
+he succeeded, as with life and health he would,--who would share his
+disappointment if fate should not favor him.--So he wound and wreathed
+himself into her thoughts.
+
+It was not very long before Myrtle began to accept the idea that she
+was the one person in the world whose peculiar duty it was to sympathize
+with the aspiring young man whose humble beginnings she had the honor
+of witnessing. And it is not very far from being the solitary confidant,
+and the single source of inspiration, to the growth of a livelier
+interest, where a young man and a young woman are in question.
+
+Myrtle was at this time her own mistress as never before. The three
+young men had access to her as she walked to and from meeting and in her
+frequent rambles, besides the opportunities Cyprian had of meeting her
+in his sister's company, and the convenient visits which, in connection
+with the great lawsuit, Murray Bradshaw could make, without question, at
+The Poplars.
+
+It was not long before Cyprian perceived that he could never pass a
+certain boundary of intimacy with Myrtle. Very pleasant and sisterly
+always she was with him; but she never looked as if she might mean more
+than she said, and cherished a little spark of sensibility which might
+be fanned into the flame of love. Cyprian felt this so certainly that he
+was on the point of telling his grief to Bathsheba, who looked to him
+as if she would sympathize as heartily with him as his own sister, and
+whose sympathy would have a certain flavor in it,--something which one
+cannot find in the heart of the dearest sister that ever lived. But
+Bathsheba was herself sensitive, and changed color when Cyprian ventured
+a hint or two in the direction of his thought, so that he never got so
+fax as to unburden his heart to her about Myrtle, whom she admired so
+sincerely that she could not have helped feeling a great interest in his
+passion towards her.
+
+As for Gifted Hopkins, the roses that were beginning to bloom fresher
+and fresher every day in Myrtle's cheeks unfolded themselves more and
+more freely, to speak metaphorically, in his song. Every week she would
+receive a delicately tinted note with lines to “Myrtle awaking,” or to
+“Myrtle retiring,” (one string of verses a little too Musidora-ish, and
+which soon found itself in the condition of a cinder, perhaps reduced
+to that state by spontaneous combustion,) or to “The Flower of the
+Tropics,” or to the “Nymph of the River-side,” or other poetical alias,
+such as bards affect in their sieges of the female heart.
+
+Gifted Hopkins was of a sanguine temperament. As he read and re-read his
+verses it certainly seemed to him that they must reach the heart of
+the angelic being to whom they were addressed. That she was slow in
+confessing the impression they made upon her, was a favorable sign; so
+many girls called his poems “sweet pooty,” that those charming words,
+though soothing, no longer stirred him deeply. Myrtle's silence showed
+that the impression his verses had made was deep. Time would develop her
+sentiments; they were both young; his position was humble as yet; but
+when he had become famous through the land-oh blissful thought!--the
+bard of Oxbow Village would bear a name that any woman would be proud
+to assume, and the M. H. which her delicate hands had wrought on the
+kerchiefs she wore would yet perhaps be read, not Myrtle Hazard, but
+Myrtle Hopkins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. SUSAN'S YOUNG MAN.
+
+There seems no reasonable doubt that Myrtle Hazard might have made a
+safe thing of it with Gifted Hopkins, (if so inclined,) provided that
+she had only been secured against interference. But the constant habit
+of reading his verses to Susan Posey was not without its risk to so
+excitable a nature as that of the young poet. Poets were always capable
+of divided affections, and Cowley's “Chronicle” is a confession that
+would fit the whole tribe of them. It is true that Gifted had no right
+to regard Susan's heart as open to the wiles of any new-comer. He knew
+that she considered herself, and was considered by another, as pledged
+and plighted. Yet she was such a devoted listener, her sympathies were
+so easily roused, her blue eyes glistened so tenderly at the least
+poetical hint, such as “Never, oh never,” “My aching heart,” “Go, let
+me weep,”--any of those touching phrases out of the long catalogue which
+readily suggests itself, that her influence was getting to be such
+that Myrtle (if really anxious to secure him) might look upon it
+with apprehension, and the owner of Susan's heart (if of a jealous
+disposition) might have thought it worth while to make a visit to Oxbow
+Village to see after his property.
+
+It may seem not impossible that some friend had suggested as much as
+this to the young lady's lover.
+
+The caution would have been unnecessary, or at least premature. Susan
+was loyal as ever to her absent friend. Gifted Hopkins had never yet
+presumed upon the familiar relations existing between them to attempt to
+shake her allegiance. It is quite as likely, after all, that the young
+gentleman about to make his appearance in Oxbow Village visited the
+place of his own accord, without a hint from anybody. But the fact
+concerns us more than the reason of it, just now.
+
+“Who do you think is coming, Mr. Gridley? Who do you think is coming?”
+ said Susan Posey, her face covered with a carnation such as the first
+season may see in a city belle, but not the second.
+
+“Well, Susan Posey, I suppose I must guess, though I am rather slow at
+that business. Perhaps the Governor. No, I don't think it can be the
+Governor, for you would n't look so happy if it was only his Excellency.
+It must be the President, Susan Posey,--President James Buchanan. Have
+n't I guessed right, now, tell me, my dear?”
+
+“O Mr. Gridley, you are too bad,--what do I care for governors and
+presidents? I know somebody that's worth fifty million thousand
+presidents,--and he 's coming,--my Clement is coming,” said Susan, who
+had by this time learned to consider the awful Byles Gridley as her next
+friend and faithful counsellor.
+
+Susan could not stay long in the house after she got her note informing
+her that her friend was soon to be with her. Everybody told everything
+to Olive Eveleth, and Susan must run over to the parsonage to tell her
+that there was a young gentleman coming to Oxbow Village; upon which
+Olive asked who it was, exactly as if she did not know; whereupon Susan
+dropped her eyes and said, “Clement,--I mean Mr. Lindsay.”
+
+That was a fair piece of news now, and Olive had her bonnet on five
+minutes after Susan was gone, and was on her way to Bathsheba's,--it was
+too bad that the poor girl who lived so out of the world shouldn't
+know anything of what was going on in it. Bathsheba had been in all the
+morning, and the Doctor had said she must take the air every day; so
+Bathsheba had on her bonnet a little after Olive had gone, and walked
+straight up to The Poplars to tell Myrtle Hazard that a certain young
+gentleman, Clement Lindsay, was coming to Oxbow Village.
+
+It was perhaps fortunate that there was no special significance to
+Myrtle in the name of Clement Lindsay. Since the adventure which had
+brought these two young persons together, and, after coming so near a
+disaster, had ended in a mere humiliation and disappointment, and
+but for Master Gridley's discreet kindness might have led to foolish
+scandal, Myrtle had never referred to it in any way. Nobody really knew
+what her plans had been except Olive and Cyprian, who had observed a
+very kind silence about the whole matter. The common version of the
+story was harmless, and near enough to the truth,--down the river,--boat
+upset,--pulled out,--taken care of by some women in a house farther
+down,--sick, brain fever,--pretty near it, anyhow,--old Dr. Hurlbut
+called in,--had her hair cut,--hystericky, etc., etc.
+
+Myrtle was contented with this statement, and asked no questions, and it
+was a perfectly understood thing that nobody alluded to the subject in
+her presence. It followed from all this that the name of Clement Lindsay
+had no peculiar meaning for her. Nor was she like to recognize him as
+the youth in whose company she had gone through her mortal peril, for
+all her recollections were confused and dreamlike from the moment when
+she awoke and found herself in the foaming rapids just above the fall,
+until that when her senses returned, and she saw Master Byles Gridley
+standing over her with that look of tenderness in his square features
+which had lingered in her recollection, and made her feel towards him as
+if she were his daughter.
+
+Now this had its advantage; for as Clement was Susan's young man, and
+had been so for two or three years, it would have been a great pity
+to have any such curious relations established between him and Myrtle
+Hazard as a consciousness on both sides of what had happened would
+naturally suggest.
+
+“Who is this Clement Lindsay, Bathsheba?” Myrtle asked.
+
+“Why, Myrtle, don't you remember about Susan Posey's is-to-be,--the
+young man that has been well, I don't know, but I suppose engaged to her
+ever since they were children almost?”
+
+“Yes, yes, I remember now. Oh dear! I have forgotten so many things, I
+should think I had been dead and was coming back to life again. Do you
+know anything about him, Bathsheba? Did n't somebody say he was very
+handsome? I wonder if he is really in love with Susan Posey. Such a
+simple thing? I want to see him. I have seen so few young men.”
+
+As Myrtle said these words, she lifted the sleeve a little on her left
+arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary movement. The glimmering
+gold of Judith Pride's bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has
+been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so, many
+souls since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of
+Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, such as Bathsheba
+had never seen there before. It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying
+unconsciously to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would
+like to try its influence on the handsome young man whom she was soon to
+meet, even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections.
+This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having
+tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the
+lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life
+was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human
+soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not
+conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling
+the instincts which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious
+adjustment. The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of
+the golden bracelet filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was
+like to be led away by the vanities of that world lying in wickedness of
+which the minister's daughter had heard so much and seen so little.
+
+Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches, to herself. She only
+felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often
+gives us,--such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a
+parent feel,--that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
+inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a
+sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true
+that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle
+Hazard of one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's virgin
+perceptions had caught a faint early ray of its glimmering twilight.
+
+She answered, after a very slight pause, which this explanation has made
+seem so long, that she had never seen the young gentleman, and that she
+did not know about Susan's sentiments. Only, as they had kept so long to
+each other, she supposed there must be love between them.
+
+Myrtle fell into a revery, with certain tableaux glowing along its
+perspectives which poor little Susan Posey would have shivered to look
+upon, if they could have been transferred from the purple clouds
+of Myrtle's imagination to the pale silvery mists of Susan's pretty
+fancies. She sat in her day-dream long after Bathsheba had left her, her
+eyes fixed, not on the faded portrait of her beatified ancestress, but
+on that other canvas where the dead Beauty seemed to live in all the
+splendors of her full-blown womanhood.
+
+The young man whose name had set her thoughts roving was handsome,
+as the glance at him already given might have foreshadowed. But his
+features had a graver impress than his age seemed to account for, and
+the sober tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had given
+him a maturity beyond his years. The story was not an uncommon one. At
+sixteen he had dreamed-and told his dream. At eighteen he had awoke, and
+found, as he believed, that a young heart had grown to his so that its
+life was dependent on his own. Whether it would have perished if its
+filaments had been gently disentangled from the object to which they
+had attached themselves, experienced judges of such matters may perhaps
+question. To justify Clement in his estimate of the danger of such an
+experiment, we must remember that to young people in their teens a first
+passion is a portentous and unprecedented phenomenon. The young man may
+have been mistaken in thinking that Susan would die if he left her, and
+may have done more than his duty in sacrificing himself; but if so,
+it was the mistake of a generous youth, who estimated the depth of
+another's feelings by his own. He measured the depth of his own rather
+by what he felt they might be, than by that of any abysses they had yet
+sounded.
+
+Clement was called a “genius” by those who knew him, and was
+consequently in danger of being spoiled early. The risk is great enough
+anywhere, but greatest in a new country, where there is an almost
+universal want of fixed standards of excellence.
+
+He was by nature an artist; a shaper with the pencil or the chisel, a
+planner, a contriver capable of turning his hand to almost any work of
+eye and hand. It would not have been strange if he thought he could do
+everything, having gifts which were capable of various application,--and
+being an American citizen. But though he was a good draughtsman, and had
+made some reliefs and modelled some figures, he called himself only an
+architect. He had given himself up to his art, not merely from a love
+of it and talent for it, but with a kind of heroic devotion, because he
+thought his country wanted a race of builders to clothe the new forms of
+religious, social, and national life afresh from the forest, the quarry,
+and the mine. Some thought he would succeed, others that he would be a
+brilliant failure.
+
+“Grand notions,--grand notions,” the master with whom he studied said.
+“Large ground plan of life,--splendid elevation. A little wild in some
+of his fancies, perhaps, but he's only a boy, and he's the kind of boy
+that sometimes grows to be a pretty big man. Wait and see,--wait and
+see. He works days, and we can let him dream nights. There's a good deal
+of him, anyhow.” His fellow-students were puzzled. Those who thought
+of their calling as a trade, and looked forward to the time when they
+should be embodying the ideals of municipal authorities in brick and
+stone, or making contracts with wealthy citizens, doubted whether
+Clement would have a sharp eye enough for business. “Too many whims, you
+know. All sorts of queer ideas in his head,--as if a boy like him were
+going to make things all over again!”.
+
+No doubt there was something of youthful extravagance in his plans and
+expectations. But it was the untamed enthusiasm which is the source of
+all great thoughts and deeds,--a beautiful delirium which age commonly
+tames down, and for which the cold shower-bath the world furnishes
+gratis proves a pretty certain cure.
+
+Creation is always preceded by chaos. The youthful architect's mind was
+confused by the multitude of suggestions which were crowding in upon
+it, and which he had not yet had time or developed mature strength
+sufficient to reduce to order. The young American of any freshness of
+intellect is stimulated to dangerous excess by the conditions of life
+into which he is born. There is a double proportion of oxygen in the New
+World air. The chemists have not found it out yet, but human brains and
+breathing-organs have long since made the discovery.
+
+Clement knew that his hasty entanglement had limited his possibilities
+of happiness in one direction, and he felt that there was a certain
+grandeur in the recompense of working out his defeated instincts through
+the ambitious medium of his noble art. Had not Pharaohs chosen it to
+proclaim their longings for immortality, Caesars their passion for pomp
+and luxury, and priests to symbolize their conceptions of the heavenly
+mansions? His dreams were on a grand scale; such, after all, are the
+best possessions of youth. Had he but been free, or mated with a
+nature akin to his own, he would have felt himself as truly the heir
+of creation as any young man that lived. But his lot was cast, and his
+youth had all the serious aspect to himself of thoughtful manhood.
+In the region of his art alone he hoped always to find freedom and a
+companionship which his home life could never give him.
+
+Clement meant to have visited his beloved before he left Alderbank,
+but was called unexpectedly back to the city. Happily Susan was not
+exacting; she looked up to him with too great a feeling of distance
+between them to dare to question his actions. Perhaps she found a
+partial consolation in the company of Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who tried his
+new poems on her, which was the next best thing to addressing them to
+her. “Would that you were with us at this delightful season,” she
+wrote in the autumn; “but no, your Susan must not repine. Yet, in the
+beautiful words of our native poet,
+
+     “Oh would, oh would that thou wast here,
+     For absence makes thee doubly dear;
+     Ah! what is life while thou 'rt away?
+     'T is night without the orb of day!'”
+
+The poet referred to, it need hardly be said, was our young and
+promising friend G. H., as he sometimes modestly signed himself. The
+letter, it is unnecessary to state, was voluminous,--for a woman can
+tell her love, or other matter of interest, over and over again in as
+many forms as another poet, not G. H., found for his grief in ringing
+the musical changes of “In Memoriam.”
+
+The answers to Susan's letters were kind, but not very long. They
+convinced her that it was a simple impossibility that Clement could come
+to Oxbow Village, on account of the great pressure of the work he had to
+keep him in the city, and the plans he must finish at any rate. But at
+last the work was partially got rid of, and Clement was coming; yes, it
+was so nice, and, oh dear! should n't she be real happy to see him?
+
+To Susan he appeared as a kind of divinity, almost too grand for human
+nature's daily food. Yet, if the simple-hearted girl could have told
+herself the whole truth in plain words, she would have confessed to
+certain doubts which from time to time, and oftener of late, cast a
+shadow on her seemingly bright future. With all the pleasure that the
+thought of meeting Clement gave her, she felt a little tremor, a certain
+degree of awe, in contemplating his visit. If she could have clothed her
+self-humiliation in the gold and purple of the “Portuguese Sonnets,”
+ it would have been another matter; but the trouble with the most common
+sources of disquiet is that they have no wardrobe of flaming phraseology
+to air themselves in; the inward burning goes on without the relief and
+gratifying display of the crater.
+
+“A friend of mine is coming to the village,” she said to Mr. Gifted
+Hopkins. “I want you to see him. He is a genius,--as some other young
+men are.” (This was obviously personal, and the youthful poet blushed
+with ingenuous delight.) “I have known him for ever so many years. He
+and I are very good friends.” The poet knew that this meant an exclusive
+relation between them; and though the fact was no surprise to him,
+his countenance fell a little. The truth was, that his admiration was
+divided between Myrtle, who seemed to him divine and adorable, but
+distant, and Susan, who listened to his frequent poems, whom he was in
+the habit of seeing in artless domestic costumes, and whose attractions
+had been gaining upon him of late in the enforced absence of his
+divinity.
+
+He retired pensive from this interview, and, flinging himself at his
+desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the
+language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he
+began thus--
+
+               “ANOTHER'S!
+
+     “Another's!  Oh the pang, the smart!
+          Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge,
+     --The barbed fang has rent a heart
+          Which--which
+
+“judge--judge,--no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge--What a disgusting
+language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge!
+And the gush of an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped
+short, corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme!
+
+“Judge,--budge,--drudge,--nudge, oh!--smudge,--misery!--fudge. In
+vain,--futile,--no use,--all up for to-night!”
+
+While the poet, headed off in this way by the poverty of his native
+tongue, sought inspiration by retiring into the world of dreams,--went
+to bed, in short, his more fortunate rival was just entering the
+village, where he was to make his brief residence at the house of Deacon
+Rumrill, who, having been a loser by the devouring element, was glad to
+receive a stray boarder when any such were looking about for quarters.
+
+For some reason or other he was restless that evening, and took out
+a volume he had brought with him to beguile the earlier hours of the
+night. It was too late when he arrived to disturb the quiet of Mrs.
+Hopkins's household, and whatever may have been Clement's impatience,
+he held it in check, and sat tranquilly until midnight over the pages of
+the book with which he had prudently provided himself.
+
+“Hope you slept well last night,” said the old Deacon, when Mr. Clement
+came down to breakfast the next morning.
+
+“Very well, thank you,--that is, after I got to bed. But I sat up pretty
+late reading my favorite Scott. I am apt to forget how the hours pass
+when I have one of his books in my hand.”
+
+The worthy Deacon looked at Mr. Clement with a sudden accession of
+interest.
+
+“You couldn't find better reading, young man. Scott is my favorite
+author. A great man. I have got his likeness in a gilt-frame hanging up
+in the other room. I have read him all through three times.”
+
+The young man's countenance brightened. He had not expected to find so
+much taste for elegant literature in an old village deacon.
+
+“What are your favorites among his writings, Deacon? I suppose you have
+your particular likings, as the rest of us have.”
+
+The Deacon was flattered by the question. “Well,” he answered, “I
+can hardly tell you. I like pretty much everything Scott ever wrote.
+Sometimes I think it is one thing, and sometimes another. Great on
+Paul's Epistles,--don't you think so?”
+
+The honest fact was, that Clement remembered very little about “Paul's
+Letters to his Kinsfolk,”--a book of Sir Walter's less famous than
+many of his others; but he signified his polite assent to the Deacon's
+statement, rather wondering at his choice of a favorite, and smiling at
+his queer way of talking about the Letters as Epistles.
+
+“I am afraid Scott is not so much read now-a-days as he once was, and as
+he ought to be,” said Mr. Clement: “Such character, such nature and so
+much grace.”
+
+“That's it,--that's it, young man,” the Deacon broke in,--“Natur' and
+Grace,--Natur' and Grace. Nobody ever knew better what those two words
+meant than Scott did, and I'm very glad to see--you've chosen such good
+wholesome reading. You can't set up too late, young man, to read Scott.
+If I had twenty children, they should all begin reading Scott as soon as
+they were old enough to spell sin,--and that's the first word my little
+ones learned, next to 'pa' and I 'ma.' Nothing like beginning the
+lessons of life in good season.”
+
+“What a grim old satirist!” Clement said to himself. “I wonder if the
+old man reads other novelists.--Do tell me, Deacon, if you have read
+Thackeray's last story?”
+
+“Thackeray's story? Published by the American Tract Society?”
+
+“Not exactly,” Clement answered, smiling, and quite delighted to find
+such an unexpected vein of grave pleasantry about the demure-looking
+church-dignitary; for the Deacon asked his question without moving a
+muscle, and took no cognizance whatever of the young man's tone and
+smile. First-class humorists are, as is well known, remarkable for the
+immovable solemnity of their features. Clement promised himself not a
+little amusement from the curiously sedate drollery of the venerable
+Deacon, who, it was plain from his conversation, had cultivated a
+literary taste which would make him a more agreeable companion than the
+common ecclesiastics of his grade in country villages.
+
+After breakfast, Mr. Clement walked forth in the direction of Mrs.
+Hopkins's house, thinking as he went of the pleasant surprise his visit
+would bring to his longing and doubtless pensive Susan; for though she
+knew he was coming, she did not know that he was at that moment in Oxbow
+Village.
+
+As he drew near the house, the first thing he saw was Susan Posey,
+almost running against her just as he turned a corner. She looked
+wonderfully lively and rosy, for the weather was getting keen and the
+frosts had begun to bite. A young gentleman was walking at her side,
+and reading to her from a paper he held in his hand. Both looked deeply
+interested,--so much so that Clement felt half ashamed of himself for
+intruding upon them so abruptly.
+
+But lovers are lovers, and Clement could not help joining them.
+The first thing, of course, was the utterance of two simultaneous
+exclamations, “Why, Clement!” “Why, Susan!” What might have come next
+in the programme, but for the presence of a third party, is matter of
+conjecture; but what did come next was a mighty awkward look on the part
+of Susan Posey, and the following short speech: “Mr. Lindsay, let me
+introduce Mr. Hopkins, my friend, the poet I 've written to you about.
+He was just reading two of his poems to me. Some other time, Gifted--Mr.
+Hopkins.”
+
+“Oh no, Mr. Hopkins,--pray go on,” said Clement. “I 'm very fond of
+poetry.”
+
+The poet did not require much urging, and began at once reciting over
+again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the “Banner
+and Oracle,”--the first verse being, as the readers of that paper will
+remember,
+
+    “She moves in splendor, like the ray
+     That flashes from unclouded skies,
+     And all the charms of night and day
+     Are mingled in her hair and eyes.”
+
+Clement, who must have been in an agony of impatience to be alone
+with his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably. He signified his
+approbation of the poem by saying that the lines were smooth and the
+rhymes absolutely without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly of
+one of the greatest poets of the century.
+
+Gifted flushed hot with pleasure. He had tasted the blood of his own
+rhymes; and when a poet gets as far as that, it is like wringing the bag
+of exhilarating gas from the lips of a fellow sucking at it, to drag his
+piece away from him.
+
+“Perhaps you will like these lines still better,” he said; “the style is
+more modern:--
+
+     “'O daughter of the spiced South,
+          Her bubbly grapes have spilled the wine
+          That staineth with its hue divine
+       The red flower of thy perfect mouth.'”
+
+And so on, through a series of stanzas like these, with the pulp of two
+rhymes between the upper and lower crust of two others.
+
+Clement was cornered. It was necessary to say something for the poet's
+sake,--perhaps for Susan's; for she was in a certain sense responsible
+for the poems of a youth of genius, of whom she had spoken so often and
+so enthusiastically.
+
+“Very good, Mr. Hopkins, and a form of verse little used, I should
+think, until of late years. You modelled this piece on the style of a
+famous living English poet, did you not?”
+
+“Indeed I did not, Mr. Lindsay,--I never imitate. Originality is, if I
+may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the
+critics allow as much as that. See here, Mr. Lindsay.”
+
+Mr. Gifted Hopkins pulled out his pocket-book, and, taking therefrom a
+cutting from a newspaper,--which dropped helplessly open of itself, as
+if tired of the process, being very tender in the joints or creases, by
+reason of having been often folded and unfolded read aloud as follows:
+
+“The bard of Oxbow Pillage--our valued correspondent who writes over
+the signature of G. H.--is, in our opinion, more remarkable for his
+originality than for any other of his numerous gifts.”
+
+Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet a little elated
+with a sense of triumph. Susan could not help sharing his feeling of
+satisfaction, and without meaning it in the least, nay, without knowing
+it, for she was as simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit--the
+merest infinitesimal atom--nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side
+of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering
+party,--it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen,
+are well-nigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of
+fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and,
+if he perceived anything of this movement, took no notice of it.
+
+He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She was tender in her
+expressions and manners as usual, but there was a little something
+in her looks and language from time to time that Clement did not know
+exactly what to make of. She colored once or twice when the young poet's
+name was mentioned. She was not so full of her little plans for the
+future as she had sometimes been, “everything was so uncertain,” she
+said. Clement asked himself whether she felt quite as sure that her
+attachment would last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not
+even any explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There
+was nothing but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling
+quite so closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if
+he had happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with
+the beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who
+would have cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time have listened to
+consolation from some other young man,--possibly from the young poet
+whose verses he had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new husbands
+soonest; there is nothing like wet weather for transplanting, as Master
+Gridley used to say. Susan had a fluent natural gift for tears, as
+Clement well knew, after the exercise of which she used to brighten up
+like the rose which had been washed, just washed in a shower, mentioned
+by Cowper.
+
+As for the poet, he learned more of his own sentiments during this visit
+of Clement's than he had ever before known. He wandered about with
+a dreadfully disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a
+falling-off in his appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed
+his mother, for she had filled the house with fragrant suggestions of
+good things coming, in honor of Mr. Lindsay, who was to be her guest
+at tea. And chiefly the genteel form of doughnut called in the native
+dialect cymbal (Qu. Symbol? B. G.) which graced the board with its
+plastic forms, suggestive of the most pleasing objects,--the spiral
+ringlets pendent from the brow of beauty; the magic circlet, which is
+the pledge of plighted affection,--the indissoluble knot, which typifies
+the union of hearts, which organs were also largely represented; this
+exceptional delicacy would at any other time have claimed his special
+notice. But his mother remarked that he paid little attention to these,
+and his, “No, I thank you,” when it came to the preserved “damsels,” as
+some call them, carried a pang with it to the maternal bosom. The most
+touching evidence of his unhappiness--whether intentional or the result
+of accident was not evident was a broken heart, which he left upon his
+plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in the language of
+flowers. His thoughts were gloomy during that day, running a good deal
+on the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary
+farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to
+snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this,
+and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the
+clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors,--an affectionate, yet
+perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from
+this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse
+to relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may rather be
+considered as implying a more than average chance for longevity; as
+those who meditate an--imposing finish naturally save themselves for it,
+and are therefore careful of their health until the time comes, and this
+is apt to be indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write
+or a proof to be corrected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE SECOND MEETING.
+
+Miss Eveleth requests the pleasure of Mr. Lindsay's company to meet a
+few friends on the evening of the Feast of St. Ambrose, December 7th,
+Wednesday.
+
+THE PARSONAGE, December 6th.
+
+It was the luckiest thing in the world. They always made a little
+festival of that evening at the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth's, in honor of his
+canonized namesake, and because they liked to have a good time. It
+came this year just at the right moment, for here was a distinguished
+stranger visiting in the place. Oxbow Village seemed to be running
+over with its one extra young man,--as may be seen sometimes in larger
+villages, and even in cities of moderate dimensions.
+
+Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had called on Clement the day after his
+arrival. He had already met the Deacon in the street, and asked some
+questions about his transient boarder.
+
+A very interesting young man, the Deacon said, much given to the
+reading of pious books. Up late at night after he came, reading Scott's
+Commentary. Appeared to be as fond of serious works as other young folks
+were of their novels and romances and other immoral publications. He,
+the Deacon, thought of having a few religious friends to meet the young
+gentleman, if he felt so disposed; and should like to have him, Mr.
+Bradshaw, come in and take a part in the exercises.--Mr. Bradshaw was
+unfortunately engaged. He thought the young gentleman could hardly find
+time for such a meeting during his brief visit.
+
+Mr. Bradshaw expected naturally to see a youth of imperfect
+constitution, and cachectic or dyspeptic tendencies, who was in training
+to furnish one of those biographies beginning with the statement that,
+from his infancy, the subject of it showed no inclination for boyish
+amusements, and so on, until he dies out, for the simple reason that
+there was not enough of him to live. Very interesting, no doubt, Master
+Byles Gridley would have said, but had no more to do with good, hearty,
+sound life than the history of those very little people to be seen in
+museums preserved in jars of alcohol, like brandy peaches.
+
+When Mr. Clement Lindsay presented himself, Mr. Bradshaw was a good deal
+surprised to see a young fellow of such a mould. He pleased himself with
+the idea that he knew a man of mark at sight, and he set down Clement in
+that category at his first glance. The young man met his penetrating and
+questioning look with a frank, ingenuous, open aspect, before which
+he felt himself disarmed, as it were, and thrown upon other means of
+analysis. He would try him a little in talk.
+
+“I hope you like these people you are with. What sort of a man do you
+find my old friend the Deacon?”
+
+Clement laughed. “A very queer old character. Loves his joke as well,
+and is as sly in making it, as if he had studied Joe Miller instead of
+the Catechism.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw looked at the young man to know what he meant. Mr. Lindsay
+talked in a very easy way for a serious young person. He was puzzled.
+He did not see to the bottom of this description of the Deacon. With a
+lawyer's instinct, he kept his doubts to himself and tried his witness
+with a new question.
+
+“Did you talk about books at all with the old man?”
+
+“To be sure I did. Would you believe it,--that aged saint is a great
+novel-reader. So he tells me. What is more, he brings up his children to
+that sort of reading, from the time when they first begin to spell. If
+anybody else had told me such a story about an old country deacon, I
+wouldn't have believed it; but he said so himself, to me, at breakfast
+this morning.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw felt as if either he or Mr. Lindsay must certainly be in
+the first stage of mild insanity, and he did not think that he himself
+could be out of his wits. He must try one more question. He had become
+so mystified that he forgot himself, and began putting his interrogation
+in legal form.
+
+“Will you state, if you please--I beg your pardon--may I ask who is your
+own favorite author?”
+
+“I think just now I like to read Scott better than almost anybody.”
+
+“Do you mean the Rev. Thomas Scott, author of the Commentary?”
+
+Clement stared at Mr. Bradshaw, and wondered whether he was trying to
+make a fool of him. The young lawyer hardly looked as if he could be a
+fool himself.
+
+“I mean Sir Walter Scott,” he said, dryly.
+
+“Oh!” said Mr. Bradshaw. He saw that there had been a slight
+misunderstanding between the young man and his worthy host, but it was
+none of his business, and there were other subjects of interest to talk
+about.
+
+“You know one of our charming young ladies very well, I believe, Mr.
+Lindsay. I think you are an old acquaintance of Miss Posey, whom we all
+consider so pretty.”
+
+Poor Clement! The question pierced to the very marrow of his soul, but
+it was put with the utmost suavity and courtesy, and honeyed with a
+compliment to the young lady, too, so that there was no avoiding a
+direct and pleasant answer to it.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “I have known the young lady you speak of for a long
+time, and very well,--in fact, as you must have heard, we are something
+more than friends. My visit here is principally on her account.”
+
+“You must give the rest of us a chance to see something of you during
+your visit, Mr. Lindsay. I hope you are invited to Miss Eveleth's
+to-morrow evening?”
+
+“Yes, I got a note this morning. Tell me, Mr. Bradshaw, who is there
+that I shall meet if I go? I have no doubt there are girls here in the
+village I should like to see, and perhaps some young fellows that I
+should like to talk with. You know all that's prettiest and pleasantest,
+of course.”
+
+“Oh, we're a little place, Mr. Lindsay. A few nice people, the
+rest comme Va, you know. High-bush blackberries and low-bush
+black-berries,--you understand,--just so everywhere,--high-bush here and
+there, low-bush plenty. You must see the two parsons' daughters,--Saint
+Ambrose's and Saint Joseph's,--and another girl I want particularly to
+introduce you to. You shall form your own opinion of her. I call her
+handsome and stylish, but you have got spoiled, you know. Our young
+poet, too, one we raised in this place, Mr. Lindsay, and a superior
+article of poet, as we think,--that is, some of us, for the rest of us
+are jealous of him, because the girls are all dying for him and want his
+autograph. And Cyp,--yes, you must talk to Cyp,--he has ideas. But don't
+forget to get hold of old Byles Master Gridley I mean--before you go.
+Big head. Brains enough for a cabinet minister, and fit out a college
+faculty with what was left over. Be sure you see old Byles. Set him
+talking about his book, 'Thoughts on the Universe.' Did n't sell much,
+but has got knowing things in it. I'll show you a copy, and then you
+can tell him you know it, and he will take to you. Come in and get your
+dinner with me to-morrow. We will dine late, as the city folks do, and
+after that we will go over to the Rector's. I should like to show you
+some of our village people.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw liked the thought of showing the young man to some of his
+friends there. As Clement was already “done for,” or “bowled out,” as
+the young lawyer would have expressed the fact of his being pledged in
+the matrimonial direction, there was nothing to be apprehended on the
+score of rivalry. And although Clement was particularly good-looking,
+and would have been called a distinguishable youth anywhere, Mr.
+Bradshaw considered himself far more than his match, in all probability,
+in social accomplishments. He expected, therefore, a certain amount of
+reflex credit for bringing such a fine young fellow in his company, and
+a second instalment of reputation from outshining him in conversation.
+This was rather nice calculating, but Murray Bradshaw always calculated.
+With most men life is like backgammon, half skill, and half luck, but
+with him it was like chess. He never pushed a pawn without reckoning the
+cost, and when his mind was least busy it was sure to be half a dozen
+moves ahead of the game as it was standing.
+
+Mr. Bradshaw gave Clement a pretty dinner enough for such a place as
+Oxbow Village. He offered him some good wine, and would have made him
+talk so as to show his lining, to use one of his own expressions, but
+Clement had apparently been through that trifling experience, and could
+not be coaxed into saying more than he meant to say. Murray Bradshaw
+was very curious to find out how it was that he had become the victim
+of such a rudimentary miss as Susan Posey. Could she be an heiress in
+disguise? Why no, of course not; had not he made all proper inquiries
+about that when Susan came to town? A small inheritance from an aunt or
+uncle, or some such relative, enough to make her a desirable party in
+the eyes of certain villagers perhaps, but nothing to allure a man like
+this, whose face and figure as marketable possessions were worth say
+a hundred thousand in the girl's own right, as Mr. Bradshaw put it
+roughly, with another hundred thousand if his talent is what some say,
+and if his connection is a desirable one, a fancy price,--anything he
+would fetch. Of course not. Must have got caught when he was a child.
+Why the diavolo didn't he break it off, then?
+
+There was no fault to find with the modest entertainment at the
+Parsonage. A splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing,
+provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward
+conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its
+bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village
+is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully
+lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel
+comfortable without being reminded that anybody is making a painful
+effort.
+
+We know several of the young people who were there, and need not trouble
+ourselves for the others. Myrtle Hazard had promised to come. She had
+her own way of late as never before; in fact, the women were afraid of
+her. Miss Silence felt that she could not be responsible for her any
+longer. She had hopes for a time that Myrtle would go through the
+customary spiritual paroxysm under the influence of the Rev. Mr.
+Stoker's assiduous exhortations; but since she had broken off with him,
+Miss Silence had looked upon her as little better than a backslider. And
+now that the girl was beginning to show the tendencies which seemed to
+come straight down to her from the belle of the last century, (whose
+rich physical developments seemed to the under-vitalized spinster as
+in themselves a kind of offence against propriety,) the forlorn woman
+folded her thin hands and looked on hopelessly, hardly venturing a
+remonstrance for fear of some new explosion. As for Cynthia, she was
+comparatively easy since she had, through Mr. Byles Gridley, upset the
+minister's questionable arrangement of religious intimacy. She had, in
+fact, in a quiet way, given Mr. Bradshaw to understand that he would
+probably meet Myrtle at the Parsonage if he dropped in at their small
+gathering. Clement walked over to Mrs. Hopkins's after his dinner with
+the young lawyer, and asked if Susan was ready to go with him. At
+the sound of his voice, Gifted Hopkins smote his forehead, and called
+himself, in subdued tones, a miserable being. His imagination wavered
+uncertain for a while between pictures of various modes of ridding
+himself of existence, and fearful deeds involving the life of others.
+He had no fell purpose of actually doing either, but there was a
+gloomy pleasure in contemplating them as possibilities, and in mentally
+sketching the “Lines written in Despair” which would be found in what
+was but an hour before the pocket of the youthful bard, G. H., victim of
+a hopeless passion. All this emotion was in the nature of a surprise to
+the young man. He had fully believed himself desperately in love with
+Myrtle Hazard; and it was not until Clement came into the family circle
+with the right of eminent domain over the realm of Susan's affections,
+that this unfortunate discovered that Susan's pretty ways and morning
+dress and love of poetry and liking for his company had been too much
+for him, and that he was henceforth to be wretched during the remainder
+of his natural life, except so far as he could unburden himself in song.
+
+Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had asked the privilege of waiting upon
+Myrtle to the little party at the Eveleths. Myrtle was not insensible
+to the attractions of the young lawyer, though she had never thought
+of herself except as a child in her relations with any of these older
+persons. But she was not the same girl that she had been but a few
+months before. She had achieved her independence by her audacious and
+most dangerous enterprise. She had gone through strange nervous trials
+and spiritual experiences which had matured her more rapidly than years
+of common life would have done. She had got back her health, bringing
+with it a riper wealth of womanhood. She had found her destiny in the
+consciousness that she inherited the beauty belonging to her blood, and
+which, after sleeping for a generation or two as if to rest from the
+glare of the pageant that follows beauty through its long career of
+triumph, had come to the light again in her life, and was to repeat the
+legends of the olden time in her own history.
+
+Myrtle's wardrobe had very little of ornament, such as the modistes of
+the town would have thought essential to render a young girl like her
+presentable. There were a few heirlooms of old date, however, which she
+had kept as curiosities until now, and which she looked over until she
+found some lace and other convertible material, with which she enlivened
+her costume a little for the evening. As she clasped the antique
+bracelet around her wrist, she felt as if it were an amulet that
+gave her the power of charming which had been so long obsolete in her
+lineage. At the bottom of her heart she cherished a secret longing to
+try her fascinations on the young lawyer. Who could blame her? It was
+not an inwardly expressed intention,--it was the simple instinctive
+movement to subjugate the strongest of the other sex who had come in her
+way, which, as already said, is as natural to a woman as it is to a man
+to be captivated by the loveliest of those to whom he dares to aspire.
+
+Before William Murray Bradshaw and Myrtle Hazard had reached the
+Parsonage, the girl's cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes were
+flashing with a new excitement. The young man had not made love to her
+directly, but he had interested her in herself by a delicate and tender
+flattery of manner, and so set her fancies working that she was taken
+with him as never before, and wishing that the Parsonage had been a mile
+farther from The Poplars. It was impossible for a young girl like Myrtle
+to conceal the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive
+admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless
+companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if
+he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying
+this child,--it might startle her to make downright love abruptly; and
+now that he had an ally in her own household, and was to have access
+to her with a freedom he had never before enjoyed, there was a
+refined pleasure in playing his fish,--this gamest of golden-scaled
+creatures,--which had risen to his fly, and which he wished to hook, but
+not to land, until he was sure it would be worth his while.
+
+They entered the little parlor at the Parsonage looking so beaming,
+that Olive and Bathsheba exchanged glances which implied so much that it
+would take a full page to tell it with all the potentialities involved.
+
+“How magnificent Myrtle is this evening, Bathsheba!” said Cyprian
+Eveleth, pensively.
+
+“What a handsome pair they are, Cyprian!” said Bathsheba cheerfully.
+
+Cyprian sighed. “She always fascinates me whenever I look upon her.
+Is n't she the very picture of what a poet's love should be,--a poem
+herself,--a glorious lyric,--all light and music! See what a smile the
+creature has! And her voice! When did you ever hear such tones? And when
+was it ever so full of life before.”
+
+Bathsheba sighed. “I do not know any poets but Gifted Hopkins. Does not
+Myrtle look more in her place by the side of Murray Bradshaw than she
+would with Gifted hitched on her arm?”
+
+Just then the poet made his appearance. He looked depressed, as if it
+had cost him an effort to come. He was, however, charged with a message
+which he must deliver to the hostess of the evening.
+
+“They 're coming presently,” he said. “That young man and Susan. Wants
+you to introduce him, Mr. Bradshaw.”
+
+The bell rang presently, and Murray Bradshaw slipped out into the entry
+to meet the two lovers.
+
+“How are you, my fortunate friend?” he said, as he met them at the door.
+“Of course you're well and happy as mortal man can be in this vale of
+tears. Charming, ravishing, quite delicious, that way of dressing your
+hair, Miss Posey! Nice girls here this evening, Mr. Lindsay. Looked
+lovely when I came out of the parlor. Can't say how they will show
+after this young lady puts in an appearance.” In reply to which florid
+speeches Susan blushed, not knowing what else to do, and Clement smiled
+as naturally as if he had been sitting for his photograph.
+
+He felt, in a vague way, that he and Susan were being patronized, which
+is not a pleasant feeling to persons with a certain pride of character.
+There was no expression of contempt about Mr. Bradshaw's manner or
+language at which he could take offence. Only he had the air of a man
+who praises his neighbor without stint, with a calm consciousness that
+he himself is out of reach of comparison in the possessions or qualities
+which he is admiring in the other. Clement was right in his obscure
+perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases.
+That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of
+showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to
+extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of
+Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered
+entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face
+to face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, not
+in words, but as plainly as speech could have told him, “Behold my
+captive!”
+
+It was a proud moment for Murray Bradshaw. He had seen, or thought
+that he had seen, the assured evidence of a speedy triumph over all the
+obstacles of Myrtle's youth and his own present seeming slight excess
+of maturity. Unless he were very greatly mistaken, he could now walk the
+course; the plate was his, no matter what might be the entries. And this
+youth, this handsome, spirited-looking, noble-aired young fellow, whose
+artist-eye could not miss a line of Myrtle's proud and almost defiant
+beauty, was to be the witness of his power, and to look in admiration
+upon his prize! He introduced him to the others, reserving her for the
+last. She was at that moment talking with the worthy Rector, and turned
+when Mr. Bradshaw spoke to her.
+
+“Miss Hazard, will you allow me to present to you my friend, Mr. Clement
+Lindsay?”
+
+They looked full upon each other, and spoke the common words of
+salutation. It was a strange meeting; but we who profess to tell the
+truth must tell strange things, or we shall be liars.
+
+In poor little Susan's letter there was some allusion to a bust of
+Innocence which the young artist had begun, but of which he had said
+nothing in his answer to her. He had roughed out a block of marble for
+that impersonation; sculpture was a delight to him, though secondary to
+his main pursuit. After his memorable adventure, the image of the girl
+he had rescued so haunted him that the pale ideal which was to work
+itself out in the bust faded away in its perpetual presence, and--alas,
+poor Susan! in obedience to the impulse that he could not control, he
+left Innocence sleeping in the marble, and began modelling a figure
+of proud and noble and imperious beauty, to which he gave the name of
+Liberty.
+
+The original which had inspired his conception was before him. These
+were the lips to which his own had clung when he brought her back from
+the land of shadows. The hyacinthine curl of her lengthening locks
+had added something to her beauty; but it was the same face which had
+haunted him. This was the form he had borne seemingly lifeless in his
+arms, and the bosom which heaved so visibly before him was that which
+his eyes they were the calm eyes of a sculptor, but of a sculptor hardly
+twenty years old.
+
+Yes,--her bosom was heaving. She had an unexplained feeling of
+suffocation, and drew great breaths,--she could not have said why,--but
+she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great
+noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of
+going into an hysteric spasm. They called Dr. Hurlbut, who was making
+himself agreeable to Olive just then, to come and see what was the
+matter with Myrtle.
+
+“A little nervous turn,--that is all,” he said.
+
+“Open the window. Loose the ribbon round her neck. Rub her hands.
+Sprinkle some water on her forehead.
+
+“A few drops of cologne. Room too warm for her,--that 's all, I think.”
+
+Myrtle came to herself after a time without anything like a regular
+paroxysm. But she was excitable, and whatever the cause of the
+disturbance may have been, it seemed prudent that she should go home
+early; and the excellent Rector insisted on caring for her, much to the
+discontent of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
+
+“Demonish odd,” said this gentleman, “was n't it, Mr. Lindsay, that Miss
+Hazard should go off in that way. Did you ever see her before?”
+
+“I--I--have seen that young lady before,” Clement answered.
+
+“Where did you meet her?” Mr. Bradshaw asked, with eager interest.
+
+“I met her in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” Clement answered, very
+solemnly.--“I leave this place to-morrow morning. Have you any commands
+for the city?”
+
+“Knows how to shut a fellow up pretty well for a young one, doesn't he?”
+ Mr. Bradshaw thought to himself.
+
+“Thank you, no,” he answered, recovering himself. “Rather a melancholy
+place to make acquaintance in, I should think, that Valley you spoke of.
+I should like to know about it.”
+
+Mr. Clement had the power of looking steadily into another person's eyes
+in a way that was by no means encouraging to curiosity or favorable to
+the process of cross-examination. Mr. Bradshaw was not disposed to press
+his question in the face of the calm, repressive look the young man gave
+him.
+
+“If he was n't bagged, I shouldn't like the shape of things any too
+well,” he said to himself.
+
+The conversation between Mr. Clement Lindsay and Miss Susan Posey, as
+they walked home together, was not very brilliant. “I am going to-morrow
+morning,” he said, “and I must bid you good-by tonight.” Perhaps it is
+as well to leave two lovers to themselves, under these circumstances.
+
+Before he went he spoke to his worthy host, whose moderate demands he
+had to satisfy, and with whom he wished to exchange a few words.
+
+“And by the way, Deacon, I have no use for this book, and as it is in a
+good type, perhaps you would like it. Your favorite, Scott, and one of
+his greatest works. I have another edition of it at home, and don't care
+for this volume.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Lindsay, much obleeged. I shall read that
+copy for your sake, the best of books next to the Bible itself.”
+
+After Mr. Lindsay had gone, the Deacon looked at the back of the book.
+“Scott's Works, Vol. IX.” He opened it at hazard, and happened to fall
+on a well-known page, from which he began reading aloud, slowly,
+
+    “When Izrul, of the Lord beloved,
+     Out of the land of bondage came.”
+
+The whole hymn pleased the grave Deacon. He had never seen this work of
+the author of the Commentary. No matter; anything that such a good man
+wrote must be good reading, and he would save it up for Sunday. The
+consequence of this was, that, when the Rev. Mr. Stoker stopped in on
+his way to meeting on the “Sabbath,” he turned white with horror at the
+spectacle of the senior Deacon of his church sitting, open-mouthed and
+wide-eyed, absorbed in the pages of “Ivanhoe,” which he found enormously
+interesting; but, so far as he had yet read, not occupied with religious
+matters so much as he had expected.
+
+Myrtle had no explanation to give of her nervous attack. Mr. Bradshaw
+called the day after the party, but did not see her. He met her walking,
+and thought she seemed a little more distant than common. That would
+never do. He called again at The Poplars a few days afterwards, and was
+met in the entry by Miss Cynthia, with whom he had a long conversation
+on matters involving Myrtle's interests and their own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. MADNESS?
+
+Mr. Clement Lindsay returned to the city and his usual labors in a state
+of strange mental agitation. He had received an impression for which he
+was unprepared. He had seen for the second time a young girl whom, for
+the peace of his own mind, and for the happiness of others, he should
+never again have looked upon until Time had taught their young hearts
+the lesson which all hearts must learn, sooner or later.
+
+What shall the unfortunate person do who has met with one of those
+disappointments, or been betrayed into one of those positions, which
+do violence to all the tenderest feelings, blighting the happiness of
+youth, and the prospects of after years?
+
+If the person is a young man, he has various resources. He can take to
+the philosophic meerschaum, and nicotine himself at brief intervals into
+a kind of buzzing and blurry insensibility, until he begins to “color”
+ at last like the bowl of his own pipe, and even his mind gets the
+tobacco flavor. Or he can have recourse to the more suggestive
+stimulants, which will dress his future up for him in shining
+possibilities that glitter like Masonic regalia, until the morning light
+and the waking headache reveal his illusion. Some kind of spiritual
+anaesthetic he must have, if he holds his grief fast tied to his
+heartstrings. But as grief must be fed with thought, or starve to death,
+it is the best plan to keep the mind so busy in other ways that it has
+no time to attend to the wants of that ravening passion. To sit down and
+passively endure it, is apt to end in putting all the mental machinery
+into disorder.
+
+Clement Lindsay had thought that his battle of life was already fought,
+and that he had conquered. He believed that he had subdued himself
+completely, and that he was ready, without betraying a shadow of
+disappointment, to take the insufficient nature which destiny had
+assigned him in his companion, and share with it all of his own larger
+being it was capable, not of comprehending, but of apprehending.
+
+He had deceived himself. The battle was not fought and won. There
+had been a struggle, and what seemed to be a victory, but the
+enemy--intrenched in the very citadel of life--had rallied, and would
+make another desperate attempt to retrieve his defeat.
+
+The haste with which the young man had quitted the village was only a
+proof that he felt his danger. He believed that, if he came into the
+presence of Myrtle Hazard for the third time, he should be no longer
+master of his feelings. Some explanation must take place between them,
+and how was it possible that it should be without emotion? and in what
+do all emotions shared by a young man with such a young girl as this
+tend to find their last expression?
+
+Clement determined to stun his sensibilities by work. He would give
+himself no leisure to indulge in idle dreams of what might have been.
+His plans were never so carefully finished, and his studies were never
+so continuous as now. But the passion still wrought within him, and, if
+he drove it from his waking thoughts, haunted his sleep until he could
+endure it no longer, and must give it some manifestation. He had covered
+up the bust of Liberty so closely, that not an outline betrayed itself
+through the heavy folds of drapery in which it was wrapped. His thoughts
+recurred to his unfinished marble, as offering the one mode in which
+he could find a silent outlet to the feelings and thoughts which it was
+torture to keep imprisoned in his soul. The cold stone would tell them,
+but without passion; and having got the image which possessed him out of
+himself into a lifeless form, it seemed as if he might be delivered from
+a presence which, lovely as it was, stood between him and all that made
+him seem honorable and worthy to himself.
+
+He uncovered the bust which he had but half shaped, and struck the first
+flake from the glittering marble. The toil, once begun, fascinated him
+strangely, and after the day's work was done, and at every interval he
+could snatch from his duties, he wrought at his secret task.
+
+“Clement is graver than ever,” the young men said at the office. “What's
+the matter, do you suppose? Turned off by the girl they say he means
+to marry by and by? How pale he looks too! Must have something worrying
+him: he used to look as fresh as a clove pink.”
+
+The master with whom he studied saw that he was losing color, and
+looking very much worn; and determined to find out, if he could, whether
+he was not overworking himself. He soon discovered that his light was
+seen burning late into the night, that he was neglecting his natural
+rest, and always busy with some unknown task, not called for in his
+routine of duty or legitimate study.
+
+“Something is wearing on you, Clement,” he said. “You are killing
+yourself with undertaking too much. Will you let me know what keeps you
+so busy when you ought to be asleep, or taking your ease and comfort in
+some way or other?”
+
+Nobody but himself had ever seen his marble or its model. He had now
+almost finished it, laboring at it with such sleepless devotion, and he
+was willing to let his master have a sight of his first effort of the
+kind,--for he was not a sculptor, it must be remembered, though he had
+modelled in clay, not without some success, from time to time.
+
+“Come with me,” he said.
+
+The master climbed the stairs with him up to his modest chamber. A
+closely shrouded bust stood on its pedestal in the light of the solitary
+window.
+
+“That is my ideal personage,” Clement said. “Wait one moment, and you
+shall see how far I have caught the character of our uncrowned queen.”
+
+The master expected, very naturally, to see the conventional young woman
+with classical wreath or feather headdress, whom we have placed upon our
+smallest coin, so that our children may all grow up loving Liberty.
+
+As Clement withdrew the drapery that covered his work, the master stared
+at it in amazement. He looked at it long and earnestly, and at length
+turned his eyes, a little moistened by some feeling which thus betrayed
+itself, upon his scholar.
+
+“This is no ideal, Clement. It is the portrait of a very young but
+very beautiful woman. No common feeling could have guided your hand in
+shaping such a portrait from memory. This must be that friend of yours
+of whom I have often heard as an amiable young person. Pardon me, for
+you know that nobody cares more for you than I do,--I hope that you are
+happy in all your relations with this young friend of yours. How could
+one be otherwise?”
+
+It was hard to bear, very hard. He forced a smile. “You are partly
+right,” he said. “There is a resemblance, I trust, to a living person,
+for I had one in my mind.”
+
+“Did n't you tell me once, Clement, that you were attempting a bust of
+Innocence? I do not see any block in your room but this. Is that done?”
+
+“Done with!” Clement answered; and, as he said it, the thought stung
+through him that this was the very stone which was to have worn the
+pleasant blandness of pretty Susan's guileless countenance. How the new
+features had effaced the recollection of the others!
+
+In a few days more Clement had finished his bust. His hours were again
+vacant to his thick-coming fancies. While he had been busy with his
+marble, his hands had required his attention, and he must think closely
+of every detail upon which he was at work. But at length his task was
+done, and he could contemplate what he had made of it. It was a triumph
+for one so little exercised in sculpture. The master had told him so,
+and his own eye could not deceive him. He might never succeed in any
+repetition of his effort, but this once he most certainly had succeeded.
+He could not disguise from himself the source of this extraordinary good
+fortune in so doubtful and difficult an attempt. Nor could he resist the
+desire of contemplating the portrait bust, which--it was foolish to talk
+about ideals--was not Liberty, but Myrtle Hazard.
+
+It was too nearly like the story of the ancient sculptor; his own
+work was an over-match for its artist. Clement had made a mistake in
+supposing that by giving his dream a material form he should drive it
+from the possession of his mind. The image in which he had fixed his
+recollection of its original served only to keep her living presence
+before him. He thought of her as she clasped her arms around him, and
+they were swallowed up in the rushing waters, coming so near to passing
+into the unknown world together. He thought of her as he stretched her
+lifeless form upon the bank, and looked for one brief moment on her
+unsunned loveliness,--“a sight to dream of, not to tell.” He thought of
+her as his last fleeting glimpse had shown her, beautiful, not with the
+blossomy prettiness that passes away with the spring sunshine, but with
+a rich vitality of which noble outlines and winning expression were only
+the natural accidents. And that singular impression which the sight of
+him had produced upon her,--how strange! How could she but have listened
+to him,--to him, who was, as it were, a second creator to her, for
+he had bought her back from the gates of the unseen realm,--if he had
+recalled to her the dread moments they had passed in each other's arms,
+with death, not love, in all their thoughts. And if then he had told her
+how her image had remained with him, how it had colored all his visions,
+and mingled with all his conceptions, would not those dark eyes have
+melted as they were turned upon him? Nay, how could he keep the thought
+away, that she would not have been insensible to his passion, if he
+could have suffered its flame to kindle in his heart? Did it not seem
+as if Death had spared them for Love, and that Love should lead them
+together through life's long journey to the gates of Death?
+
+Never! never! never! Their fates were fixed. For him, poor insect as he
+was, a solitary flight by day, and a return at evening to his wingless
+mate! For her--he thought he saw her doom.
+
+Could he give her up to the cold embraces of that passionless egotist,
+who, as he perceived plainly enough, was casting his shining net all
+around her? Clement read Murray Bradshaw correctly. He could not perhaps
+have spread his character out in set words, as we must do for him, for
+it takes a long apprenticeship to learn to describe analytically what
+we know as soon as we see it; but he felt in his inner consciousness
+all that we must tell for him. Fascinating, agreeable, artful, knowing,
+capable of winning a woman infinitely above himself, incapable of
+understanding her,--oh, if he could but touch him with the angel's
+spear, and bid him take his true shape before her whom he was gradually
+enveloping in the silken meshes of his subtle web! He would make a place
+for her in the world,--oh yes, doubtless. He would be proud of her
+in company, would dress her handsomely, and show her off in the best
+lights. But from the very hour that he felt his power over her firmly
+established, he would begin to remodel her after his own worldly
+pattern. He would dismantle her of her womanly ideals, and give her in
+their place his table of market-values. He would teach her to submit her
+sensibilities to her selfish interest, and her tastes to the fashion of
+the moment, no matter which world or half-world it came from. “As the
+husband is, the wife is,”--he would subdue her to what he worked in.
+
+All this Clement saw, as in apocalyptic vision, stored up for the wife
+of Murray Bradshaw, if he read him rightly, as he felt sure he did,
+from the few times he had seen him. He would be rich by and by, very
+probably. He looked like one of those young men who are sharp, and hard
+enough to come to fortune. Then she would have to take her place in the
+great social exhibition where the gilded cages are daily opened that the
+animals may be seen, feeding on the sight of stereotyped toilets and the
+sound of impoverished tattle. O misery of semi-provincial fashionable
+life, where wealth is at its wit's end to avoid being tired of an
+existence which has all the labor of keeping up appearances, without the
+piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid!
+How many fashionable women at the end of a long season would be ready
+to welcome heaven itself as a relief from the desperate monotony of
+dressing, dawdling, and driving!
+
+This could not go on so forever. Clement had placed a red curtain so
+as to throw a rose-bloom on his marble, and give it an aspect which
+his fancy turned to the semblance of life. He would sit and look at the
+features his own hand had so faithfully wrought, until it seemed as if
+the lips moved, sometimes as if they were smiling, sometimes as if they
+were ready to speak to him. His companions began to whisper strange
+things of him in the studio,--that his eye was getting an unnatural
+light,--that he talked as if to imaginary listeners,--in short, that
+there was a look as if something were going wrong with his brain,
+which it might be feared would spoil his fine intelligence. It was
+the undecided battle, and the enemy, as in his noblest moments he had
+considered the growing passion, was getting the better of him.
+
+He was sitting one afternoon before the fatal bust which had smiled and
+whispered away his peace, when the post-man brought him a letter. It was
+from the simple girl to whom he had given his promise. We know how she
+used to prattle in her harmless way about her innocent feelings, and the
+trifling matters that were going on in her little village world. But now
+she wrote in sadness. Something, she did not too clearly explain what,
+had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings. “I have
+no one that loves me but you,” she said; “and if you leave me I must
+droop and die. Are you true to me, dearest Clement,--true as when we
+promised each other that we would love while life lasted? Or have you
+forgotten one who will never cease to remember that she was once your
+own Susan?”
+
+Clement dropped the letter from his hand, and sat a long hour looking
+at the exquisitely wrought features of her who had come between him and
+honor and his plighted word.
+
+At length he arose, and, lifting the bust tenderly from its pedestal,
+laid it upon the cloth with which it had been covered. He wrapped it
+closely, fold upon fold, as the mother whom man condemns and God pities
+wraps the child she loves before she lifts her hand against its life.
+Then he took a heavy hammer and shattered his lovely idol into shapeless
+fragments. The strife was over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. A CHANGE OF PROGRAMME.
+
+Mr. William Murray Bradshaw was in pretty intimate relations with Miss
+Cynthia Badlam. It was well understood between them that it might be of
+very great advantage to both of them if he should in due time become
+the accepted lover of Myrtle Hazard. So long as he could be reasonably
+secure against interference, he did not wish to hurry her in making
+her decision. Two things he did wish to be sure of, if possible, before
+asking her the great question;--first, that she would answer it in the
+affirmative; and secondly, that certain contingencies, the turning
+of which was not as yet absolutely capable of being predicted, should
+happen as he expected. Cynthia had the power of furthering his wishes in
+many direct and indirect ways, and he felt sure of her cooperation. She
+had some reason to fear his enmity if she displeased him, and he had
+taken good care to make her understand that her interests would be
+greatly promoted by the success of the plan which he had formed, and
+which was confided to her alone.
+
+He kept the most careful eye on every possible source of disturbance to
+this quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins
+about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard
+entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she
+was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the
+yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was
+Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude.
+Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all
+that, and it was not very likely she would take up with such a bashful,
+humble, country youth as this. He could expect nothing beyond a possible
+rectorate in the remote distance, with one of those little pony chapels
+to preach in, which, if it were set up on a stout pole, would pass for a
+good-sized martin-house. Cyprian might do to practise on, but there was
+no danger of her looking at him in a serious way. As for that youth,
+Clement Lindsay, if he had not taken himself off as he did, Murray
+Bradshaw confessed to himself that he should have felt uneasy. He was
+too good-looking, and too clever a young fellow to have knocking about
+among fragile susceptibilities. But on reflection he saw there could be
+no danger.
+
+“All up with him,--poor diavolo! Can't understand it--such a little
+sixpenny miss--pretty enough boiled parsnip blonde, if one likes that
+sort of thing--pleases some of the old boys, apparently. Look out, Mr.
+L. remember Susanna and the Elders. Good!
+
+“Safe enough if something new doesn't turn up. Youngish. Sixteen's
+a little early. Seventeen will do. Marry a girl while she's in the
+gristle, and you can shape her bones for her. Splendid creature without
+her trimmings. Wants training. Must learn to dance, and sing something
+besides psalm-tunes.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw began humming the hymn, “When I can read my title clear,”
+ adding some variations of his own. “That 's the solo for my prima
+donna!”
+
+In the mean time Myrtle seemed to be showing some new developments. One
+would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the
+city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature. Her little nervous
+attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day. She
+was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please
+herself with the homage of her rustic admirers. Why was it that no one
+of them had the look and bearing of that young man she had seen but a
+moment the other evening? To think that he should have taken up with
+such a weakling as Susan Posey! She sighed, and not so much thought as
+felt how kind it would have been in Heaven to have made her such a man.
+But the image of the delicate blonde stood between her and all serious
+thought of Clement Lindsay. She saw the wedding in the distance, and
+very foolishly thought to herself that she could not and would not go to
+it.
+
+But Clement Lindsay was gone, and she must content herself with such
+worshippers as the village afforded. Murray Bradshaw was surprised and
+confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and
+played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room
+belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are
+really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the
+topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on
+its floor. He admired her all the more for this, and yet he saw that she
+would be a harder prize to win than he had once thought. If he made up
+his mind that he would have her, he must go armed with all implements,
+from the red hackle to the harpoon.
+
+The change which surprised Murray Bradshaw could not fail to be noticed
+by all those about her. Miss Silence had long ago come to pantomime,
+rolling up of eyes, clasping of hands, making of sad mouths, and the
+rest,--but left her to her own way, as already the property of that
+great firm of World & Co. which drives such sharp bargains for young
+souls with the better angels. Cynthia studied her for her own purposes,
+but had never gained her confidence. The Irish servant saw that some
+change had come over her, and thought of the great ladies she had
+sometimes looked upon in the old country. They all had a kind of
+superstitious feeling about Myrtle's bracelet, of which she had told
+them the story, but which Kitty half believed was put in the drawer by
+the fairies, who brought her ribbons and partridge feathers, and
+other slight adornments with which she contrived to set off her simple
+costume, so as to produce those effects which an eye for color and
+cunning fingers can bring out of almost nothing.
+
+Gifted Hopkins was now in a sad, vacillating condition, between the two
+great attractions to which he was exposed. Myrtle looked so immensely
+handsome ere Sunday when he saw her going to church, not to meeting, for
+she world not go, except when she knew Father Pemberton was going to be
+the preacher, that the young poet was on the point of going down on his
+knees to her, and telling her that his heart was hers and hers alone.
+But he suddenly remembered that he had on his best trousers, and the
+idea of carrying the marks of his devotion in the shape of two dusty
+impressions on his most valued article of apparel turned the scale
+against the demonstration. It happened the next morning, that Susan
+Posey wore the most becoming ribbon she had displayed for a long
+time, and Gifted was so taken with her pretty looks that he might very
+probably have made the same speech to her that he had been on the point
+of making to Myrtle the day before, but that he remembered her plighted
+affections, and thought what he should have to say for himself when
+Clement Lindsay, in a frenzy of rage and jealousy, stood before him,
+probably armed with as many deadly instruments as a lawyer mentions by
+name in an indictment for murder.
+
+Cyprian Eveleth looked very differently on the new manifestations Myrtle
+was making of her tastes and inclinations. He had always felt dazzled,
+as well as attracted, by her; but now there was something in her
+expression and manner which made him feel still more strongly that they
+were intended for different spheres of life. He could not but own that
+she was born for a brilliant destiny,--that no ball-room would throw a
+light from its chandeliers too strong for her,--that no circle would
+be too brilliant for her to illuminate by her presence. Love does not
+thrive without hope, and Cyprian was beginning to see that it was idle
+in him to think of folding these wide wings of Myrtle's so that they
+would be shut up in any cage he could ever offer her. He began to doubt
+whether, after all, he might not find a meeker and humbler nature better
+adapted to his own. And so it happened that one evening after the three
+girls, Olive, Myrtle, and Bathsheba, had been together at the Parsonage,
+and Cyprian, availing himself of a brother's privilege, had joined them,
+he found he had been talking most of the evening with the gentle girl
+whose voice had grown so soft and sweet, during her long ministry in
+the sick-chamber, that it seemed to him more like music than speech. It
+would not be fair to say that Myrtle was piqued to see that Cyprian was
+devoting himself to Bathsheba. Her ambition was already reaching beyond
+her little village circle, and she had an inward sense that Cyprian
+found a form of sympathy in the minister's simple-minded daughter which
+he could not ask from a young woman of her own aspirations.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Master Byles Gridley was one morning
+surprised by an early call from Myrtle. He had a volume of Walton's
+Polyglot open before him, and was reading Job in the original, when she
+entered.
+
+“Why, bless me, is that my young friend Miss Myrtle Hazard?” he
+exclaimed. “I might call you Keren-Happuch, which is Hebrew for Child of
+Beauty, and not be very far out of the way, Job's youngest daughter,
+my dear. And what brings my young friend out in such good season this
+morning? Nothing going wrong up at our ancient mansion, The Poplars, I
+trust?”
+
+“I want to talk with you, dear Master Gridley,” she answered. She looked
+as if she did not know just how to begin.
+
+“Anything that interests you, Myrtle, interests me. I think you have
+some project in that young head of yours, my child. Let us have it, in
+all its dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness. I think I can guess,
+Myrtle, that we have a little plan of some kind or other. We don't visit
+Papa Job quite so early as this without some special cause,--do we, Miss
+Keren-Happuch?”
+
+“I want to go to the city--to school,” Myrtle said, with the directness
+which belonged to her nature.
+
+“That is precisely what I want you to do myself, Miss Myrtle Hazard. I
+don't like to lose you from the village, but I think we must spare you
+for a while.”
+
+“You're the best and dearest man that ever lived. What could have made
+you think of such a thing for me, Mr. Gridley?”
+
+“Because you are ignorant, my child,--partly I want to see you fitted to
+take a look at the world without feeling like a little country miss. Has
+your aunt Silence promised to bear your expenses while you are in the
+city? It will cost a good deal of money.”
+
+“I have not said a word to her about it. I am sure I don't know what she
+would say. But I have some money, Mr. Gridley.”
+
+She showed him a purse with gold, telling him how she came by it. “There
+is some silver besides. Will it be enough?”
+
+“No, no, my child, we must not meddle with that. Your aunt will let me
+put it in the bank for you, I think, where it will be safe. But that
+shall not make any difference. I have got a little money lying idle,
+which you may just as well have the use of as not. You can pay it back
+perhaps some time or other; if you did not, it would not make much
+difference. I am pretty much alone in the world, and except a book now
+and then--Aut liberos aut libros, as our valiant heretic has it,--you
+ought to know a little Latin, Myrtle, but never mind--I have not much
+occasion for money. You shall go to the best school that any of our
+cities can offer, Myrtle, and you shall stay there until we agree that
+you are fitted to come back to us an ornament to Oxbow Village, and to
+larger places than this if you are called there. We have had some talk
+about it, your aunt Silence and I, and it is all settled. Your aunt does
+not feel very rich just now, or perhaps she would do more for you. She
+has many pious and poor friends, and it keeps her funds low. Never mind,
+my child, we will have it all arranged for you, and you shall begin the
+year 1860 in Madam Delacoste's institution for young ladies. Too many
+rich girls and fashionable ones there, I fear, but you must see some of
+all kinds, and there are very good instructors in the school,--I know
+one,--he was a college boy with me,--and you will find pleasant and good
+companions there, so he tells me; only don't be in a hurry to choose
+your friends, for the least desirable young persons are very apt to
+cluster about a new-comer.”
+
+Myrtle was bewildered with the suddenness of the prospect thus held
+out to her. It is a wonder that she did not bestow an embrace upon the
+worthy old master. Perhaps she had too much tact. It is a pretty way
+enough of telling one that he belongs to a past generation, but it
+does tell him that not over-pleasing fact. Like the title of Emeritus
+Professor, it is a tribute to be accepted, hardly to be longed for.
+
+When the curtain rises again, it will show Miss Hazard in a new
+character, and surrounded by a new world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. MYRTLE HAZARD AT THE CITY SCHOOL.
+
+Mr. Bradshaw was obliged to leave town for a week or two on business
+connected with the great land-claim. On his return, feeling in pretty
+good spirits, as the prospects looked favorable, he went to make a call
+at The Poplars. He asked first for Miss Hazard.
+
+“Bliss your soul, Mr. Bridshaw,” answered Mistress Kitty Fagan, “she's
+been gahn nigh a wake. It's to the city, to the big school, they've sint
+her.”
+
+This announcement seemed to make a deep impression on Murray Bradshaw,
+for his feelings found utterance in one of the most energetic forms of
+language to which ears polite or impolite are accustomed. He next asked
+for Miss Silence, who soon presented herself. Mr. Bradshaw asked, in a
+rather excited way, “Is it possible, Miss Withers, that your niece has
+quitted you to go to a city school?”
+
+Miss Silence answered, with her chief--mourner expression, and her
+death-chamber tone: “Yes, she has left us for a season. I trust it
+may not be her destruction. I had hoped in former years that she would
+become a missionary, but I have given up all expectation of that now.
+Two whole years, from the age of four to that of six, I had prevailed
+upon her to give up sugar,--the money so saved to go to a graduate
+of our institution--who was afterwards----he labored among the
+cannibal-islanders. I thought she seemed to take pleasure in this small
+act of self-denial, but I have since suspected that Kitty gave her
+secret lumps. It was by Mr. Gridley's advice that she went, and by his
+pecuniary assistance. What could I do? She was bent on going, and I was
+afraid she would have fits, or do something dreadful, if I did not let
+her have her way. I am afraid she will come back to us spoiled. She has
+seemed so fond of dress lately, and once she spoke of learning--yes,
+Mr. Bradshaw, of learning to--dance! I wept when I heard of it. Yes, I
+wept.”
+
+That was such a tremendous thing to think of, and especially to speak of
+in Mr. Bradshaw's presence, for the most pathetic image in the world to
+many women is that of themselves in tears,--that it brought a return of
+the same overflow, which served as a substitute for conversation until
+Miss Badlam entered the apartment.
+
+Miss Cynthia followed the same general course of remark. They could not
+help Myrtle's going if they tried. She had always maintained that, if
+they had only once broke her will when she was little, they would have
+kept the upper hand of her; but her will never was broke. They came
+pretty near it once, but the child would n't give in.
+
+Miss Cynthia went to the door with Mr. Bradshaw, and the conversation
+immediately became short and informal.
+
+“Demonish pretty business! All up for a year or more,--hey?”
+
+“Don't blame me,--I couldn't stop her.”
+
+“Give me her address,--I 'll write to her. Any young men teach in the
+school?”
+
+“Can't tell you. She'll write to Olive and Bathsheba, and I'll find out
+all about it.”
+
+Murray Bradshaw went home and wrote a long letter to Mrs. Clymer
+Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place, containing many interesting remarks and
+inquiries, some of the latter relating to Madam Delacoste's institution
+for the education of young ladies.
+
+While this was going on at Oxbow Village, Myrtle was establishing
+herself at the rather fashionable school to which Mr. Gridley had
+recommended her. Mrs. or Madam Delacoste's boarding-school had a name
+which on the whole it deserved pretty well. She had some very good
+instructors for girls who wished to get up useful knowledge in case they
+might marry professors or ministers. They had a chance to learn music,
+dancing, drawing, and the way of behaving in company. There was a
+chance, too, to pick up available acquaintances, for many rich people
+sent their daughters to the school, and it was something to have been
+bred in their company.
+
+There was the usual division of the scholars into a first and second
+set, according to the social position, mainly depending upon the
+fortune, of the families to which they belonged. The wholesale dealer's
+daughter very naturally considered herself as belonging to a different
+order from the retail dealer's daughter. The keeper of a great hotel and
+the editor of a widely circulated newspaper were considered as ranking
+with the wholesale dealers, and their daughters belonged also to the
+untitled nobility which has the dollar for its armorial bearing. The
+second set had most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest
+girls; but nobody knew anything about their families, who lived off the
+great streets and avenues, or vegetated in country towns.
+
+Myrtle Hazard's advent made something like a sensation. They did not
+know exactly what to make of her. Hazard? Hazard? No great firm of that
+name. No leading hotel kept by any Hazard, was there? No newspaper of
+note edited by anybody called Hazard, was there? Came from where? Oxbow
+Village. Oh, rural district. Yes.--Still they could not help owning
+that she was handsome, a concession which of course had to be made with
+reservations.
+
+“Don't you think she's vuiry good-lookin'?” said a Boston girl to a New
+York girl. “I think she's real pooty.”
+
+“I dew, indeed. I didn't think she was haaf so handsome the feeest time
+I saw her,” answered the New York girl.
+
+“What a pity she had n't been bawn in Bawston!”
+
+“Yes, and moved very young to Ne Yock!”
+
+“And married a sarsaparilla man, and lived in Fiff Avenoo, and moved in
+the fust society.”
+
+“Better dew that than be strong-mainded, and dew your own cook'n, and
+live in your own kitch'n.”
+
+“Don't forgit to send your card when you are Mrs. Old Dr. Jacob!”
+
+“Indeed I shaan't. What's the name of the alley, and which bell?” The
+New York girl took out a memorandum-book as if to put it down.
+
+“Had n't you better let me write it for you, dear?” said the Boston
+girl. “It is as well to have it legible, you know.”
+
+“Take it,” said the New York girl. “There 's tew York shill'ns in it
+when I hand it to you.”
+
+“Your whole quarter's allowance, I bullieve,--ain't it?” said the Boston
+girl.
+
+“Elegant manners, correct deportment, and propriety of language will be
+strictly attended to in this institution. The most correct standards of
+pronunciation will be inculcated by precept and example. It will be
+the special aim of the teachers to educate their pupils out of all
+provincialisms, so that they may be recognized as well-bred English
+scholars wherever the language is spoken in its purity.”--Extract from
+the Prospectus of Madam Delacoste's Boarding-school.
+
+Myrtle Hazard was a puzzle to all the girls. Striking, they all agreed,
+but then the criticisms began. Many of the girls chattered a little
+broken French, and one of them, Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half
+educated in Paris, so that she had all the phrases which are to social
+operators what his cutting instruments are to the surgeon. Her face she
+allowed was handsome; but her style, according to this oracle, was
+a little bourgeoise, and her air not exactly comme il faut. More
+specifically, she was guilty of contours fortement prononces,--corsage
+de paysanne,--quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided
+herself on her figure.
+
+Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian girl had
+christened her,) the beauty of the school, did not think so much of
+Myrtle's face, but considered her figure as better than the De Lacy
+girl's.
+
+The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the Greeks and
+Trojans over a dead hero, or the Yale College societies over a live
+freshman. She was nobody by her connections, it is true, so far as
+they could find out, but then, on the other hand, she had the walk of
+a queen, and she looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or
+two would make her a belle of the first water. She had that air of
+indifference to their little looks and whispered comments which is
+surest to disarm all the critics of a small tattling community. On the
+other hand, she came to this school to learn, and not to play; and the
+modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the
+cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people,
+considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters
+of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling
+over each other in the golden dust of the great city markets.
+
+She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets. She came
+with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply
+them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads
+of the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
+therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
+somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
+touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
+melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
+and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences.
+She caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
+unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became
+nature with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed
+in the educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl
+had an opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits
+prescribed. And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air
+she contrived to give her dresses, and the skill with which she blended
+their colors.
+
+“Tell you what, girls,” said Miss Berengaria Topping, female
+representative of the great dynasty that ruled over the world-famous
+Planet Hotel, “she's got style, lots of it. I call her perfectly
+splendid, when she's got up in her swell clothes. That oriole's wing
+she wears in her bonnet makes her look gorgeous, she'll be a stunning
+Pocahontas for the next tableau.”
+
+Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of the only
+merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to seek profit from,
+thought she could be made presentable in the first circles if taken in
+hand in good season. So it came about that, before many weeks had passed
+over her as a scholar in the great educational establishment, she might
+be considered as on the whole the most popular girl in the whole bevy
+of them. The studious ones admired her for her facility of learning, and
+her extraordinary appetite for every form of instruction, and the showy
+girls, who were only enduring school as the purgatory that opened into
+the celestial world of society, recognized in her a very handsome young
+person, who would be like to make a sensation sooner or later.
+
+There were, however, it must be confessed, a few who considered
+themselves the thickest of the cream of the school-girls, who submitted
+her to a more trying ordeal than any she had yet passed.
+
+“How many horses does your papa keep?” asked Miss Florence Smythe. “We
+keep nine, and a pony for Edgar.”
+
+Myrtle had to explain that she had no papa, and that they did not keep
+any horses. Thereupon Miss Florence Smythe lost her desire to form an
+acquaintance, and wrote home to her mother (who was an ex-bonnet-maker)
+that the school was getting common, she was afraid,--they were letting
+in persons one knew nothing about.
+
+Miss Clare Browne had a similar curiosity about the amount of plate used
+in the household from which Myrtle came. Her father had just bought a
+complete silver service. Myrtle had to own that they used a good deal of
+china at her own home,--old china, which had been a hundred years in the
+family, some of it.
+
+“A hundred years old!” exclaimed Miss Clare Browne. “What queer-looking
+stuff it must be! Why, everything in our house is just as new and
+bright! Papaa had all our pictures painted on purpose for us. Have you
+got any handsome pictures in your house?”
+
+“We have a good many portraits of members of the family,” she said,
+“some of them older than the china.”
+
+“How very very odd! What do the dear old things look like?”
+
+“One was a great beauty in her time.”
+
+“How jolly!”
+
+“Another was a young woman who was put to death for her
+religion,--burned to ashes at the stake in Queen Mary's time.”
+
+“How very very wicked! It was n't nice a bit, was it? Ain't you telling
+me stories? Was that a hundred years ago?--But you 've got some new
+pictures and things, have n't you? Who furnished your parlors?”
+
+“My great-grandfather, or his father, I believe.”
+
+“Stuff and nonsense. I don't believe it. What color are your
+carriage-horses?”
+
+“Our woman, Kitty Fagan, told somebody once we didn't keep any horse but
+a cow.”
+
+“Not keep any horses! Do for pity's sake let me look at your feet.”
+
+Myrtle put out as neat a little foot as a shoemaker ever fitted with a
+pair of number two. What she would have been tempted to do with it, if
+she had been a boy, we will not stop to guess. After all, the questions
+amused her quite as much as the answers instructed Miss Clara Browne.
+Of that young lady's ancestral claims to distinction there is no need of
+discoursing. Her “papaa” commonly said sir in talking with a gentleman,
+and her “mammaa” would once in a while forget, and go down the area
+steps instead of entering at the proper door; but they lived behind a
+brown stone front, which veneers everybody's antecedents with a facing
+of respectability.
+
+Miss Clara Browne wrote home to her mother in the same terms as Miss
+Florence Smythe,--that the school was getting dreadful common, and they
+were letting in very queer folks.
+
+Still another trial awaited Myrtle, and one which not one girl in a
+thousand would have been so unprepared to meet. She knew absolutely
+nothing of certain things with which the vast majority of young persons
+were quite familiar.
+
+There were literary young ladies, who had read everything of Dickens
+and Thackeray, and something at least of Sir Walter, and occasionally,
+perhaps, a French novel, which they had better have let alone. One of
+the talking young ladies of this set began upon Myrtle one day.
+
+“Oh, is n't 'Pickwick' nice?” she asked.
+
+“I don't know,” Myrtle replied; “I never tasted any.”
+
+The girl stared at her as if she were a crazy creature. “Tasted any!
+Why, I mean the 'Pickwick Papers,' Dickens's story. Don't you think
+they're nice.”
+
+Poor Myrtle had to confess that she had never read them, and did n't
+know anything about them.
+
+“What! did you never read any novels?” said the young lady.
+
+“Oh, to be sure I have,” said Myrtle, blushing as she thought of
+the great trunk and its contents. “I have read 'Caleb Williams,' and
+'Evelina,' and 'Tristram Shandy'” (naughty girl!), “and the 'Castle of
+Otranto,' and the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'
+and 'Don Quixote'--”
+
+The young lady burst out laughing. “Stop! stop! for mercy's sake,” she
+cried. “You must be somebody that's been dead and buried and come back
+to life again. Why you're Rip Van Winkle in a petticoat! You ought to
+powder your hair and wear patches.”
+
+“We've got the oddest girl here,” this young lady wrote home. “She has
+n't read any book that is n't a thousand years old. One of the girls
+says she wears a trilobite for a breastpin; some horrid old stone, I
+believe that is, that was a bug ever so long ago. Her name, she says, is
+Myrtle Hazard, but I call her Rip Van Myrtle.”
+
+Notwithstanding the quiet life which these young girls were compelled
+to lead, they did once in a while have their gatherings, at which a few
+young gentlemen were admitted. One of these took place about a month
+after Myrtle had joined the school. The girls were all in their best,
+and by and by they were to have a tableau. Myrtle came out in all her
+force. She dressed herself as nearly as she dared like the handsome
+woman of the past generation whom she resembled. The very spirit of the
+dead beauty seemed to animate every feature and every movement of the
+young girl whose position in the school was assured from that moment.
+She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or
+three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by
+some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success
+without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and
+crowds something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.
+
+The cruelest cut of all was the remark attributed to Mr. Livingston
+Jerkins, who was what the opposition girls just referred to called the
+great “swell” among the privileged young gentlemen who were present at
+the gathering.
+
+“Rip Van Myrtle, you call that handsome girl, do you, Miss Clara? By
+Jove, she's the stylishest of the whole lot, to say nothing of being a
+first-class beauty. Of course you know I except one, Miss Clara. If a
+girl can go to sleep and wake up after twenty years looking like that,
+I know a good many who had better begin their nap without waiting. If I
+were Florence Smythe, I'd try it, and begin now,--eh, Clara?”
+
+Miss Browne felt the praise of Myrtle to be slightly alleviated by the
+depreciation of Miss Smythe, who had long been a rival of her own. A
+little later in the evening Miss Smythe enjoyed almost precisely the
+same sensation, produced in a very economical way by Mr. Livingston
+Jenkins's repeating pretty nearly the same sentiments to her, only with
+a change in the arrangement of the proper names. The two young ladies
+were left feeling comparatively comfortable with regard to each other,
+each intending to repeat Mr. Livingston Jenkins's remark about her
+friend to such of her other friends as enjoyed clever sayings, but not
+at all comfortable with reference to Myrtle Hazard, who was evidently
+considered by the leading “swell” of their circle as the most noticeable
+personage of the assembly. The individual exception in each case did
+very well as a matter of politeness, but they knew well enough what he
+meant.
+
+It seemed to Myrtle Hazard, that evening, that she felt the bracelet on
+her wrist glow with a strange, unaccustomed warmth. It was as if it had
+just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and
+tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked
+to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the
+water,--bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river,
+and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length
+afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first
+time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to command, to rule
+with gentle sway in virtue of the royal gift of beauty,--to enchant with
+the commonest exercise of speech, through the rare quality of a voice
+which could not help being always gracious and winning, of a manner
+which came to her as an inheritance of which she had just found the
+title. She read in the eyes of all that she was more than any other the
+centre of admiration. Blame her who may, the world was a very splendid
+vision as it opened before her eyes in its long vista of pleasures and
+of triumphs. How different the light of these bright saloons from the
+glimmer of the dim chamber at The Poplars! Silence Withers was at that
+very moment looking at the portraits of Anne Holyoake and of Judith
+Pride. “The old picture seems to me to be fading faster than ever,” she
+was thinking. But when she held her lamp before the other, it seemed to
+her that the picture never was so fresh before, and that the proud smile
+upon its lips was more full of conscious triumph than she remembered
+it. A reflex, doubtless, of her own thoughts, for she believed that the
+martyr was weeping even in heaven over her lost descendant, and that the
+beauty, changed to the nature of the malignant spiritual company with
+which she had long consorted in the under-world, was pleasing herself
+with the thought that Myrtle was in due time to bring her news from the
+Satanic province overhead, where she herself had so long indulged in the
+profligacy of embonpoint and loveliness.
+
+The evening at the school-party was to terminate with some tableaux. The
+girl who had suggested that Myrtle would look “stunning” or “gorgeous”
+ or “jolly,” or whatever the expression was, as Pocahontas, was not far
+out of the way, and it was so evident to the managing heads that she
+would make a fine appearance in that character, that the “Rescue of
+Captain John Smith” was specially got up to show her off.
+
+Myrtle had sufficient reason to believe that there was a hint of Indian
+blood in her veins. It was one of those family legends which some of
+the members are a little proud of, and others are willing to leave
+uninvestigated. But with Myrtle it was a fixed belief that she felt
+perfectly distinct currents of her ancestral blood at intervals, and she
+had sometimes thought there were instincts and vague recollections which
+must have come from the old warriors and hunters and their dusky brides.
+The Indians who visited the neighborhood recognized something of their
+own race in her dark eyes, as the reader may remember they told the
+persons who were searching after her. It had almost frightened her
+sometimes to find how like a wild creature she felt when alone in the
+woods. Her senses had much of that delicacy for which the red people are
+noted, and she often thought she could follow the trail of an enemy, if
+she wished to track one through the forest, as unerringly as if she were
+a Pequot or a Mohegan.
+
+It was a strange feeling that came over Myrtle, as they dressed her for
+the part she was to take. Had she never worn that painted robe before?
+Was it the first time that these strings of wampum had ever rattled upon
+her neck and arms? And could it be that the plume of eagle's feathers
+with which they crowned her dark, fast-lengthening locks had never
+shadowed her forehead until now? She felt herself carried back into the
+dim ages when the wilderness was yet untrodden save by the feet of its
+native lords. Think of her wild fancy as we may, she felt as if that
+dusky woman of her midnight vision on the river were breathing for one
+hour through her lips. If this belief had lasted, it is plain enough
+where it would have carried her. But it came into her imagination and
+vivifying consciousness with the putting on of her unwonted costume,
+and might well leave her when she put it off. It is not for us, who tell
+only what happened, to solve these mysteries of the seeming admission
+of unhoused souls into the fleshly tenements belonging to air-breathing
+personalities. A very little more, and from that evening forward the
+question would have been treated in full in all the works on medical
+jurisprudence published throughout the limits of Christendom. The story
+must be told or we should not be honest with the reader.
+
+TABLEAU 1. Captain John Smith (Miss Euphrosyne de Lacy) was to be
+represented prostrate and bound, ready for execution; Powhatan (Miss
+Florence Smythe) sitting upon a log; savages with clubs (Misses Clara
+Browne, A. Van Boodle, E. Van Boodle, Heister, Booster, etc., etc.)
+standing around; Pocahontas holding the knife in her hand, ready to cut
+the cords with which Captain John Smith is bound.--Curtain.
+
+TABLEAU 2. Captain John Smith released and kneeling before Pocahontas,
+whose hand is extended in the act of raising him and presenting him to
+her father. Savages in various attitudes of surprise. Clubs fallen from
+their hands. Strontian flame to be kindled.--Curtain.
+
+This was a portion of the programme for the evening, as arranged behind
+the scenes. The first part went off with wonderful eclat, and at its
+close there were loud cries for Pocahontas. She appeared for a moment.
+Bouquets were flung to her; and a wreath, which one of the young ladies
+had expected for herself in another part, was tossed upon the stage, and
+laid at her feet. The curtain fell.
+
+“Put the wreath on her for the next tableau,” some of them whispered,
+just as the curtain was going to rise, and one of the girls hastened to
+place it upon her head.
+
+The disappointed young lady could not endure it, and, in a spasm of
+jealous passion, sprang at Myrtle, snatched it from her head, and
+trampled it under her feet at the very instant the curtain was rising.
+With a cry which some said had the blood-chilling tone of an Indian's
+battle-shriek, Myrtle caught the knife up, and raised her arm against
+the girl who had thus rudely assailed her. The girl sank to the ground,
+covering her eyes in her terror. Myrtle, with her arm still lifted, and
+the blade glistening in her hand, stood over her, rigid as if she had
+been suddenly changed to stone. Many of those looking on thought all
+this was a part of the show, and were thrilled with the wonderful
+acting. Before those immediately around her had had time to recover from
+the palsy of their fright Myrtle had flung the knife away from her, and
+was kneeling, her head bowed and her hands crossed upon her breast. The
+audience went into a rapture of applause as the curtain came suddenly
+down; but Myrtle had forgotten all but the dread peril she had just
+passed, and was thanking God that his angel--her own protecting spirit,
+as it seemed to her had stayed the arm which a passion such as her
+nature had never known, such as she believed was alien to her truest
+self, had lifted with deadliest purpose. She alone knew how extreme the
+danger had been. “She meant to scare her,--that 's all,” they said. But
+Myrtle tore the eagle's feathers from her hair, and stripped off her
+colored beads, and threw off her painted robe. The metempsychosis was
+far too real for her to let her wear the semblance of the savage from
+whom, as she believed, had come the lawless impulse at the thought of
+which her soul recoiled in horror.
+
+“Pocahontas has got a horrid headache,” the managing young ladies gave
+it out, “and can't come to time for the last tableau.” So this all
+passed over, not only without loss of credit to Myrtle, but with no
+small addition to her local fame,--for it must have been acting; “and
+was n't it stunning to see her with that knife, looking as if she was
+going to stab Bells, or to scalp her, or something?”
+
+As Master Gridley had predicted, and as is the case commonly with
+new-comers at colleges and schools, Myrtle had come first in contact
+with those who were least agreeable to meet. The low-bred youth who
+amuse themselves with scurvy tricks on freshmen, and the vulgar girls
+who try to show off their gentility to those whom they think less
+important than themselves, are exceptions in every institution; but they
+make themselves odiously prominent before the quiet and modest young
+people have had time to gain the new scholar's confidence. Myrtle found
+friends in due time, some of them daughters of rich people, some poor
+girls, who came with the same sincerity of purpose as herself. But
+not one was her match in the facility of acquiring knowledge. Not one
+promised to make such a mark in society, if she found an opening into
+its loftier circles. She was by no means ignorant of her natural gifts,
+and she cultivated them with the ambition which would not let her rest.
+
+During her stay at the great school, she made but one visit to
+Oxbow Village. She did not try to startle the good people with her
+accomplishments, but they were surprised at the change which had
+taken place in her. Her dress was hardly more showy, for she was but
+a school-girl, but it fitted her more gracefully. She had gained a
+softness of expression, and an ease in conversation, which produced
+their effect on all with whom she came in contact. Her aunt's voice
+lost something of its plaintiveness in talking with her. Miss Cynthia
+listened with involuntary interest to her stories of school and
+school-mates. Master Byles Gridley accepted her as the great success of
+his life, and determined to make her his chief heiress, if there was any
+occasion for so doing. Cyprian told Bathsheba that Myrtle must come to
+be a great lady. Gifted Hopkins confessed to Susan Posey that he was
+afraid of her, since she had been to the great city school. She knew too
+much and looked too much like a queen, for a village boy to talk with.
+
+Mr. William Murray Bradshaw tried all his fascinations upon her, but
+she parried compliments so well, and put off all his nearer advances
+so dexterously, that he could not advance beyond the region of florid
+courtesy, and never got a chance, if so disposed, to risk a question
+which he would not ask rashly, believing that, if Myrtle once said No,
+there would be little chance of her ever saying Yes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. MUSTERING OF FORCES.
+
+Not long after the tableau performance had made Myrtle Hazard's name
+famous in the school and among the friends of the scholars, she received
+the very flattering attention of a call from Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24
+Carat Place. This was in consequence of a suggestion from Mr. Livingston
+Jenkins, a particular friend of the family.
+
+“They've got a demonish splendid school-girl over there,” he said to
+that lady, “made the stunningest looking Pocahontas at the show there
+the other day. Demonish plucky looking filly as ever you saw. Had a row
+with another girl,--gave the war-whoop, and went at her with a knife.
+Festive,--hey? Say she only meant to scare her,--looked as if she meant
+to stick her, anyhow. Splendid style. Why can't you go over to the shop
+and make 'em trot her out?”
+
+The lady promised Mr. Livingston Jenkins that she certainly would, just
+as soon as she could find a moment's leisure,--which, as she had nothing
+in the world to do, was not likely to be very soon. Myrtle in the mean
+time was busy with her studies, little dreaming what an extraordinary
+honor was awaiting her.
+
+That rare accident in the lives of people who have nothing to do, a
+leisure morning, did at last occur. An elegant carriage, with a coachman
+in a wonderful cape, seated on a box lofty as a throne, and wearing
+a hat-band as brilliant as a coronet, stopped at the portal of Madam
+Delacoste's establishment. A card was sent in bearing the open sesame
+of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, the great lady of 24 Carat Place. Miss Myrtle
+Hazard was summoned as a matter of course, and the fashionable woman and
+the young girl sat half an hour together in lively conversation.
+
+Myrtle was fascinated by her visitor, who had that flattering manner
+which, to those not experienced in the world's ways, seems to imply
+unfathomable depths of disinterested devotion. Then it was so delightful
+to look upon a perfectly appointed woman,--one who was as artistically
+composed as a poem or an opera,--in whose costume a kind of various
+rhythm undulated in one fluent harmony, from the spray that nodded on
+her bonnet to the rosette that blossomed on her sandal. As for the lady,
+she was captivated with Myrtle. There is nothing that your fashionable
+woman, who has ground and polished her own spark of life into as many
+and as glittering social facets as it will bear, has a greater passion
+for than a large rough diamond, which knows nothing of the sea of
+light it imprisons, and which it will be her pride to have cut into a
+brilliant under her own eye, and to show the world for its admiration
+and her own reflected glory. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had taken the entire
+inventory of Myrtle's natural endowments before the interview was over.
+She had no marriageable children, and she was thinking what a killing
+bait Myrtle would be at one of her stylish parties.
+
+She soon got another letter from Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, which
+explained the interest he had taken in Madam Delacoste's school,--all
+which she knew pretty nearly beforehand, for she had found out a good
+part of Myrtle's history in the half-hour they had spent in company.
+
+“I had a particular reason for my inquiries about the school,” he wrote.
+“There is a young girl there I take an interest in. She is handsome
+and interesting; and--though it is a shame to mention such a thing has
+possibilities in the way of fortune not to be undervalued. Why can't you
+make her acquaintance and be civil to her? A country girl, but fine old
+stock, and will make a figure some time or other, I tell you. Myrtle
+Hazard,--that's her name. A mere schoolgirl. Don't be malicious and
+badger me about her, but be polite to her. Some of these country girls
+have got 'blue blood' in them, let me tell you, and show it plain
+enough.”
+
+(“In huckleberry season!”) said Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, in a
+parenthesis,--and went on reading.
+
+“Don't think I'm one of your love-in-a-cottage sort, to have my head
+turned by a village beauty. I've got a career before me, Mrs. K., and
+I know it. But this is one of my pets, and I want you to keep an eye on
+her. Perhaps when she leaves school you wouldn't mind asking her to come
+and stay with you a little while. Possibly I may come and see how she is
+getting on if you do,--won't that tempt you, Mrs. C. K.?”
+
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum wrote back to her relative how she had already made
+the young lady's acquaintance.
+
+“Livingston Jerkins (you remember him) picked her out of the whole lot
+of girls as the 'prettiest filly in the stable.' That's his horrid way
+of talking. But your young milkmaid is really charming, and will come
+into form like a Derby three-year-old. There, now, I've caught that
+odious creature's horse-talk, myself. You're dead in love with this
+girl, Murray, you know you are.
+
+“After all, I don't know but you're right. You would make a good country
+lawyer enough, I don't doubt. I used to think you had your ambitions,
+but never mind. If you choose to risk yourself on 'possibilities,' it is
+not my affair, and she's a beauty, there's no mistake about that.
+
+“There are some desirable partis at the school with your dulcinea. There
+'s Rose Bugbee. That last name is a good one to be married from. Rose
+is a nice girl,--there are only two of them. The estate will cut up
+like one of the animals it was made out of, you know,--the
+sandwich-quadruped. Then there 's Berengaria. Old Topping owns the
+Planet Hotel among other things,--so big, they say, there's always a
+bell ringing from somebody's room day and night the year round. Only
+child--unit and six ciphers carries diamonds loose in her pocket--that's
+the story--good-looking--lively--a little slangy called Livingston
+Jerkins 'Living Jingo' to his face one day. I want you to see my lot
+before you do anything serious. You owe something to the family, Mr.
+William Murray Bradshaw! But you must suit yourself, after all: if you
+are contented with a humble position in life, it is nobody's business
+that I know of. Only I know what life is, Murray B. Getting married is
+jumping overboard, any way you look at it, and if you must save some
+woman from drowning an old maid, try to find one with a cork jacket, or
+she 'll carry you down with her.”
+
+Murray Bradshaw was calculating enough, but he shook his head over this
+letter. It was too demonish cold-blooded for him, he said to himself.
+(Men cannot pardon women for saying aloud what they do not hesitate
+to think in silence themselves.) Never mind,--he must have Mrs. Clymer
+Ketchum's house and influence for his own purposes. Myrtle Hazard must
+become her guest, and then if circumstances were favorable, he was
+certain obtaining her aid in his project.
+
+The opportunity to invite Myrtle to the great mansion presented itself
+unexpectedly. Early in the spring of 1861 there were some cases of
+sickness in Madam Delacoste's establishment, which led to closing the
+school for a while. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum took advantage of the dispersion
+of the scholars to ask Myrtle to come and spend some weeks with her.
+There were reasons why this was more agreeable to the young girl than
+returning to Oxbow Village, and she very gladly accepted the invitation.
+
+It was very remarkable that a man living as Master Byles Gridley had
+lived for so long a time should all at once display such liberality as
+he showed to a young woman who had no claim upon him, except that he had
+rescued her from the consequences of her own imprudence and warned her
+against impending dangers. Perhaps he cared more for her than if the
+obligation had been the other way,--students of human nature say it is
+commonly so. At any rate, either he had ampler resources than it was
+commonly supposed, or he was imprudently giving way to his generous
+impulses, or he thought he was making advances which would in due time
+be returned to him. Whatever the reason was, he furnished her with
+means, not only for her necessary expenses, but sufficient to afford her
+many of the elegances which she would be like to want in the fashionable
+society with which she was for a short time to mingle.
+
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was so well pleased with the young lady she was
+entertaining, that she thought it worth while to give a party while
+Myrtle was staying with her. She had her jealousies and rivalries, as
+women of the world will, sometimes, and these may have had their share
+in leading her to take the trouble a large party involved. She was tired
+of the airs of Mrs. Pinnikle, who was of the great Apex family, and
+her terribly accomplished daughter Rhadamartha, and wanted to crush the
+young lady, and jaundice her mother, with a girl twice as brilliant and
+ten times handsomer. She was very willing, also, to take the nonsense
+out of the Capsheaf girls, who thought themselves the most stylish
+personages of their city world, and would bite their lips well to see
+themselves distanced by a country miss.
+
+In the mean time circumstances were promising to bring into Myrtle's
+neighborhood several of her old friends and admirers. Mrs. Clymer
+Ketchum had written to Murray Bradshaw that she had asked his pretty
+milkmaid to come and stay awhile with her, but he had been away on
+business, and only arrived in the city a day or two before the party.
+But other young fellows had found out the attractions of the girl
+who was “hanging out at the Clymer Ketchum concern,” and callers were
+plenty, reducing tete-a-tetes in a corresponding ratio. He did get one
+opportunity, however, and used it well. They had so many things to talk
+about in common, that she could not help finding him good company. She
+might well be pleased, for he was an adept in the curious art of being
+agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made
+a special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's
+constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in
+himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as
+he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive
+motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her as against all
+others.
+
+It was well for her, perhaps, that others had flattered her into a
+certain consciousness of her own value. She felt her veins full of the
+same rich blood as that which had flushed the cheeks of handsome Judith
+in the long summer of her triumph. Whether it was vanity, or pride, or
+only the instinctive sense of inherited force and attraction, it was
+the best of defences. The golden bracelet on her wrist seemed to have
+brought as much protection with it as if it had been a shield over her
+heart.
+
+But far away in Oxbow Village other events were in preparation. The
+“fugitive pieces” of Mr. Gifted Hopkins had now reached a number so
+considerable, that, if collected and printed in large type, with plenty
+of what the unpleasant printers call “fat,”--meaning thereby blank
+spaces,--upon a good, substantial, not to say thick paper, they might
+perhaps make a volume which would have substance enough to bear the
+title, printed lengthwise along the back, “Hopkins's Poems.” Such a
+volume that author had in contemplation. It was to be the literary event
+of the year 1861.
+
+He could not mature such a project, one which he had been for some time
+contemplating, without consulting Mr. Byles Gridley, who, though he had
+not unfrequently repressed the young poet's too ardent ambition, had yet
+always been kind and helpful.
+
+Mr. Gridley was seated in his large arm-chair, indulging himself in the
+perusal of a page or two of his own work before repeatedly referred to.
+His eye was glistening, for it had just rested on the following passage:
+
+“There is infinite pathos in unsuccessful authorship. The book that
+perishes unread is the deaf mute of literature. The great asylum of
+Oblivion is full of such, making inaudible signs to each other in leaky
+garrets and unattainable dusty upper shelves.”
+
+He shut the book, for the page grew a little dim as he finished this
+elegiac sentence, and sighed to think how much more keenly he felt its
+truth than when it was written,--than on that memorable morning when he
+saw the advertisement in all the papers, “This day published, 'Thoughts
+on the Universe.' By Byles Gridley, A. M.”
+
+At that moment he heard a knock at his door. He closed his eyelids
+forcibly for ten seconds, opened them, and said cheerfully, “Come in!”
+
+Gifted Hopkins entered. He had a collection of manuscripts in his hands
+which it seemed to him would fill a vast number of pages. He did not
+know that manuscript is to type what fresh dandelions are to the dish
+of greens that comes to table, of which last Nurse Byloe, who considered
+them very wholesome spring grazing for her patients, used to say that
+they “biled down dreadful.”
+
+“I have brought the autographs of my poems, Master Gridley, to consult
+you about making arrangements for publication. They have been so well
+received by the public and the leading critics of this part of the
+State, that I think of having them printed in a volume. I am going to
+the city for that purpose. My mother has given her consent. I wish to
+ask you several business questions. Shall I part with the copyright
+for a downright sum of money, which I understand some prefer doing, or
+publish on shares, or take a percentage on the sales? These, I believe,
+are the different ways taken by authors.”
+
+Mr. Gridley was altogether too considerate to reply with the words which
+would most naturally have come to his lips. He waited as if he were
+gravely pondering the important questions just put to him, all the while
+looking at Gifted with a tenderness which no one who had not buried one
+of his soul's children could have felt for a young author trying to get
+clothing for his new-born intellectual offspring.
+
+“I think,” he said presently, “you had better talk with an intelligent
+and liberal publisher, and be guided by his advice. I can put you in
+correspondence with such a person, and you had better trust him than me
+a great deal. Why don't you send your manuscript by mail?”
+
+“What, Mr. Gridley? Trust my poems, some of which are unpublished, to
+the post-office? No, sir, I could never make up my mind to such a risk.
+I mean to go to the city myself, and read them to some of the leading
+publishers. I don't want to pledge myself to any one of them. I should
+like to set them bidding against each other for the copyright, if I sell
+it at all.”
+
+Mr. Gridley gazed upon the innocent youth with a sweet wonder in his
+eyes that made him look like an angel, a little damaged in the features
+by time, but full of celestial feelings.
+
+“It will cost you something to make this trip, Gifted. Have you the
+means to pay for your journey and your stay at a city hotel?”
+
+Gifted blushed. “My mother has laid by a small sum for me,” he said.
+“She knows some of my poems by heart, and she wants to see them all in
+print.”
+
+Master Gridley closed his eyes very firmly again, as if thinking, and
+opened them as soon as the foolish film had left them. He had read many
+a page of “Thoughts on the Universe” to his own old mother, long, long
+years ago, and she had often listened with tears of modest pride that
+Heaven had favored her with a son so full of genius.
+
+“I 'll tell you what, Gifted,” he said. “I have been thinking for a good
+while that I would make a visit to the city, and if you have made up
+your mind to try what you can do with the publishers, I will take you
+with me as a companion. It will be a saving to you and your good mother,
+for I shall bear the expenses of the expedition.”
+
+Gifted Hopkins came very near going down on his knees. He was so
+overcome with gratitude that it seemed as if his very coattails wagged
+with his emotion.
+
+“Take it quietly,” said Master Gridley. “Don't make a fool of yourself.
+Tell your mother to have some clean shirts and things ready for you, and
+we will be off day after to-morrow morning.”
+
+Gifted hastened to impart the joyful news to his mother, and to break
+the fact to Susan Posey that he was about to leave them for a while, and
+rush into the deliriums and dangers of the great city.
+
+Susan smiled. Gifted hardly knew whether to be pleased with her
+sympathy, or vexed that she did not take his leaving more to heart. The
+smile held out bravely for about a quarter of a minute. Then there came
+on a little twitching at the corners of the mouth. Then the blue eyes
+began to shine with a kind of veiled glimmer. Then the blood came up
+into her cheeks with a great rush, as if the heart had sent up a herald
+with a red flag from the citadel to know what was going on at
+the outworks. The message that went back was of discomfiture and
+capitulation. Poor Susan was overcome, and gave herself up to weeping
+and sobbing.
+
+The sight was too much for the young poet. In a wild burst of passion he
+seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips, exclaiming, “Would that
+you could be mine forever!” and Susan forgot all that she ought to have
+remembered, and, looking half reproachfully but half tenderly through
+her tears, said, in tones of infinite sweetness, “O Gifted!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. THE POET AND THE PUBLISHER.
+
+It was settled that Master Byles Gridley and Mr. Gifted Hopkins should
+leave early in the morning of the day appointed, to take the nearest
+train to the city. Mrs. Hopkins labored hard to get them ready, so that
+they might make a genteel appearance among the great people whom they
+would meet in society. She brushed up Mr. Gridley's best black suit, and
+bound the cuffs of his dress-coat, which were getting a little worried.
+She held his honest-looking hat to the fire, and smoothed it while it
+was warm, until one would have thought it had just been ironed by
+the hatter himself. She had his boots and shoes brought into a more
+brilliant condition than they had ever known: if Gifted helped, it was
+to his credit as much as if he had shown his gratitude by polishing off
+a copy of verses in praise of his benefactor.
+
+When she had got Mr. Gridley's encumbrances in readiness for the
+journey, she devoted herself to fitting out her son Gifted. First, she
+had down from the garret a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered
+with leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning
+disposition of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the
+rounded lid, in the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk,
+and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover,
+and the smothering shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations,
+was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first
+unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed
+their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!
+
+But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old
+bottles into the new ones,--off from the lees of the past generation,
+clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it.
+Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only
+the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she
+felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and
+thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention
+her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the
+mother of Hopkins.
+
+So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young
+man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence.
+The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a
+boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common
+clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and
+collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a
+week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and
+“hot drops,” and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible,
+and a phial with hiera picra, and another with paregoric, and another
+with “camphire” for sprains and bruises.
+
+--Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to the
+pole, and armed against every malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried
+also the paternal watch, a solid silver bull's-eye, and a large
+pocketbook, tied round with a long tape, and, by way of precaution,
+pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked about having a pistol, in case
+he were attacked by any of the ruffians who are so numerous in the city,
+but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would certainly shoot himself, and he
+shouldn't think of letting him take a pistol.
+
+They went forth, Mentor and Telemachus, at the appointed time, to dare
+the perils of the railroad and the snares of the city. Mrs. Hopkins was
+firm up to near the last moment, when a little quiver in her voice set
+her eyes off, and her face broke up all at once, so that she had to hide
+it behind her handkerchief. Susan Posey showed the truthfulness of her
+character in her words to Gifted at parting. “Farewell,” she said,
+“and think of me sometimes while absent. My heart is another's, but my
+friendship, Gifted--my friendship--”
+
+Both were deeply affected. He took her hand and would have raised it
+to his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it,
+exclaiming, “O Gifted!” this time with a tone of tender reproach which
+made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a
+safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with a tearful smile.
+
+Master Byles Gridley must have had some good dividends from some of his
+property of late. There is no other way of accounting for the handsome
+style in which he did things on their arrival in the city. He went to a
+tailor's and ordered a new suit to be sent home as soon as possible, for
+he knew his wardrobe was a little rusty. He looked Gifted over from head
+to foot, and suggested such improvements as would recommend him to the
+fastidious eyes of the selecter sort of people, and put him in his own
+tailor's hands, at the same time saying that all bills were to be sent
+to him, B. Gridley, Esq., parlor No. 6, at the Planet Hotel. Thus it
+came to pass that in three days from their arrival they were both in
+an eminently presentable condition. In the mean time the prudent Mr.
+Gridley had been keeping the young man busy, and amusing himself by
+showing him such of the sights of the city and its suburbs as he thought
+would combine instruction with entertainment.
+
+When they were both properly equipped and ready for the best company,
+Mr. Gridley said to the young poet, who had found it very hard to
+contain his impatience, that they would now call together on the
+publisher to whom he wished to introduce him, and they set out
+accordingly.
+
+“My name is Gridley,” he said with modest gravity, as he entered the
+publisher's private room. “I have a note of introduction here from one
+of your authors, as I think he called himself, a very popular writer for
+whom you publish.”
+
+The publisher rose and came forward in the most cordial and respectful
+manner. “Mr. Gridley? Professor Byles Gridley,--author of 'Thoughts on
+the Universe'?”
+
+The brave-hearted old man colored as if he had been a young girl.
+His dead book rose before him like an apparition. He groped in modest
+confusion for an answer. “A child I buried long ago, my dear sir,”
+ he said. “Its title-page was its tombstone. I have brought this young
+friend with me,--this is Mr. Gifted Hopkins of Oxbow Village,--who
+wishes to converse with you about--”
+
+“I have come, sir--” the young poet began, interrupting him.
+
+“Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins,” said the
+publisher, interrupting in his turn.
+
+“Hopkins, if you please, sir,” Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to
+extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed
+to be holding on with all its might. He was wondering all the time over
+the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through
+so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems
+lying hidden in his breast-pocket. The idea that a young person coming
+on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have
+seemed very odd to the publisher. He knew the look which belongs to this
+class of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green
+purchaser with the equine fever raging in his veins. If a young author
+had come to him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like
+Major Andre's papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him
+and said, “Out with it!”
+
+While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which
+turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people
+are nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation
+again to Master Byles Gridley.
+
+“A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley, would have a great run
+if it were well handled. Came out twenty years too soon,--that was the
+trouble. One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other
+day. 'We must have a new edition,' he said; people are just ripe for
+that book.' Did you ever think of that? Change the form of it a little,
+and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book. Five thousand or
+more, very likely.”
+
+Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a
+dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him.
+He sat still without saying a word. He had forgotten for the moment all
+about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and
+was calming the disturbed corners of it. Coming to himself a little, he
+took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases,
+from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to
+have grown very warm all at once. Then he remembered the errand on which
+he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first
+hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it
+should be gently administered.
+
+“You surprise me,” he said,--“you surprise me. Dead and buried. Dead and
+buried. I had sometimes thought that--at some future period, after I was
+gone, it might--but I hardly know what to say about your suggestions.
+But here is my young friend, Mr. Hopkins, who would like to talk with
+you, and I will leave him in your hands. I am at the Planet Hotel, if
+you should care to call upon me. Good morning. Mr. Hopkins will explain
+everything to you more at his ease, without me, I am confident.”
+
+Master Gridley could not quite make up his mind to stay through the
+interview between the young poet and the publisher. The flush of hope
+was bright in Gifted's eye and cheek, and the good man knew that
+young hearts are apt to be over-sanguine, and that one who enters a
+shower-bath often feels very differently from the same person when he
+has pulled the string.
+
+“I have brought you my Poems in the original autographs, sir,” said Mr.
+Gifted Hopkins.
+
+He laid the manuscript on the table, caressing the leaves still with one
+hand, as loath to let it go.
+
+“What disposition had you thought of making of them?” the publisher
+asked, in a pleasant tone. He was as kind a man as lived, though he
+worked the chief engine in a chamber of torture.
+
+“I wish to read you a few specimens of the poems,” he said, “with
+reference to their proposed publication in a volume.”
+
+“By all means,” said the kind publisher, who determined to be very
+patient with the protege of the hitherto little-known, but remarkable
+writer, Professor Gridley. At the same time he extended his foot in an
+accidental sort of way, and pressed it on the right hand knob of three
+which were arranged in a line beneath the table. A little bell in a
+distant apartment--the little bell marked C--gave one slight note; loud
+enough to start a small boy up, who looked at the clock, and knew that
+he was to go and call the publisher in just twenty-five minutes. “A,
+five minutes; B, ten minutes; C, twenty-five minutes “;--that was
+the youngster's working formula. Mr. Hopkins was treated to the full
+allowance of time, as being introduced by Professor Gridley.
+
+The young man laid open the manuscript so that the title-page,
+written out very handsomely in his own hand, should win the eye of the
+publisher.
+
+               BLOSSOMS OF THE SOUL.
+           A WREATH OF VERSE; Original.
+
+               BY GIFTED HOPKINS.
+
+    “a youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.”--Gray.
+
+“Shall I read you some of the rhymed pieces first, or some of the
+blank-verse poems, sir?” Gifted asked.
+
+“Read what you think is best,--a specimen of your first-class style of
+composition.”
+
+“I will read you the very last poem I have written,” he said, and he
+began:
+
+              “THE TRIUMPH OF SONG.
+
+     “I met that gold-haired maiden, all too dear;
+     And I to her: Lo! thou art very fair,
+     Fairer than all the ladies in the world
+     That fan the sweetened air with scented fans,
+     And I am scorched with exceeding love,
+     Yea, crisped till my bones are dry as straw.
+     Look not away with that high-arched brow,
+     But turn its whiteness that I may behold,
+     And lift thy great eyes till they blaze on mine,
+     And lay thy finger on thy perfect mouth,
+     And let thy lucent ears of careen pearl
+     Drink in the murmured music of my soul,
+     As the lush grass drinks in the globed dew;
+     For I have many scrolls of sweetest rhyme
+     I will unroll and make thee glad to hear.
+
+     “Then she: O shaper of the marvellous phrase
+     That openeth woman's heart as Both a key,
+     I dare not hear thee--lest the bolt should slide
+     That locks another's heart within my own.
+     Go, leave me,--and she let her eyelids fall,
+     And the great tears rolled from her large blue eyes.
+
+     “Then I: If thou not hear me, I shall die,
+     Yea, in my desperate mood may lift my hand
+     And do myself a hurt no leach can mend;
+     For poets ever were of dark resolve,
+     And swift stern deed
+
+     “That maiden heard no more,
+     But spike: Alas! my heart is very weak,
+     And but for--Stay!  And if some dreadful morn,
+     After great search and shouting thorough the wold,
+     We found thee missing,--strangled,--drowned i' the mere,
+     Then should I go distraught and be clean mad!
+
+     “O poet, read! read all thy wondrous scrolls.
+     Yea, read the verse that maketh glad to hear!
+     Then I began and read two sweet, brief hours,
+     And she forgot all love save only mine!”
+
+“Is all this from real life?” asked the publisher.
+
+“It--no, sir--not exactly from real life--that is, the leading female
+person is not wholly fictitious--and the incident is one which might
+have happened. Shall I read you the poems referred to in the one you
+have just heard, sir?”
+
+“Allow me, one moment. Two hours' reading, I think, you said. I fear I
+shall hardly be able to spare quite time to hear them all. Let me ask
+what you intend doing with these productions, Mr.----rr Poplins.”
+
+“Hopkins, if you please, sir, not Poplins,” said Gifted, plaintively.
+He expressed his willingness to dispose of the copyright, to publish on
+shares, or perhaps to receive a certain percentage on the profits.
+
+“Suppose we take a glass of wine together, Mr.--Hopkins, before we talk
+business,” the publisher said, opening a little cupboard and taking
+therefrom a decanter and two glasses. He saw the young man was looking
+nervous. He waited a few minutes, until the wine had comforted his
+epigastrium, and diffused its gentle glow through his unspoiled and
+consequently susceptible organisation.
+
+“Come with me,” he said.
+
+Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat
+at a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge
+basket, ha'f full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped
+another manuscript into the basket and looked up.
+
+“Tell me,” said Gifted, “what are these papers, and who is he that looks
+upon them and drops them into the basket?”
+
+“These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at
+the table is commonly spoken of among us as 'The Butcher'. The poems he
+drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account.”
+
+“But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?”
+
+“He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?”
+
+“And what becomes of all those that he drops into the basket?”
+
+“If they are not claimed by their author in proper season, they go to
+the devil.”
+
+“What!” said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.
+
+“To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the
+devil, that tears everything to bits,--as the critics treat our authors,
+sometimes, sometimes, Mr. Hopkins.”
+
+Gifted devoted a moment to silent reflection.
+
+After this instructive sight they returned together to the publisher's
+private room. The wine had now warmed the youthful poet's praecordia,
+so that he began to feel a renewed confidence in his genius and his
+fortunes.
+
+“I should like to know what that critic of yours would say to my
+manuscript,” he said boldly.
+
+“You can try it if you want to,” the publisher replied, with an ominous
+dryness of manner which the sanguine youth did not perceive, or,
+perceiving, did not heed.
+
+“How can we manage to get an impartial judgment?”
+
+“Oh, I'll arrange that. He always goes to his luncheon about this time.
+Raw meat and vitriol punch,--that 's what the authors say. Wait till we
+hear him go, and then I will lay your manuscript so that he will come to
+it among the first after he gets back. You shall see with your own eyes
+what treatment it gets. I hope it may please him, but you shall see.”
+
+They went back to the publisher's private room and talked awhile.
+Then the little office-boy came up with some vague message about a
+gentleman--business--wants to see you, sir, etc., according to the
+established programme; all in a vacant, mechanical sort of way, as if he
+were a talking-machine just running down.
+
+The publisher told the boy that he was engaged, and the gentleman must
+wait. Very soon they heard The Butcher's heavy footstep as he went out
+to get his raw meat and vitriol punch.
+
+“Now, then,” said the publisher, and led forth the confiding literary
+lamb once more, to enter the fatal door of the critical shambles.
+
+“Hand me your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. I will lay it so
+that it shall be the third of these that are coming to hand. Our friend
+here is a pretty good judge of verse, and knows a merchantable article
+about as quick as any man in his line of business. If he forms a
+favorable opinion of your poems, we will talk over your propositions.”
+
+Gifted was conscious of a very slight tremor as he saw his precious
+manuscript deposited on the table, under two others, and over a pile
+of similar productions. Still he could not help feeling that the critic
+would be struck by his title. The quotation from Gray must touch his
+feelings. The very first piece in the collection could not fail to
+arrest him. He looked a little excited, but he was in good spirits.
+
+“We will be looking about here when our friend comes back,” the
+publisher said. “He is a very methodical person, and will sit down and
+go right to work just as if we were not here. We can watch him, and if
+he should express any particular interest in your poems, I will, if you
+say so, carry you up to him and reveal the fact that you are the author
+of the works that please him.”
+
+They waited patiently until The Butcher returned, apparently refreshed
+by his ferocious refection, and sat down at his table. He looked
+comforted, and not in ill humor. The publisher and the poet talked
+in low tones, as if on business of their own, and watched him as he
+returned to his labor.
+
+The Butcher took the first manuscript that came to hand, read a
+stanza here and there, turned over the leaves, turned back and tried
+again,--shook his head--held it for an instant over the basket, as if
+doubtful,--and let it softly drop. He took up the second manuscript,
+opened it in several places, seemed rather pleased with what he read,
+and laid it aside for further examination.
+
+He took up the third. “Blossoms of the Soul,” etc. He glared at it in
+a dreadfully ogreish way. Both the looker-ons held their breath. Gifted
+Hopkins felt as if half a glass more of that warm sherry would not hurt
+him. There was a sinking at the pit of his stomach, as if he was in
+a swing, as high as he could go, close up to the swallows' nests and
+spiders' webs. The Butcher opened the manuscript at random, read ten
+seconds, and gave a short low grunt. He opened again, read ten seconds,
+and gave another grunt, this time a little longer and louder. He opened
+once more, read five seconds, and, with something that sounded like the
+snort of a dangerous animal, cast it impatiently into the basket, and
+took up the manuscript that came next in order.
+
+Gifted Hopkins stood as if paralyzed for a moment.
+
+“Safe, perfectly safe,” the publisher said to him in a whisper. “I'll
+get it for you presently. Come in and take another glass of wine,” he
+said, leading him back to his own office.
+
+“No, I thank you,” he said faintly, “I can bear it. But this is
+dreadful, sir. Is this the way that genius is welcomed to the world of
+letters?”
+
+The publisher explained to him, in the kindest manner, that there was an
+enormous over-production of verse, and that it took a great part of one
+man's time simply to overhaul the cart-loads of it that were trying to
+get themselves into print with the imprimatur of his famous house. “You
+are young, Mr. Hopkins. I advise you not to try to force your article
+of poetry on the market. The B----, our friend, there, that is, knows
+a thing that will sell as soon as he sees it. You are in independent
+circumstances, perhaps? If so, you can print--at your own
+expense--whatever you choose. May I take the liberty to ask
+your--profession?”
+
+Gifted explained that he was “clerk” in a “store,” where they sold dry
+goods and West India goods, and goods promiscuous.
+
+“Oh, well, then,” the publisher said, “you will understand me. Do you
+know a good article of brown sagas when you see it?”
+
+Gifted Hopkins rather thought he did. He knew at sight whether it was a
+fair, salable article or not.
+
+“Just so. Now our friend, there, knows verses that are salable and
+unsalable as well as you do brown sugar.--Keep quiet now, and I will go
+and get your manuscript for you.
+
+“There, Mr. Hopkins, take your poems,--they will give you a reputation
+in your village, I don't doubt, which, is pleasant, but it will cost you
+a good deal of money to print them in a volume. You are very young: you
+can afford to wait. Your genius is not ripe yet, I am confident, Mr.
+Hopkins. These verses are very well for a beginning, but a man of
+promise like you, Mr. Hopkins, must n't throw away his chance by
+premature publication! I should like to make you a present of a few
+of the books we publish. By and by, perhaps, we can work you into
+our series of poets; but the best pears ripen slowly, and so with
+genius.--Where shall I send the volumes?”
+
+Gifted answered, to parlor No. 6, Planet Hotel, where he soon presented
+himself to Master Gridley, who could guess pretty well what was coming.
+But he let him tell his story.
+
+“Shall I try the other publishers?” said the disconsolate youth.
+
+“I would n't, my young friend, I would n't. You have seen the best one
+of them--all. He is right about it, quite right: you are young, and had
+better wait. Look here, Gifted, here is something to please you. We are
+going to visit the gay world together. See what has been left here this
+forenoon.”
+
+He showed him two elegant notes of invitation requesting the pleasure
+of Professor Byles Gridley's and of Mr. Gifted Hopkins's company on
+Thursday evening, as the guests of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat
+Place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.
+
+Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl
+of the season, There were hints from different quarters that she might
+possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
+which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about
+town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all
+agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,--“best filly this grass,”
+ as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
+that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to
+capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But
+Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
+have been to make out who was an especial favorite.
+
+There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart
+and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept
+him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to
+feel sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could
+hardly doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in
+the city,--even elegantly,--he had many of the lesser social
+accomplishments, was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such
+matters with the more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better
+talker than most of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing
+with than they could know. “You have only got to say the word, Murray,”
+ Mrs. Clymer Ketchum said to her relative, “and you can have her. But
+don't be rash. I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there 's
+something better there than possibilities.” Murray Bradshaw laughed,
+and told Mrs. Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was
+doing.
+
+It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr.
+Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with
+her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical
+admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
+party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two
+elegant notes were accounted for.
+
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world
+of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she
+called clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a
+streak of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and,
+if she could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an
+Amazon who had captured a Centaur.
+
+“There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay,” Mr.
+Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.
+“Better ask him. They say he 's the rising talent in his line,
+architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way
+of sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite
+wonderful. I'll find his address for you.” So Mr. Clement Lindsay got
+his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring
+together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were
+acquainted with each other.
+
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have carte
+blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord,
+and she would see to the rest,--lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet.
+He needn't be afraid: all he had to do was to keep out of the way.
+
+Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization.
+Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
+Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
+business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
+with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps
+of many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the
+promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.
+
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'Alenyon must have
+spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
+of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
+and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
+too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks
+glowed like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard.
+She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added
+certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the
+dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question
+and then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for
+effect. Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich
+bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything
+like it, and as some one whispered that it was “the last thing out,” it
+was greatly admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the
+few who had a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long
+divorced from its once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim
+consciousness through any of those who inherited her blood, it was then
+and there that she breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The
+young girl almost trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being,
+soliciting every sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that
+could make her feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all
+its chords first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle,
+whose mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always
+made an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all
+their portraits painted with halos round their heads), found herself
+extinguished in this new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the
+wall as if she had been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties
+were dismayed and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if
+she had been a Gorgon instead of a beauty.
+
+The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time
+making ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant
+one; for 24 Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its
+entertainments.
+
+Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had,
+however, been made a lion of several times of late, and was very willing
+to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world.
+
+It was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
+expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.
+
+Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and
+understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to
+dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in
+his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But
+Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable
+comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume.
+The young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very
+large breast-pin containing a gem which he was assured by the vender
+was a genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently
+effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to
+convince him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more
+fitted to the occasion.
+
+On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw
+received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as
+he changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up
+and down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing
+of a certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this
+telegram may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would
+contrive an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as
+a suitor to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely
+certain of getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous
+periods. Myrtle knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better
+than when she was a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she
+had been surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of
+beauty, which had set her off so that she could not help seeing her
+own attractions, rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little
+experience in society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases
+which all the Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to
+land his fish now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked,
+and he had a feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his
+book. However, as he had made up his mind not to wait another day,
+he addressed himself to the trial before him with a determination to
+succeed, if any means at his command would insure success. He arrayed
+himself with faultless elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an
+occasion. He went forth firm and grave as a general going into a battle
+where all is to be lost or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the
+unfailing smile upon his lips, to which he set them as he set his watch
+to a particular hour and minute.
+
+The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow
+before the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance
+under which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene
+over which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He
+turned to Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his
+inclinations led him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how
+much light can a woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A
+plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may
+seem almost a beauty in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being
+handsome, the more ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the
+sunshine or the chandelier.
+
+Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the brilliant effect of
+Myrtle in full dress. He did not know before what handsome arms she
+had,--Judith Pride's famous arms--which the high-colored young men in
+top-boots used to swear were the handsomest pair in New England--right
+over again. He did not know before with what defiant effect she would
+light up, standing as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full
+flower of flame, like a burning azalea. He was not a man who intended
+to let his sentiments carry him away from the serious interests of his
+future, yet, as he looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart gave one throb
+which made him feel in every pulse that this way a woman who in her own
+right, simply as a woman, could challenge the homage of the proudest
+young man of her time. He hardly knew till this moment how much of
+passion mingled with other and calmer motives of admiration. He could
+say I love you as truly as such a man could ever speak these words,
+meaning that he admired her, that he was attracted to her, that he
+should be proud of her as his wife, that he should value himself
+always as the proprietor of so rare a person, that no appendage to his
+existence would take so high a place in his thoughts. This implied also,
+what is of great consequence to a young woman's happiness in the
+married state, that she would be treated with uniform politeness, with
+satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a degree of confidence
+quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect from a very
+superior man, her husband.
+
+If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against
+which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for
+the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her.
+
+Less than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young
+women; and it may be that the interior just drawn, fairly judged,
+belongs to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or not, Myrtle did
+not see this picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in
+front of that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted
+all sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young,
+handsome, courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit,
+whose every look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who
+was associated with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared
+like old friends in the midst of that cold alien throng. It seemed as if
+he could not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never
+looked so captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the
+eloquence of love. And she--was not this delirious atmosphere of light
+and music just the influence to which he would wish to subject her
+before trying the last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a
+woman? He knew the mechanism of that impressionable state which served
+Coleridge so excellently well,--
+
+    “All impulses of soul and sense
+     Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve
+     The music, and the doleful tale,
+     The rich and balmy eve,”--
+
+though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
+case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
+ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
+for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
+into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
+the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses
+and jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
+crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
+the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
+as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
+all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
+appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
+Hopkins and rhyming tom-tits of that feather.
+
+Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
+he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with
+a great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark
+ready to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile
+upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would
+have said he was as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial
+good-matured disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton
+who had tied himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.
+
+Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts
+that he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as
+Myrtle had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once
+caught by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley,
+accompanied by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped
+forward at once to meet, and to present them.
+
+Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and
+respectable appearance. There was an unusual look of benignity upon his
+firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr.
+Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed
+a part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was
+courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the
+masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them
+both into the immediate Presence.
+
+“This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the
+honor of introducing to you,--a very distinguished scholar, as I have
+no doubt you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins,
+a young poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it
+has not come to your ears already.”
+
+The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little
+crushed by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making
+polite speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly
+delighted to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet
+with a degree of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive
+from his company. They both brought with them so many reminiscences of
+familiar scenes and events, that it was like going back for the moment
+to Oxbow Village. But Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and
+had no opportunity to enter into conversation just then with either of
+them. There was to be dancing by and by, and the younger people were
+getting impatient that it should begin. At last the music sounded the
+well-known summons, and the floors began to ring to the tread of
+the dancers. As usual on such occasions there were a large number of
+noncombatants, who stood as spectators around those who were engaged
+in the campaign of the evening. Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely,
+thinking of the minuets and the gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted
+Hopkins, who had never acquired the desirable accomplishment of dancing,
+gazed with dazzled and admiring eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the
+graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been
+introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he
+began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of
+a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he
+thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty
+years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands.
+In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled and
+double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And when they were all gone and
+forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still fresh in the world's
+memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose to his lips; he felt
+that the village boy who could look forward to fame as his inheritance
+was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the words he should set
+in verse would have an enduring lustre to which the whiteness of pearls
+was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.
+
+He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon
+these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing
+but perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he
+observed, were fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little
+self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of
+dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings
+going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:--
+
+Which is it? Which is it?--Why, that one, there,--that young
+fellow,--don't you see?--What young fellow are you two looking at? Who
+is he? What is he?--Why, that is Hopkins, the poet.--Hopkins, the poet!
+Let me see him! Let me see him! Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins? etc.,
+etc.
+
+Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did
+unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him,
+which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already
+begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
+his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared
+as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking
+at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of
+himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look
+upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the
+way with great people when going about the country. But this was only
+a suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have
+implied infatuation.
+
+Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes.
+At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived
+that an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his
+rather large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear.
+A not very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the
+subject of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much
+better taste or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful
+poet was receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little
+accident of which her rural friend was the victim than she left her
+place in the dance with a simple courage which did her credit.
+
+“I want to speak to you a minute,” she said. “Come into this alcove.”
+
+And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
+him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
+in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
+knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has
+to other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he
+might perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
+curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
+very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
+and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever
+he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the
+collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the
+whisper would pass from one to another, “That's him! That's Hopkins!”
+
+Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
+his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
+in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
+been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
+supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
+to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
+the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
+Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
+which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
+of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
+his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
+so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to
+make her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
+flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
+suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling
+happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
+impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
+less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to
+make would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural
+connection to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called
+up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their
+great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as
+in business, and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of
+Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury
+case but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand,
+in the first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by
+all, and that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them
+to shape their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own
+side of the case?
+
+Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
+accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact,
+that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
+admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
+it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
+evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
+plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from
+her, and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could
+safely give his confidence.
+
+The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an
+instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
+grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it
+all in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy
+savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval
+great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock,
+or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
+question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the
+nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
+
+She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere
+blind elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of
+Schehallion. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster
+than so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady
+nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors
+tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words
+with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny.
+His tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks
+once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.
+
+“There is but one word more to add,” he murmured softly, as he bent
+towards her--
+
+A grave voice interrupted him. “Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw,” said Master
+Bytes Gridley, “I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I
+promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to
+be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have
+the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young
+friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay.”
+
+Once mere, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to
+face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which
+any sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her
+half-hysteric state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who
+found himself unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have
+risked of his own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the
+easy self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social
+exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy,
+and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since
+their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the
+instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some
+peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever
+it was, it broke the charm which had been weaving between her and Murray
+Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could he
+find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do
+with a lady to whom he had just been introduced, addressed a few
+polite words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very
+courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray
+Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her
+attention, at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded
+his arms and waited,--but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which
+drew Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley
+of the Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave
+himself up to the fascination of her presence.
+
+The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the
+moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the
+first great game he had ever played may well be imagined. But it could
+not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young
+ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with
+another,--that was all. Fortunately, for him the young man who had been
+introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need
+apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to
+pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained
+her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful
+interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
+to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no
+favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the
+interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and
+bring matters to a conclusion.
+
+He called accordingly the next morning, but was disappointed in not
+seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a
+bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.
+
+He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had
+just left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village:
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. MINE AND COUNTERMINE.
+
+What the nature of the telegram was which had produced such an effect on
+the feelings and plans of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw nobody especially
+interested knew but himself. We may conjecture that it announced some
+fact, which had leaked out a little prematurely, relating to the issue
+of the great land-case in which the firm was interested. However that
+might be, Mr. Bradshaw no sooner heard that Myrtle had suddenly left
+the city for Oxbow Village,--for what reason he puzzled himself to
+guess,--than he determined to follow her at once, and take up the
+conversation he had begun at the party where it left off. And as the
+young poet had received his quietus for the present at the publisher's,
+and as Master Gridley had nothing specially to detain him, they too
+returned at about the same time, and so our old acquaintances were
+once more together within the familiar precincts where we have been
+accustomed to see them.
+
+Master Gridley did not like playing the part of a spy, but it must be
+remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the
+detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of
+keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was
+at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he
+was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to
+attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching
+his wits against another crafty person's,--such a one, for instance, as
+Mr. Macchiavelli Bradshaw.
+
+Perhaps he caught some words of that gentleman's conversation at the
+party; at any rate, he could not fail to observe his manner. When he
+found that the young man had followed Myrtle back to the village, he
+suspected something more than a coincidence. When he learned that he was
+assiduously visiting The Poplars, and that he was in close communication
+with Miss Cynthia Badlam, he felt sure that he was pressing the siege
+of Myrtle's heart. But that there was some difficulty in the way was
+equally clear to him, for he ascertained, through channels which the
+attentive reader will soon have means of conjecturing, that Myrtle had
+seen him but once in the week following his return, and that in
+the presence of her dragons. She had various excuses when he
+called,--headaches, perhaps, among the rest, as these are staple
+articles on such occasions. But Master Gridley knew his man too well to
+think that slight obstacles would prevent his going forward to effect
+his purpose.
+
+“I think he will get her; if he holds on,” the old man said to himself,
+“and he won't let go in a hurry, if there were any real love about
+it--but surely he is incapable of such a human weakness as the tender
+passion. What does all this sudden concentration upon the girl mean? He
+knows something about her that we don't know,--that must be it. What did
+he hide that paper for, a year ago and more? Could that have anything to
+do with his pursuit of Myrtle Hazard today?”
+
+Master Gridley paused as he asked this question of himself, for a
+luminous idea had struck him. Consulting daily with Cynthia Badlam, was
+he? Could there be a conspiracy between these two persons to conceal
+some important fact, or to keep something back until it would be for
+their common interest to have it made known?
+
+Now Mistress Kitty Fagan was devoted, heart and soul, to Myrtle Hazard,
+and ever since she had received the young girl from Mr. Gridley's hands,
+when he brought her back safe and sound after her memorable adventure,
+had considered him as Myrtle's best friend and natural protector.
+These simple creatures, whose thoughts are not taken up, like those of
+educated people, with the care of a great museum of dead phrases, are
+very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. Mr.
+Gridley had met her, more or less accidentally, several times of late,
+and inquired very particularly about Myrtle, and how she got along
+at the house since her return, and whether she was getting over her
+headaches, and how they treated her in the family.
+
+“Bliss your heart, Mr. Gridley,” Kitty said to him on one of these
+occasions, “it's ahltogither changed intirely. Sure Miss Myrtle does
+jist iverythin' she likes, an' Miss Withers niver middles with her
+at ahl, excip' jist to roll up her eyes an' look as if she was the
+hid-moorner at a funeril whiniver Miss Myrtle says she wants to do this
+or that, or to go here or there. It's Miss Badlam that's ahlwiz after
+her, an' a-watchin' her,--she thinks she's cunnin'er than a cat, but
+there 's other folks that's got eyes an' ears as good as hers. It's that
+Mr. Bridshaw that's a puttin' his head together with Miss Badlam for
+somethin' or other, an' I don't believe there's no good in it, for what
+does the fox an' the cat be a whisperin' about, as if they was thaves
+an' incind'ries, if there ain't no mischief hatchin'?”
+
+“Why, Kitty,” he said, “what mischief do you think is going on, and who
+is to be harmed?”
+
+“O Mr. Gridley,” she answered, “if there ain't somebody to be chated
+somehow, then I don't know an honest man and woman from two rogues. An'
+have n't I heard Miss Myrtle's name whispered as if there was somethin'
+goin' on agin' her, an' they was afraid the tahk would go out through
+the doors, an' up through the chimbley? I don't want to tell no tales,
+Mr. Gridley, nor to hurt no honest body, for I'm a poor woman, Mr.
+Gridley, but I comes of dacent folks, an' I vallies my repitation an'
+character as much as if I was dressed in silks and satins instead of
+this mane old gown, savin' your presence, which is the best I 've got,
+an' niver a dollar to buy another. But if I iver I hears a word, Mr.
+Gridley, that manes any kind of a mischief to Miss Myrtle,--the Lard
+bliss her soul an' keep ahl the divils away from her!--I'll be runnin'
+straight down here to tell ye ahl about it,--be right sure o' that, Mr.
+Gridley.”
+
+“Nothing must happen to Myrtle,” he said, “that we can help. If you see
+anything more that looks wrong, you had better come down here at once
+and let me know, as you say you will. At once, you understand. And,
+Kitty, I am a little particular about the dress of people who come to
+see me, so that if you would just take the trouble to get you a tidy
+pattern of gingham or calico, or whatever you like of that sort for
+a gown, you would please me; and perhaps this little trifle will be a
+convenience to you when you come to pay for it.”
+
+Kitty thanked him with all the national accompaniments, and trotted off
+to the store, where Mr. Gifted Hopkins displayed the native amiability
+of his temper by fumbling down everything in the shape of ginghams and
+calicoes they had on the shelves, without a murmur at the taste of his
+customer, who found it hard to get a pattern sufficiently emphatic for
+her taste. She succeeded at last, and laid down a five-dollar bill as if
+she were as used to the pleasing figure on its face as to the sight of
+her own five digits.
+
+Master Byles Gridley had struck a spade deeper than he knew into his
+first countermine, for Kitty had none of those delicate scruples about
+the means of obtaining information which might have embarrassed a
+diplomatist of higher degree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. MR. BRADSHAW CALLS ON MISS BADLAM
+
+“Is Miss Hazard in, Kitty?”
+
+“Indade she's in, Mr. Bridshaw, but she won't see nobody.”
+
+“What's the meaning of that, Kitty? Here is the third time within three
+days you've told me I could n't see her. She saw Mr. Gridley yesterday,
+I know; why won't she see me to-day?”
+
+“Y' must ask Miss Myrtle what the rason is, it's none o' my business,
+Mr. Bridshaw. That's the order she give me.”
+
+“Is Miss Badlam in?”
+
+“Indade she's in, Mr. Bridshaw, an' I 'll go cahl her.”
+
+“Bedad,” said Kitty Fagan to herself, “the cat an' the fox is goin' to
+have another o' thim big tahks togither, an' sure the old hole for the
+stove-pipe has niver been stopped up yet.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Cynthia went into the parlor together, and
+Mistress Kitty retired to her kitchen. There was a deep closet belonging
+to this apartment, separated by a partition from the parlor. There was a
+round hole high up in this partition through which a stove-pipe had
+once passed. Mistress Kitty placed a stool just under this opening, upon
+which, as on a pedestal, she posed herself with great precaution in the
+attitude of the goddess of other people's secrets, that is to say, with
+her head a little on one side, so as to bring her liveliest ear close
+to the opening. The conversation which took place in the hearing of the
+invisible third party began in a singularly free-and-easy manner on Mr.
+Bradshaw's part.
+
+“What the d---- is the reason I can't see Myrtle, Cynthia?”
+
+“That's more than I can tell you, Mr. Bradshaw. I can watch her goings
+on, but I can't account for her tantrums.”
+
+“You say she has had some of her old nervous whims,--has the doctor been
+to see her?”
+
+“No indeed. She has kept to herself a good deal, but I don't think
+there's anything in particular the matter with her. She looks well
+enough, only she seems a little queer,--as girls do that have taken a
+fancy into their heads that they're in love, you know,--absent-minded,
+does n't seem to be interested in things as you would expect after being
+away so long.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw looked as if this did not please him particularly. If he
+was the object of her thoughts she would not avoid him, surely.
+
+“Have you kept your eye on her steadily?”
+
+“I don't believe there is an hour we can't account for,--Kitty and I
+between us.”
+
+“Are you sure you can depend on Kitty?”
+
+[“Depind on Kitty, is it? Oh, an' to be sure ye can depind on Kitty to
+kape watch at the stove-pipe hole, an' to tell all y'r plottin's an'
+contrivin's to them that'll get the cheese out o' y'r mousetrap for ye
+before ye catch any poor cratur in it.” This was the inaudible comment
+of the unseen third party.]
+
+“Of course I can depend on her as far as I trust her. All she knows is
+that she must look out for the girl to see that she does not run away or
+do herself a mischief. The Biddies don't know much, but they know enough
+to keep a watch on the--”
+
+“Chickens.” Mr. Bradshaw playfully finished the sentence for Miss
+Cynthia.
+
+[“An' on the foxes, an' the cats, an' the wazels, an' the hen-hahks,
+an' ahl the other bastes,” added the invisible witness, in unheard
+soliloquy.]
+
+“I ain't sure whether she's quite as stupid as she looks,” said the
+suspicious young lawyer. “There's a little cunning twinkle in her eye
+sometimes that makes me think she might be up to a trick on occasion.
+Does she ever listen about to hear what people are saying?”
+
+“Don't trouble yourself about Kitty Fagan,' for pity's sake, Mr.
+Bradshaw. The Biddies are all alike, and they're all as stupid as owls,
+except when you tell 'em just what to do, and how to do it. A pack of
+priest-ridden fools!”
+
+The hot Celtic blood in Kitty Fagan's heart gave a leap. The stout
+muscles gave an involuntary jerk. The substantial frame felt the thrill
+all through, and the rickety stool on which she was standing creaked
+sharply under its burden.
+
+Murray Bradshaw started. He got up and opened softly all the doors
+leading from the room, one after another, and looked out.
+
+“I thought I heard a noise as if somebody was moving, Cynthia. It's just
+as well to keep our own matters to ourselves.”
+
+“If you wait till this old house keeps still, Mr. Bradshaw, you might as
+well wait till the river has run by. It's as full of rats and mice as
+an old cheese is of mites. There's a hundred old rats in this house, and
+that's what you hear.”
+
+[“An' one old cat; that's what I hear.” Third party.]
+
+“I told you, Cynthia, I must be off on this business to-morrow. I want
+to know that everything is safe before I go. And, besides, I have got
+something to say to you that's important, very important, mind you.”
+
+He got up once more and opened every door softly and looked out. He
+fixed his eye suspiciously on a large sofa at the other side of the
+room, and went, looking half ashamed of his extreme precaution, and
+peeped under it, to see if there was any one hidden thereto listen.
+Then he came back and drew his chair close up to the table at which Miss
+Badlam had seated herself. The conversation which followed was in a low
+tone, and a portion of it must be given in another place in the words
+of the third party. The beginning of it we are able to supply in this
+connection.
+
+“Look here, Cynthia; you know what I am going for. It's all right, I
+feel sure, for I have had private means of finding out. It's a sure
+thing; but I must go once more to see that the other fellows don't try
+any trick on us. You understand what is for my advantage is for yours,
+and, if I go wrong, you go overboard with me. Now I must leave the--you
+know--behind me. I can't leave it in the house or the office: they might
+burn up. I won't have it about me when I am travelling. Draw your chair
+a little more this way. Now listen.”
+
+[“Indade I will,” said the third party to herself. The reader will find
+out in due time whether she listened to any purpose or not.]
+
+In the mean time Myrtle, who for some reason was rather nervous and
+restless, had found a pair of half-finished slippers which she had left
+behind her. The color came into her cheeks when she remembered the state
+of mind she was in when she was working on them for the Rev. Mr. Stoker.
+She recollected Master Gridley's mistake about their destination, and
+determined to follow the hint he had given. It would please him better
+if she sent them to good Father Pemberton, she felt sure, than if he
+should get them himself. So she enlarged them somewhat, (for the old
+man did not pinch his feet, as the younger clergyman was in the habit
+of doing, and was, besides, of portly dimensions, as the old orthodox
+three-deckers were apt to be,) and worked E. P. very handsomely into the
+pattern, and sent them to him with her love and respect, to his great
+delight; for old ministers do not have quite so many tokens of affection
+from fair hands as younger ones.
+
+What made Myrtle nervous and restless? Why had she quitted the city so
+abruptly, and fled to her old home, leaving all the gayeties behind her
+which had so attracted and dazzled her?
+
+She had not betrayed herself at the third meeting with the young man who
+stood in such an extraordinary relation to her,--who had actually given
+her life from his own breath,--as when she met him for the second time.
+Whether his introduction to her at the party, just at the instant when
+Murray Bradshaw was about to make a declaration, saved her from being
+in another moment the promised bride of that young gentleman, or not, we
+will not be so rash as to say. It looked, certainly, as if he was in a
+fair way to carry his point; but perhaps she would have hesitated, or
+shrunk back, when the great question came to stare her in the face.
+
+She was excited, at any rate, by the conversation, so that, when Clement
+was presented to her, her thoughts could not at once be all called away
+from her other admirer, and she was saved from all danger of that sudden
+disturbance which had followed their second meeting. Whatever impression
+he made upon her developed itself gradually,--still, she felt strangely
+drawn towards him. It was not simply in his good looks, in his good
+manners, in his conversation, that she found this attraction, but there
+was a singular fascination which she felt might be dangerous to her
+peace, without explaining it to herself in words. She could hardly be in
+love with this young artist; she knew that his affections were plighted
+to another, a fact which keeps most young women from indulging unruly
+fancies; yet her mind was possessed by his image to such an extent that
+it left little room for that of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
+
+Myrtle Hazard had been just ready to enter on a career of worldly vanity
+and ambition. It is hard to blame her, for we know how she came by the
+tendency. She had every quality, too, which fitted her to shine in the
+gay world; and the general law is, that those who have the power have
+the instinct to use it. We do not suppose that the bracelet on her arm
+was an amulet, but it was a symbol. It reminded her of her descent; it
+kept alive the desire to live over the joys and excitements of a bygone
+generation. If she had accepted Murray Bradshaw, she would have pledged
+herself to a worldly life. If she had refused him, it would perhaps have
+given her a taste of power that might have turned her into a coquette.
+
+This new impression saved her for the time. She had come back to her
+nest in the village like a frightened bird; her heart was throbbing, her
+nerves were thrilling, her dreams were agitated; she wanted to be quiet,
+and could not listen to the flatteries or entreaties of her old lover.
+
+It was a strong will and a subtle intellect that had arrayed their force
+and skill against the ill-defended citadel of Myrtle's heart. Murray
+Bradshaw was perfectly determined, and not to be kept back by any
+trivial hindrances, such as her present unwillingness to accept him, or
+even her repugnance to him, if a freak of the moment had carried her so
+far. It was a settled thing: Myrtle Hazard must become Mrs. Bradshaw;
+and nobody could deny that, if he gave her his name, they had a chance,
+at least, for a brilliant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. MISTRESS KITTY FAGAN CALLS ON MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY.
+
+“I 'd like to go down to the store this mornin', Miss Withers, plase.
+Sure I've niver a shoe to my fut, only jist these two that I've got on,
+an' one other pair, and thim is so full of holes that whin I 'm standin'
+in 'em I'm outside of 'em intirely.”
+
+“You can go, Kitty,” Miss Silence answered, funereally.
+
+Thereupon Kitty Fagan proceeded to array herself in her most tidy
+apparel, including a pair of shoes not exactly answering to her
+description, and set out straight for the house of the Widow Hopkins.
+Arrived at that respectable mansion, she inquired for Mr. Gridley, and
+was informed that he was at home. Had a message for him,--could she
+see him in his study? She could if she would wait a little while. Mr.
+Gridley was busy just at this minute. Sit down, Kitty, and warm yourself
+at the cooking-stove.
+
+Mistress Kitty accepted Mrs. Hopkins's hospitable offer, and presently
+began orienting herself, and getting ready to make herself agreeable.
+The kindhearted Mrs. Hopkins had gathered about her several other
+pensioners besides the twins. These two little people, it may be here
+mentioned, were just taking a morning airing in charge of Susan Posey,
+who strolled along in company with Gifted Hopkins on his way to the
+store.
+
+Mistress Kitty soon began the conversational blandishments so natural to
+her good-humored race. “It's a little blarney that'll jist suit th' old
+lady,” she said to herself, as she made her first conciliatory advance.
+
+“An' sure an' it's a beautiful kitten you've got there, Mrs. Hopkins.
+An' it's a splendid mouser she is, I'll be bound. Does n't she look as
+if she'd clans the house out o'them little bastes, bad luck to em.”
+
+Mrs. Hopkins looked benignantly upon the more than middle-aged tabby,
+slumbering as if she had never known an enemy, and turned smiling to
+Mistress Kitty. “Why, bless your heart, Kitty, our old puss would n't
+know a mouse by sight, if you showed her one. If I was a mouse, I'd as
+lieves have a nest in one of that old cat's ears as anywhere else. You
+couldn't find a safer place for one.”
+
+“Indade, an' to be sure she's too big an' too handsome a pussy to be
+after wastin' her time on them little bastes. It's that little tarrier
+dog of yours, Mrs. Hopkins, that will be after worryin' the mice an' the
+rats, an' the thaves too, I 'll warrant. Is n't he a fust-rate-lookin'
+watch-dog, an' a rig'ler rat-hound?”
+
+Mrs. Hopkins looked at the little short-legged and short-winded
+animal of miscellaneous extraction with an expression of contempt and
+affection, mingled about half and half. “Worry 'em! If they wanted to
+sleep, I rather guess he would worry 'em! If barkin' would do their job
+for 'em, nary a mouse nor rat would board free gratis in my house as
+they do now. Noisy little good-for-nothing tike,--ain't you, Fret?”
+
+Mistress Kitty was put back a little by two such signal failures. There
+was another chance, however, to make her point, which she presently
+availed herself of,--feeling pretty sure this time that she should
+effect a lodgement. Mrs. Hopkins's parrot had been observing Kitty,
+first with one eye and then with the other, evidently preparing to make
+a remark, but awkward with a stranger. “That 's a beautiful part y 've
+got there,” Kitty said, buoyant with the certainty that she was on safe
+ground this time; “and tahks like a book, I 'll be bound. Poll! Poll!
+Poor Poll!”
+
+She put forth her hand to caress the intelligent and affable bird,
+which, instead of responding as expected, “squawked,” as our phonetic
+language has it, and, opening a beak imitated from a tooth-drawing
+instrument of the good old days, made a shrewd nip at Kitty's
+forefinger. She drew it back with a jerk.
+
+“An' is that the way your part tahks, Mrs. Hopkins?”
+
+“Talks, bless you, Kitty! why, that parrot hasn't said a word this ten
+year. He used to say Poor Poll! when we first had him, but he found it
+was easier to squawk, and that's all he ever does nowadays,--except bite
+once in a while.”
+
+“Well, an' to be sure,” Kitty answered, radiant as she rose from her
+defeats, “if you'll kape a cat that does n't know a mouse when she
+sees it, an' a dog that only barks for his livin', and a part that only
+squawks an' bites an' niver spakes a word, ye must be the best-hearted
+woman that's alive, an' bliss ye, if ye was only a good Catholic, the
+Holy Father 'd make a saint of ye in less than no time!”
+
+So Mistress Kitty Fagan got in her bit of Celtic flattery, in spite of
+her three successive discomfitures.
+
+“You may come up now, Kitty,” said Mr. Gridley over the stairs. He had
+just finished and sealed a letter.
+
+“Well, Kitty, how are things going on up at The Poplars? And how does
+our young lady seem to be of late?”
+
+“Whisht! whisht! your honor.”
+
+Mr. Bradshaw's lessons had not been thrown away on his attentive
+listener. She opened every door in the room, “by your lave,” as
+she said. She looked all over the walls to see if there was any old
+stovepipe hole or other avenue to eye or ear. Then she went, in her
+excess of caution, to the window. She saw nothing noteworthy except
+Mr. Gifted Hopkins and the charge he convoyed, large and small, in
+the distance. The whole living fleet was stationary for the moment, he
+leaning on the fence with his cheek on his hand, in one of the attitudes
+of the late Lord Byron; she, very near him, listening, apparently,
+in the pose of Mignon aspirant au ciel, as rendered by Carlo Dolce
+Scheffer.
+
+Kitty came back, apparently satisfied, and stood close to Mr. Gridley,
+who told her to sit down, which she did, first making a catch at her
+apron to dust the chair with, and then remembering that she had left
+that part of her costume at home.--Automatic movements, curious.
+
+Mistress Kitty began telling in an undertone of the meeting between Mr.
+Bradshaw and Miss Badlam, and of the arrangements she made for herself
+as the reporter of the occasion. She then repeated to him, in her own
+way, that part of the conversation which has been already laid before
+the reader. There is no need of going over the whole of this again in
+Kitty's version, but we may fit what followed into the joints of what
+has been already told.
+
+“He cahled her Cynthy, d' ye see, Mr. Gridley, an' tahked to her jist as
+asy as if they was two rogues, and she knowed it as well as he did. An'
+so, says he, I'm goin' away, says he, an' I'm goin' to be gahn siveral
+days, or perhaps longer, says he, an' you'd better kape it, says he.”
+
+“Keep what, Kitty? What was it he wanted her to keep?” said Mr. Gridley,
+who no longer doubted that he was on the trail of a plot, and meant
+to follow it. He was getting impatient with the “says he's” with which
+Kitty double-leaded her discourse.
+
+“An' to be sure ain't I tellin' you, Mr. Gridley, jist as fast as my
+breath will let me? An' so, says he, you'd better kape it, says he,
+mixed up with your other paupers, says he,” (Mr. Gridley started,) “an'
+thin we can find it in the garret, says he, whinever we want it, says
+he. An' if it all goes right out there, says he, it won't be lahng
+before we shall want to find it, says he. And I can dipind on you,
+says he, for we're both in the same boat, says he, an' you knows what I
+knows, says he, an' I knows what you knows, says be. And thin he taks a
+stack o' paupers out of his pocket, an' he pulls out one of 'em, an' he
+says to her, says he, that's the pauper, says he, an' if you die, says
+be, niver lose sight of that day or night, says he, for it's life an'
+dith to both of us, says he. An' thin he asks her if she has n't got one
+o' them paupers--what is 't they cahls 'em?--divilops, or some sich kind
+of a name--that they wraps up their letters in; an' she says no, she has
+n't got none that's big enough to hold it. So he says, give me a shate
+o' pauper, says he. An' thin he takes the pauper that she give him, an'
+he folds it up like one o' them--divilops, if that's the name of 'em;
+and thin he pulls a stick o' salin'-wax out of his pocket, an' a stamp,
+an' he takes the pauper an' puts it into th' other pauper, along with
+the rest of the paupers, an' thin he folds th' other pauper over the
+paupers, and thin he lights a candle, an' he milts the salin'-wax, and
+he sales up the pauper that was outside th' other paupers, an' he writes
+on the back of the pauper, an' thin he hands it to Miss Badlam.”
+
+“Did you see the paper that he showed her before he fastened it up with
+the others, Kitty?”
+
+“I did see it, indade, Mr. Gridley, and it's the truth I'm tellin' ye.”
+
+“Did you happen to notice anything about it, Kitty?”
+
+“I did, indade, Mr. Gridley. It was a longish kind of a pauper, and
+there was some blotches of ink on the back of it,--an' they looked like
+a face without any mouth, for, says I, there's two spots for the eyes,
+says I, and there's a spot for the nose, says I, and there's niver a
+spot for the mouth, says I.”
+
+This was the substance of what Master Byles Gridley got out of Kitty
+Fagan. It was enough, yes, it was too much. There was some deep-laid
+plot between Murray Bradshaw and Cynthia Badlam, involving the interests
+of some of the persons connected with the late Malachi Withers; for that
+the paper described by Kitty was the same that he had seen the young man
+conceal in the Corpus Juris Civilis, it was impossible to doubt. If it
+had been a single spot an the back of it, or two, he might have doubted.
+But three large spots “blotches” she had called them, disposed thus *.*
+--would not have happened to be on two different papers, in all human
+probability.
+
+After grave consultation of all his mental faculties in committee of the
+whole, he arrived at the following conclusion,--that Miss Cynthia Badlam
+was the depositary of a secret involving interests which he felt it his
+business to defend, and of a document which was fraudulently withheld
+and meant to be used for some unfair purpose. And most assuredly, Master
+Gridley said to himself, he held a master-key, which, just so certainly
+as he could make up his mind to use it, would open any secret in the
+keeping of Miss Cynthia Badlam.
+
+He proceeded, therefore, without delay, to get ready for a visit to that
+lady at The Poplars. He meant to go thoroughly armed, for he was a very
+provident old gentleman. His weapons were not exactly of the kind which
+a housebreaker would provide himself with, but of a somewhat peculiar
+nature.
+
+Weapon number one was a slip of paper with a date and a few words
+written upon it. “I think this will fetch the document,” he said to
+himself, “if it comes to the worst. Not if I can help it,--not if I can
+help it. But if I cannot get at the heart of this thing otherwise, why,
+I must come to this. Poor woman!--Poor woman!”
+
+Weapon number two was a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn,
+sal volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a
+stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain.
+Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes
+require the opening of windows, the dashing on of cold water, the
+cutting of stays, perhaps, with a scene of more or less tumultuous
+perturbation and afflux of clamorous womanhood.
+
+So armed, Byles Gridley, A. M., champion of unprotected innocence,
+grasped his ivory-handled cane and sallied forth on his way to The
+Poplars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CALLS ON MISS CYNTHIA BADLAM.
+
+MISS Cynthia Badlam was seated in a small parlor which she was
+accustomed to consider her own during her long residences at The
+Poplars. The entry stove warmed it but imperfectly, and she looked
+pinched and cold, for the evenings were still pretty sharp, and the old
+house let in the chill blasts, as old houses are in the habit of doing.
+She was sitting at her table, with a little trunk open before her. She
+had taken some papers from it, which she was looking over, when a knock
+at her door announced a visitor, and Master Byles Gridley entered the
+parlor.
+
+As he came into the room, she gathered the papers together and replaced
+them in the trunk, which she locked, throwing an unfinished piece
+of needle-work over it, putting the key in her pocket, and gathering
+herself up for company. Something of all this Master Gridley saw through
+his round spectacles, but seemed not to see, and took his seat like a
+visitor making a call of politeness.
+
+A visitor at such an hour, of the male sex, without special provocation,
+without social pretext, was an event in the life of the desolate
+spinster. Could it be--No, it could not--and yet--and yet! Miss Cynthia
+threw back the rather common-looking but comfortable shawl which covered
+her shoulders, and showed her quite presentable figure, arrayed with a
+still lingering thought of that remote contingency which might yet offer
+itself at some unexpected moment; she adjusted the carefully plaited
+cap, which was not yet of the lasciate ogni speranza pattern, and as
+she obeyed these instincts of her sex, she smiled a welcome to the
+respectable, learned, and independent bachelor. Mr. Gridley had a frosty
+but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it
+was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by
+the companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman, if any
+such should happen to fall in his way.
+
+That smile came very near disconcerting the plot of Master Byles
+Gridley. He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he
+thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all
+resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than
+the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of
+adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals
+brought close to the naked soles of the feet,--an instrument which,
+instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres
+and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its
+answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here
+was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited
+attractions in their best light, pleading with him in that natural
+language which makes any contumacious bachelor feel as guilty as Cain
+before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley had been alone, he would have
+taken a good sniff at his own bottle of sal volatile; for his kind heart
+sunk within him as he thought of the errand upon which he had come. It
+would not do to leave the subject of his vivisection under any illusion
+as to the nature of his designs.
+
+“Good evening, Miss Badlam,” he said, “I have come to visit you on a
+matter of business.”
+
+What was the internal panorama which had unrolled itself at the instant
+of his entrance, and which rolled up as suddenly at the sound of
+his serious voice and the look of his grave features? It cannot be
+reproduced, though pages were given to it; for some of the pictures were
+near, and some were distant; some were clearly seen, and some were only
+hinted; some were not recognized in the intellect at all, and yet they
+were implied, as it were, behind the others. Many times we have all
+found ourselves glad or sorry, and yet we could not tell what thought it
+was that reflected the sunbeam or cast the shadow. Look into Cynthia's
+suddenly exalted consciousness and see the picture, actual and
+potential, unroll itself in all its details of the natural, the
+ridiculous, the selfish, the pitiful, the human. Glimpses, hints,
+echoes, suggestions, involving tender sentiments hitherto unknown, we
+may suppose, to that unclaimed sister's breast,--pleasant excitement
+of receiving congratulations from suddenly cordial friends; the fussy
+delights of buying furniture and shopping for new dresses,--(it seemed
+as if she could hear herself saying, “Heavy silks,--best goods, if you
+please,”)--with delectable thumping down of flat-sided pieces of calico,
+cambric, “rep,” and other stiffs, and rhythmic evolution of measured
+yards, followed by sharp snip of scissors, and that cry of rending
+tissues dearer to woman's ear than any earthly sound until she hears
+the voice of her own first-born, (much of this potentially,
+remember,)--thoughts of a comfortable settlement, an imposing social
+condition, a cheerful household, and by and by an Indian summer of
+serene widowhood,--all these, and infinite other involved possibilities
+had mapped themselves in one long swift flash before Cynthia's inward
+eye, and all vanished as the old man spoke those few words. The look on
+his face, and the tone of his cold speech, had instantly swept them all
+away, like a tea-set sliding in a single crash from a slippery tray.
+
+What could be the “business” on which he had come to her with that
+solemn face?--she asked herself, as she returned his greeting and
+offered him a chair. She was conscious of a slight tremor as she put
+this question to her own intelligence.
+
+“Are we like to be alone and undisturbed?” Mr. Gridley asked. It was
+a strange question,--men do act strangely sometimes. She hardly knew.
+whether to turn red or white.
+
+“Yes, there is nobody like to come in at present,” she answered. She did
+not know what to make of it. What was coming next,--a declaration, or an
+accusation of murder?
+
+“My business,” Mr. Gridley said, very gravely, “relates to this. I wish
+to inspect papers which I have reason to believe exist, and which have
+reference to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers. Can you help me
+to get sight of any of these papers not to be found at the Registry of
+Deeds or the Probate Office?”
+
+“Excuse me, Mr. Gridley, but may I ask you what particular concern you
+have with the affairs of my relative, Cousin Malachi Withers, that's
+been dead and buried these half-dozen years?”
+
+“Perhaps it would take some time to answer that question fully, Miss
+Badlam. Some of these affairs do concern those I am interested in, if
+not myself directly.”
+
+“May I ask who the person or persons may be on whose account you wish to
+look at papers belonging to my late relative, Malachi Withers?”
+
+“You can ask me almost anything, Miss Badlam, but I should really be
+very much obliged if you would answer my question first. Can you help me
+to get a sight of any papers relating to the estate of Malachi Withers,
+not to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office,--any of
+which you may happen to have any private and particular knowledge?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Gridley; but I don't understand why you come to
+me with such questions. Lawyer Penhallow is the proper person, I
+should think, to go to. He and his partner that was--Mr. Wibird, you
+know--settled the estate, and he has got the papers, I suppose, if there
+are any, that ain't to be found in the offices you mention.”
+
+Mr. Gridley moved his chair a little, so as to bring Miss Badlam's face
+a little more squarely in view.
+
+“Does Mr. William Murray Bradshaw know anything about any papers, such
+as I am referring to, that may have been sent to the office?”
+
+The lady felt a little moisture stealing through all her pores, and at
+the same time a certain dryness of the vocal organs, so that her
+answer came in a slightly altered tone which neither of them could help
+noticing.
+
+“You had better ask Mr. William Murray Bradshaw yourself about that,”
+ she answered. She felt the hook now, and her spines were rising, partly
+with apprehension, partly with irritation.
+
+“Has that young gentleman ever delivered into your hands any papers
+relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe
+keeping?”
+
+“What do you mean by asking me these questions, Mr. Gridley? I don't
+choose to be catechised about Murray Bradshaw's business. Go to him, if
+you please, if you want to find out about it.”
+
+“Excuse my persistence, Miss Badlam, but I must prevail upon you to
+answer my question. Has Mr. William Murray Bradshaw ever delivered
+into your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi
+Withers, for your safe keeping?”
+
+“Do you suppose I am going to answer such questions as you are putting
+me because you repeat them over, Mr. Gridley? Indeed I sha'n't. Ask him,
+if you please, whatever you wish to know about his doings.”
+
+She drew herself up and looked savagely at him. She had talked herself
+into her courage. There was a color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her
+eye; she looked dangerous as a cobra.
+
+“Miss Cynthia Badlam,” Master Gridley said, very deliberately, “I am
+afraid we do not entirely understand each other. You must answer my
+question precisely, categorically, point-blank, and on the instant.
+Will you do this at once, or will you compel me to show you the absolute
+necessity of your doing it, at the expense of pain to both of us? Six
+words from me will make you answer all my questions.”
+
+“You can't say six words, nor sixty, Mr. Gridley, that will make me
+answer one question I do not choose to. I defy you!”
+
+“I will not say one, Miss Cynthia Badlam. There are some things one
+does not like to speak in words. But I will show you a scrap of paper,
+containing just six words and a date; not one word more nor one less.
+You shall read them. Then I will burn the paper in the flame of your
+lamp. As soon after that as you feel ready, I will ask the same question
+again.”
+
+Master Gridley took out from his pocket-book a scrap of paper, and
+handed it to Cynthia Badlam. Her hand shook as she received it, for she
+was frightened as well as enraged, and she saw that Mr. Gridley was in
+earnest and knew what he was doing.
+
+She read the six words, he looking at her steadily all the time, and
+watching her as if he had just given her a drop of prussic acid.
+
+No cry. No sound from her lips. She stared as if half stunned for one
+moment, then turned her head and glared at Mr. Gridley as if she would
+have murdered him if she dared. In another instant her face whitened,
+the scrap of paper fluttered to the floor, and she would have followed
+it but for the support of both Mr. Gridley's arms. He disengaged one of
+them presently, and felt in his pocket for the sal volatile. It served
+him excellently well, and stung her back again to her senses very
+quickly. All her defiant aspect had gone.
+
+“Look!” he said, as he lighted the scrap of paper in the flame. “You
+understand me, and you see that I must be answered the next time I ask
+my question.”
+
+She opened her lips as if to speak. It was as when a bell is rung in a
+vacuum,--no words came from them,--only a faint gasping sound, an effort
+at speech. She was caught tight in the heart-screw.
+
+“Don't hurry yourself, Miss Cynthia,” he said, with a certain relenting
+tenderness of manner. “Here, take another sniff of the smelling-salts.
+Be calm, be quiet,--I am well disposed towards you,--I don't like to
+give you trouble. There, now, I must have the answer to that question;
+but take your time, take your time.”
+
+“Give me some water,--some water!” she said, in a strange hoarse
+whisper. There was a pitcher of water and a tumbler on an old marble
+sideboard near by. He filled the tumbler, and Cynthia emptied it as
+if she had just been taken from the rack, and could have swallowed a
+bucketful.
+
+“What do you want to know?” she asked.
+
+“I wish to know all that you can tell me about a certain paper, or
+certain papers, which I have reason to believe Mr. William Murray
+Bradshaw committed to your keeping.”
+
+“There is only one paper of any consequence. Do you want to make him
+kill me? or do you want to make me kill myself?”
+
+“Neither, Miss Cynthia, neither. I wish to see that paper, but not for
+any bad purpose. Don't you think, on the whole, you have pretty good
+reason to trust me? I am a very quiet man, Miss Cynthia. Don't be afraid
+of me; only do what I ask,--it will be a great deal better for you in
+the end.”
+
+She thrust her trembling hand into her pocket, and took out the key of
+the little trunk. She drew the trunk towards her, put the key in the
+lock, and opened it. It seemed like pressing a knife into her own bosom
+and turning the blade. That little trunk held all the records of her
+life the forlorn spinster most cherished;--a few letters that came
+nearer to love-letters than any others she had ever received; an album,
+with flowers of the summers of 1840 and 1841 fading between its leaves;
+two papers containing locks of hair, half of a broken ring, and other
+insignificant mementos which had their meaning, doubtless, to her,--such
+a collection as is often priceless to one human heart, and passed by
+as worthless in the auctioneer's inventory. She took the papers out
+mechanically, and laid them on the table. Among them was an oblong
+packet, sealed with what appeared to be the office seal of Messrs.
+Penhallow and Bradshaw.
+
+“Will you allow me to take that envelope containing papers, Miss
+Badlam?” Mr. Gridley asked, with a suavity and courtesy in his tone and
+manner that showed how he felt for her sex and her helpless position.
+
+She seemed to obey his will as if she had none of her own left. She
+passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined
+it. He read on the back of the package: “Withers Estate--old papers--of
+no importance apparently. Examine hereafter.”
+
+“May I ask when, where, and of whom you obtained these papers, Miss
+Badlam?”
+
+“Have pity on me, Mr. Gridley,--have pity on me. I am a lost woman if
+you do not. Spare me! for God's sake, spare me! There will no wrong come
+of all this, if you will but wait a little while. The paper will come
+to light when it is wanted, and all will be right. But do not make me
+answer any more questions, and let me keep this paper. O Mr. Gridley! I
+am in the power of a dreadful man--”
+
+“You mean Mr. William Murray Bradshaw?”
+
+“I mean him.”
+
+“Has there not been some understanding between you that he should become
+the approved suitor of Miss Myrtle Hazard?”
+
+Cynthia wrung her hands and rocked herself backward and forward in
+her misery, but answered not a word. What could she answer, if she had
+plotted with this “dreadful man” against a young and innocent girl, to
+deliver her over into his hands, at the risk of all her earthly hopes
+and happiness?
+
+Master Gridley waited long and patiently for any answer she might have
+the force to make. As she made none, he took upon himself to settle the
+whole matter without further torture of his helpless victim.
+
+“This package must go into the hands of the parties who had the
+settlement of the estate of the late Malachi Withers. Mr. Penhallow is
+the survivor of the two gentlemen to whom that business was intrusted.
+How long is Mr. William Murray Bradshaw like to be away?”
+
+“Perhaps a few days,--perhaps weeks,--and then he will come back and
+kill me,--or--or--worse! Don't take that paper, Mr. Gridley,--he isn't
+like you! you would n't--but he would--he would send me to everlasting
+misery to gain his own end, or to save himself. And yet he is n't every
+way bad, and if he did marry Myrtle she'd think there never was such a
+man,--for he can talk her heart out of her, and the wicked in him lies
+very deep and won't ever come out, perhaps, if the world goes right with
+him.” The last part of this sentence showed how Cynthia talked with her
+own conscience; all her mental and moral machinery lay open before the
+calm eyes of Master Byles Gridley.
+
+His thoughts wandered a moment from the business before him; he had
+just got a new study of human nature, which in spite of himself would be
+shaping itself into an axiom for an imagined new edition of “Thoughts on
+the Universe,” something like this, “The greatest saint may be a sinner
+that never got down to 'hard pan.'” It was not the time to be framing
+axioms.
+
+“Poh! poh!” he said to himself; “what are you about making phrases, when
+you have got a piece of work like this in hand?” Then to Cynthia,
+with great gentleness and kindness of manner: “Have no fear about any
+consequences to yourself. Mr. Penhallow must see that paper--I mean
+those papers. You shall not be a loser nor a sufferer if you do your
+duty now in these premises.”
+
+Master Gridley, treating her, as far as circumstances permitted, like a
+gentleman, had shown no intention of taking the papers either stealthily
+or violently. It must be with her consent. He had laid the package down
+upon the table, waiting for her to give him leave to take it. But just
+as he spoke these last words, Cynthia, whose eye had been glancing
+furtively at it while he was thinking out his axiom, and taking her
+bearings to it pretty carefully, stretched her hand out, and, seizing
+the package, thrust it into the sanctuary of her bosom.
+
+“Mr. Penhallow must see those papers, Miss Cynthia Badlam,” Mr. Gridley
+repeated calmly. “If he says they or any of them can be returned to your
+keeping, well and good. But see them he must, for they have his office
+seal and belong in his custody, and, as you see by the writing on the
+back, they have not been examined. Now there may be something among them
+which is of immediate importance to the relatives of the late deceased
+Malachi Withers, and therefore they must be forthwith submitted to the
+inspection of the surviving partner of the firm of Wibird and Penhallow.
+This I propose to do, with your consent, this evening. It is now
+twenty-five minutes past eight by the true time, as my watch has it.
+At half past eight exactly I shall have the honor of bidding you good
+evening, Miss Cynthia Badlam, whether you give me those papers or not.
+I shall go to the office of Jacob Penhallow, Esquire, and there make
+one of two communications to him; to wit, these papers and the facts
+connected therewith, or another statement, the nature of which you may
+perhaps conjecture.”
+
+There is no need of our speculating as to what Mr. Byles Gridley, an
+honorable and humane man, would have done, or what would have been the
+nature of that communication which he offered as an alternative to the
+perplexed woman. He had not at any rate miscalculated the strength
+of his appeal, which Cynthia interpreted as he expected. She bore the
+heart-screw about two minutes. Then she took the package from her bosom,
+and gave it with averted face to Master Byles Gridley, who, on receiving
+it, made her a formal but not unkindly bow, and bade her good evening.
+
+“One would think it had been lying out in the dew,” he said, as he left
+the house and walked towards Mr. Penhallow's residence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CONSULTS WITH JACOB PENHALLOW, ESQUIRE
+
+Lawyer Penhallow was seated in his study, his day's work over, his
+feet in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir
+Walter Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports.
+He was a knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer but honest, and
+therefore less ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great
+belief in his young partner's ability, and, though he knew him to be
+astute, did not think him capable of roguery.
+
+It was at his request that Mr. Bradshaw had undertaken his journey,
+which, as he believed,--and as Mr. Bradshaw had still stronger evidence
+of a strictly confidential nature which led him to feel sure,--would
+end in the final settlement of the great land claim in favor of their
+client. The case had been dragging along from year to year, like an
+English chancery suit; and while courts and lawyers and witnesses had
+been sleeping, the property had been steadily growing. A railroad had
+passed close to one margin of the township, some mines had been opened
+in the county, in which a village calling itself a city had grown big
+enough to have a newspaper and Fourth of July orations. It was plain
+that the successful issue of the long process would make the heirs of
+the late Malachi Withers possessors of an ample fortune, and it was also
+plain that the firm of Penhallow and Bradshaw were like to receive, in
+such case, the largest fee that had gladdened the professional existence
+of its members.
+
+Mr. Penhallow had his book open before him, but his thoughts were
+wandering from the page. He was thinking of his absent partner, and the
+probable results of his expedition. What would be the consequence if
+all this property came into the possession of Silence Withers? Could she
+have any liberal intentions with reference to Myrtle Hazard, the young
+girl who had grown up with her, or was the common impression true, that
+she was bent on endowing an institution, and thus securing for herself
+a favorable consideration in the higher courts, where her beneficiaries
+would be, it might be supposed, influential advocates? He could not help
+thinking that Mr. Bradshaw believed that Myrtle Hazard would eventually
+come to a part at least of this inheritance. For the story was, that he
+was paying his court to the young lady whenever he got an opportunity,
+and that he was cultivating an intimacy with Miss Cynthia Badlam.
+“Bradshaw wouldn't make a move in that direction,” Mr. Penhallow said
+to himself, “until he felt pretty sure that it was going to be a paying
+business. If he was only a young minister now, there'd be no difficulty
+about it. Let any man, young or old, in a clerical white cravat, step
+up to Myrtle Hazard, and ask her to be miserable in his company through
+this wretched life, and aunt Silence would very likely give them her
+blessing, and add something to it that the man in the white cravat would
+think worth even more than that was. But I don't know what she'll say
+to Bradshaw. Perhaps he 'd better have a hint to go to meeting a little
+more regularly. However, I suppose he knows what he's about.”
+
+He was thinking all this over when a visitor was announced, and Mr.
+Byles Gridley entered the study.
+
+“Good evening, Mr. Penhallow,” Mr. Gridley said, wiping his forehead.
+“Quite warm, is n't it, this evening?”
+
+“Warm!” said Mr. Penhallow, “I should think it would freeze pretty
+thick to-night. I should have asked you to come up to the fire and warm
+yourself. But take off your coat, Mr. Gridley,--very glad to see you.
+You don't come to the house half as often as you come to the office. Sit
+down, sit down.”
+
+Mr. Gridley took off his outside coat and sat down. “He does look warm,
+does n't he?” Mr. Penhallow thought. “Wonder what has heated up the
+old gentleman so. Find out quick enough, for he always goes straight to
+business.”
+
+“Mr. Penhallow,” Mr. Gridley began at once, “I have come on a very grave
+matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to lay
+the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may settle
+this night before I go what is to be done. I am afraid the good standing
+of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in the
+matter. Would it be a surprise to you, if he had carried his acuteness
+in some particular case like the one I am to mention beyond the
+prescribed limits?”
+
+The question was put so diplomatically that there was no chance for an
+indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw's being involved in
+any discreditable transaction.
+
+“It is possible,” he answered, “that Bradshaw's keen wits may have
+betrayed him into sharper practice than I should altogether approve in
+any business we carried on together. He is a very knowing young man, but
+I can't think he is foolish enough, to say nothing of his honesty, to
+make any false step of the kind you seem to hint. I think he might on
+occasion go pretty near the line, but I don't believe he would cross
+it.”
+
+“Permit me a few questions, Mr. Penhallow. You settled the estate of the
+late Malachi Withers, did you not?”
+
+“Mr. Wibird and myself settled it together.”
+
+“Have you received any papers from any of the family since the
+settlement of the estate?”
+
+“Let me see. Yes; a roll of old plans of the Withers Place, and so
+forth,--not of much use, but labelled and kept. An old trunk with
+letters and account-books, some of them in Dutch,--mere curiosities. A
+year ago or more, I remember that Silence sent me over some papers she
+had found in an odd corner,--the old man hid things like a magpie. I
+looked over most of them,--trumpery not worth keeping,--old leases and
+so forth.”
+
+“Do you recollect giving some of them to Mr. Bradshaw to look over?”
+
+“Now I come to think of it, I believe I did; but he reported to me, if I
+remember right, that they amounted to nothing.”
+
+“If any of those papers were of importance, should you think your junior
+partner ought to keep them from your knowledge?”
+
+“I need not answer that question, Mr. Gridley. Will you be so good as to
+come at once to the facts on which you found your suspicions, and which
+lead you to put these questions to me?”
+
+Thereupon Mr. Gridley proceeded to state succinctly the singular
+behavior of Murray Bradshaw in taking one paper from a number handed to
+him by Mr. Penhallow, and concealing it in a volume. He related how
+he was just on the point of taking out the volume which contained the
+paper, when Mr. Bradshaw entered and disconcerted him. He had, however,
+noticed three spots on the paper by which he should know it anywhere. He
+then repeated the substance of Kitty Fagan's story, accenting the fact
+that she too noticed three remarkable spots on the paper which Mr.
+Bradshaw had pointed out to Miss Badlam as the one so important to both
+of them. Here he rested the case for the moment.
+
+Mr. Penhallow looked thoughtful. There was something questionable in
+the aspect of this business. It did obviously suggest the idea of an
+underhand arrangement with Miss Cynthia, possibly involving some very
+grave consequences. It would have been most desirable, he said, to have
+ascertained what these papers, or rather this particular paper, to which
+so much importance was attached, amounted to. Without that knowledge
+there was nothing, after all, which it might not be possible to explain.
+He might have laid aside the spotted paper to examine for some object
+of mere curiosity. It was certainly odd that the one the Fagan woman had
+seen should present three spots so like those on the other paper, but
+people did sometimes throw treys at backgammon, and that which not
+rarely happened with two dice of six faces might happen if they had
+sixty or six hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was
+any ground, so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He thought
+it not unlikely that Mr. Bradshaw was a little smitten with the young
+lady up at The Poplars, and that he had made some diplomatic overtures
+to the duenna, after the approved method of suitors. She was young for
+Bradshaw,--very young,--but he knew his own affairs. If he chose to make
+love to a child, it was natural enough that he should begin by courting
+her nurse.
+
+Master Byles Gridley lost himself for half a minute in a most
+discreditable inward discussion as to whether Laura Penhallow was
+probably one or two years older than Mr. Bradshaw. That was his way, he
+could not help it. He could not think of anything without these mental
+parentheses. But he came back to business at the end of his half-minute.
+
+“I can lay the package before you at this moment, Mr. Penhallow. I
+have induced that woman in whose charge it was left to intrust it to
+my keeping, with the express intention of showing it to you. But it is
+protected by a seal, as I have told you, which I should on no account
+presume to meddle with.”
+
+Mr. Gridley took out the package of papers.
+
+“How damp it is!” Mr. Penhallow said; “must have been lying in some very
+moist neighborhood.”
+
+“Very,” Mr. Gridley answered, with a peculiar expression which said,
+“Never mind about that.”
+
+“Did the party give you possession of these documents without making any
+effort to retain them?” the lawyer asked.
+
+“Not precisely. It cost some effort to induce Miss Badlam to let them go
+out of her hands. I hope you think I was justified in making the effort
+I did, not without a considerable strain upon my feelings, as well as
+her own, to get hold of the papers?”
+
+“That will depend something on what the papers prove to be, Mr. Gridley.
+A man takes a certain responsibility in doing just what you have done.
+If, for instance, it should prove that this envelope contained matters
+relating solely to private transactions between Mr. Bradshaw and Miss
+Badlam, concerning no one but themselves,--and if the words on the back
+of the envelope and the seal had been put there merely as a protection
+for a package containing private papers of a delicate but perfectly
+legitimate character--”
+
+The lawyer paused, as careful experts do, after bending the bow of an
+hypothesis, before letting the arrow go. Mr. Gridley felt very warm
+indeed, uncomfortably so, and applied his handkerchief to his face.
+Could n't be anything in such a violent supposition as that, and yet
+such a crafty fellow as that Bradshaw,--what trick was he not up to?
+Absurd! Cynthia was not acting,--Rachel would n't be equal to such a
+performance!--“why then, Mr. Gridley,” the lawyer continued, “I don't
+see but what my partner would have you at an advantage, and, if disposed
+to make you uncomfortable, could do so pretty effectively. But this, you
+understand, is only a supposed case, and not a very likely one. I don't
+think it would have been prudent in you to meddle with that seal. But
+it is a very different matter with regard to myself. It makes no
+difference, so far as I am concerned, where this package came from, or
+how it was obtained. It is just as absolutely within my control as any
+piece of property I call my own. I should not hesitate, if I saw fit,
+to break this seal at once, and proceed to the examination of any papers
+contained within the envelope. If I found any paper of the slightest
+importance relating to the estate, I should act as if it had never been
+out of my possession.
+
+“Suppose, however, I chose to know what was in the package, and, having
+ascertained, act my judgment about returning it to the party from whom
+you obtained it. In such case I might see fit to restore or cause it
+to be restored, to the party, without any marks of violence having been
+used being apparent. If everything is not right, probably no questions
+would be asked by the party having charge of the package. If there is
+no underhand work going on, and the papers are what they profess to be,
+nobody is compromised but yourself, so far as I can see, and you are
+compromised at any rate, Mr. Gridley, at least in the good graces of the
+party from whom you obtained the documents. Tell that party that I
+took the package without opening it, and shall return it, very likely,
+without breaking the seal. Will consider of the matter, say a couple of
+days. Then you shall hear from me, and she shall hear from you. So. So.
+Yes, that's it. A nice business. A thing to sleep on. You had better
+leave the whole matter of dealing with the package to me. If I see fit
+to send it back with the seal unbroken, that is my affair. But keep
+perfectly quiet, if you please, Mr. Gridley, about the whole matter. Mr.
+Bradshaw is off, as you know, and the business on which he is gone is
+important,--very important. He can be depended on for that; he has acted
+all along as if he had a personal interest in the success of our firm
+beyond his legal relation to it.”
+
+Mr. Penhallow's light burned very late in the office that night, and the
+following one. He looked troubled and absent-minded, and when Miss
+Laura ventured to ask him how long Mr. Bradshaw was like to be gone, he
+answered her in such a way that the girl who waited at table concluded
+that he did n't mean to have Miss Laury keep company with Mr. Bradshaw,
+or he'd never have spoke so dreadful hash to her when she asked about
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. SUSAN POSEY'S TRIAL.
+
+A day or two after Myrtle Hazard returned to the village, Master Byles
+Gridley, accompanied by Gifted Hopkins, followed her, as has been
+already mentioned, to the same scene of the principal events of this
+narrative. The young man had been persuaded that it would be doing
+injustice to his talents to crowd their fruit prematurely upon the
+market. He carried his manuscript back with him, having relinquished the
+idea of publishing for the present. Master Byles Gridley, on the other
+hand, had in his pocket a very flattering proposal, from the same
+publisher to whom he had introduced the young poet, for a new and
+revised edition of his work, “Thoughts on the Universe,” which was to
+be remodelled in some respects, and to have a new title not quite so
+formidable to the average reader.
+
+It would be hardly fair to Susan Posey to describe with what delight and
+innocent enthusiasm she welcomed back Gifted Hopkins. She had been
+so lonely since he was away? She had read such of his poems as she
+possessed--duplicates of his printed ones, or autographs which he had
+kindly written out for her--over and over again, not without the sweet
+tribute of feminine sensibility, which is the most precious of all
+testimonials to a poet's power over the heart. True, her love belonged
+to another,--but then she was so used to Gifted! She did so love to hear
+him read his poems,--and Clement had never written that “little bit of
+a poem to Susie,” which she had asked him for so long ago! She received
+him therefore with open arms,--not literally, of course, which would
+have been a breach of duty and propriety, but in a figurative sense,
+which it is hoped no reader will interpret to her discredit.
+
+The young poet was in need of consolation. It is true that he had seen
+many remarkable sights during his visit to the city; that he had got
+“smarted up,” as his mother called it, a good deal; that he had been to
+Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party, where he had looked upon life in all its
+splendors; and that he brought back many interesting experiences, which
+would serve to enliven his conversation for a long time. But he had
+failed in the great enterprise he had undertaken. He was forced to
+confess to his revered parent, and his esteemed friend Susan Posey, that
+his genius, which was freely acknowledged, was not thought to be quite
+ripe as yet. He told the young lady some particulars of his visit to the
+publisher, how he had listened with great interest to one of his
+poems, “The Triumph of Song,”--how he had treated him with marked and
+flattering attention; but that he advised him not to risk anything
+prematurely, giving him the hope that by and by he would be admitted
+into that series of illustrious authors which it was the publisher's
+privilege to present to the reading public. In short, he was advised not
+to print. That was the net total of the matter, and it was a pang to the
+susceptible heart of the poet. He had hoped to have come home enriched
+by the sale of his copyright, and with the prospect of seeing his name
+before long on the back of a handsome volume.
+
+Gifted's mother did all in her power to console him in his
+disappointment. There was plenty of jealous people always that wanted
+to keep young folks from rising in the world. Never mind, she did n't
+believe but what Gifted could make jest as good verses as any of them
+that they kept such a talk about. She had a fear that he might pine
+away in consequence of the mental excitement he had gone through,
+and solicited his appetite with her choicest appliances,--of which he
+partook in a measure which showed that there was no immediate cause of
+alarm.
+
+But Susan Posey was more than a consoler,--she was an angel to him in
+this time of his disappointment. “Read me all the poems over again,”
+ she said,--“it is almost the only pleasure I have left, to hear you read
+your beautiful verses.” Clement Lindsay had not written to Susan quite
+so often of late as at some former periods of the history of their love.
+Perhaps it was that which had made her look paler than usual for some
+little time. Something was evidently preying on her. Her only delight
+seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine
+declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various
+poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more
+than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek,
+when there seemed to be no special cause for grief. She ventured to
+speak of it to Master Byles Gridley.
+
+“Our Susan's in trouble, Mr. Gridley, for some reason or other that's
+unbeknown to me, and I can't help wishing you could jest have a few
+words with her. You're a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all
+the young folks, and they'd tell you pretty much everything about
+themselves. I calc'late she is n't at ease in her mind about somethin'
+or other, and I kind o' think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of
+her.”
+
+“Was there ever anything like it?” said Master Byles Gridley to himself.
+“I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at
+this rate. Susan Posey in trouble, too! Well, well, well, it's easier to
+get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks.
+Susan Posey's trouble will be come at easily enough; but Myrtle Hazard
+floats in deeper water. We must make Susan Posey tell her own story, or
+let her tell it, for it will all come out of itself.”
+
+“I am going to dust the books in the open shelves this morning. I wonder
+if Miss Susan Posey would n't like to help for half an hour or so,”
+ Master Gridley remarked at the breakfast-table.
+
+The amiable girl's very pleasant countenance lighted up at the thought
+of obliging the old man who had been so kind to her and so liberal to
+her friend, the poet. She would be delighted to help him; she would
+dust them all for him, if he wanted her to. No, Master Gridley said, he
+always wanted to have a hand in it; and, besides, such a little body
+as she was could not lift those great folios out of the lower shelves
+without overstraining herself; she might handle the musketry and the
+light artillery, but he must deal with the heavy guns himself. “As low
+down as the octavos, Susan Posey, you shall govern; below that, the
+Salic law.”
+
+Susan did not know much about the Salic law; but she knew he meant that
+he would dust the big books and she would attend to the little ones.
+
+A very young and a very pretty girl is sometimes quite charming in a
+costume which thinks of nothing less than of being attractive. Susan
+appeared after breakfast in the study, her head bound with a kerchief of
+bright pattern, a little jacket she had outgrown buttoned, in spite
+of opposition, close about her up to the throat, round which a white
+handkerchief was loosely tied, and a pair of old gauntlets protecting
+her hands, so that she suggested something between a gypsy, a jaunty
+soubrette, and the fille du regiment.
+
+Master Gridley took out a great volume from the lower shelf,--a folio in
+massive oaken covers with clasps Like prison hinges, bearing the stately
+colophon, white on a ground of vermilion, of Nicholas Jenson and his
+associates. He opened the volume,--paused over its blue, and scarlet
+initial letter,--he turned page after page, admiring its brilliant
+characters, its broad, white marginal rivers, and the narrower white
+creek that separated the black-typed twin-columns, he turned back to
+the beginning and read the commendatory paragraph, “Nam ipsorum omnia
+fidgent tum correctione dignissima, tum cura imprimendo splendida
+ac miranda,” and began reading, “Incipit proemium super apparatum
+decretalium....” when it suddenly occurred to him that this was not
+exactly doing what he had undertaken to do, and he began whisking an
+ancient bandanna about the ears of the venerable volume. All this time
+Miss Susan Posey was catching the little books by the small of their
+backs, pulling them out, opening them, and clapping them together,
+'p-'p-'p! 'p-'p-'p! and carefully caressing all their edges with a
+regular professional dusting-cloth, so persuasively that they yielded
+up every particle that a year had drifted upon them, and came forth
+refreshed and rejuvenated. This process went on for a while, until Susan
+had worked down among the octavos and Master Gridley had worked up among
+the quartos. He had got hold of Calmet's Dictionary, and was caught by
+the article Solomon, so that he forgot his occupation again. All at
+once it struck him that everything was very silent,--the 'p-'p-'p! of
+clapping the books had ceased, and the light rustle of Susan's dress was
+no longer heard. He looked up and saw her standing perfectly still, with
+a book in one hand and her duster in the other. She was lost in thought,
+and by the shadow on her face and the glistening of her blue eyes he
+knew it was her hidden sorrow that had just come back to her. Master
+Gridley shut up his book, leaving Solomon to his fate, like the worthy
+Benedictine he was reading, without discussing the question whether he
+was saved or not.
+
+“Susan Posey, child, what is your trouble?”
+
+Poor Susan was in the state of unstable equilibrium which the least
+touch upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down
+the waves of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it
+ventured out,--showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow,
+sinking into the hollow, and climbing again into notice.
+
+“O Mr. Grid-ley--I can't--I can't--tell you or--any-body--what 's the
+mat-mat-matter. My heart will br-br-break.”
+
+“No, no, no, child,” said Mr. Gridley, sympathetically stirred a little
+himself by the sight of Susan in tears and sobbing and catching her
+breath, “that mustn't be, Susan Posey. Come off the steps, Susan Posey,
+and stop dusting the books,--I can finish them,--and tell me all about
+your troubles. I will try to help you out of them, and I have begun
+to think I know how to help young people pretty well. I have had some
+experience at it.”
+
+But Susan cried and sobbed all the more uncontrollably and convulsively.
+Master Gridley thought he had better lead her at once to what he felt
+pretty sure was the source of her grief, and that, when she had had her
+cry out, she would probably make the hole in the ice he had broken big
+enough in a very few minutes.
+
+“I think something has gone wrong between you and your friend, the young
+gentleman with whom you are in intimate relations, my child, and I think
+you had better talk freely with me, for I can perhaps give you a little
+counsel that will be of service.”
+
+Susan cried herself quiet at last. “There's nobody in the world
+like you, Mr. Gridley,” she said, “and I've been wanting to tell you
+something ever so long. My friend--Mr. Clem--Clement Lindsay does n't
+care for me as he used to,--I know he does n't. He hasn't written to me
+for--I don't know but it's a month. And O Mr. Gridley! he's such a great
+man, and I am such a simple person,--I can't help thinking--he would be
+happier with somebody else than poor little Susan Posey!”
+
+This last touch of self-pity overcame her, as it is so apt to do those
+who indulge in that delightful misery, and she broke up badly, as a
+horse-fancier would say, so that it was some little time before she
+recovered her conversational road-gait.
+
+“O Mr. Gridley,” she began again, at length, “if I only dared to tell
+him what I think,--that perhaps it would be happier for us both--if we
+could forget each other! Ought I not to tell him so? Don't you think he
+would find another to make him happy? Wouldn't he forgive me for telling
+him he was free? Were we not too young to know each other's hearts when
+we promised each other that we would love as long as we lived? Sha'n't I
+write him a letter this very day and tell him all? Do you think it would
+be wrong in me to do it? O Mr. Gridley, it makes me almost crazy to
+think about it. Clement must be free! I cannot, cannot hold him to a
+promise he does n't want to keep.”
+
+There were so many questions in this eloquent rhapsody of Susan's that
+they neutralized each other, as one might say, and Master Gridley had
+time for reflection. His thoughts went on something in this way:
+
+“Pretty clear case! Guess Mr. Clement can make up his mind to it. Put
+it well, did n't she? Not a word about our little Gifted! That's the
+trouble. Poets! how they do bewitch these schoolgirls! And having a
+chance every day, too, how could you expect her to stand it?” Then
+aloud: “Susan Posey, you are a good, honest little girl as ever was. I
+think you and Clement were too hasty in coming together for life before
+you knew what life meant. I think if you write Clement a letter, telling
+him that you cannot help fearing that you two are not perfectly adapted
+to each other, on account of certain differences for which neither of
+you is responsible, and that you propose that each should release the
+other from the pledge given so long ago,--in that case, I say, I believe
+he will think no worse of you for so doing, and may perhaps agree that
+it is best for both of you to seek your happiness elsewhere than in each
+other.”
+
+The book-dusting came to as abrupt a close as the reading of Lancelot.
+Susan went straight to her room, dried her tears so as to write in
+a fair hand, but had to stop every few lines and take a turn at
+the “dust-layers,” as Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's friend used to call
+the fountains of sensibility. It would seem like betraying Susan's
+confidence to reveal the contents of this letter, but the reader may be
+assured that it was simple and sincere and very sweetly written, without
+the slightest allusion to any other young man, whether of the poetical
+or cheaper human varieties.
+
+It was not long before Susan received a reply from Clement Lindsay.
+It was as kind and generous and noble as she could have asked. It was
+affectionate, as a very amiable brother's letter might be, and candidly
+appreciative of the reasons Susan had assigned for her proposal. He gave
+her back her freedom, not that he should cease to feel an interest in
+her, always. He accepted his own release, not that he would ever think
+she could be indifferent to his future fortunes. And within a very
+brief period of time after sending his answer to Susan Posey, whether he
+wished to see her in person, or whether he had some other motive, he
+had packed his trunk, and made his excuses for an absence of uncertain
+length at the studio, and was on his way to Oxbow Village.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. JUST AS YOU EXPECTED.
+
+The spring of 1861 had now arrived,--that eventful spring which was to
+lift the curtain and show the first scene of the first act in the mighty
+drama which fixed the eyes of mankind during four bloody years. The
+little schemes of little people were going on in all our cities and
+villages without thought of the fearful convulsion which was soon coming
+to shatter the hopes and cloud the prospects of millions. Our little
+Oxbow Village, which held itself by no means the least of human centres,
+was the scene of its own commotions, as intense and exciting to those
+concerned as if the destiny of the nation had been involved in them.
+
+Mr. Clement Lindsay appeared suddenly in that important locality, and
+repaired to his accustomed quarters at the house of Deacon Rumrill. That
+worthy person received him with a certain gravity of manner, caused
+by his recollections of the involuntary transgression into which Mr.
+Lindsay had led him by his present of “Ivanhoe.”--He was, on the whole,
+glad to see him, for his finances were not yet wholly recovered from
+the injury inflicted on them by the devouring element. But he could not
+forget that his boarder had betrayed him into a breach of the fourth
+commandment, and that the strict eyes of his clergyman had detected him
+in the very commission of the offence. He had no sooner seen Mr. Clement
+comfortably installed, therefore, than he presented himself at the
+door of his chamber with the book, enveloped in strong paper and very
+securely tied round with a stout string.
+
+“Here is your vollum, Mr. Lindsay,” the Deacon said. “I understand it is
+not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did
+not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what
+I consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and
+romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you,
+as a young man of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you
+will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have
+written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons of my
+household from meddling with it.”
+
+True enough, Mr. Clement saw in strong black letters on the back of the
+paper wrapping his unfortunate “Ivanhoe,”--
+
+      “DANGEROUS READING FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH.
+
+      “TOUCH NOT THE UNCLEAN THING.”
+
+“I thought you said you had Scott's picture hung up in your parlor,
+Deacon Rumrill,” he said, a little amused with the worthy man's fear and
+precautions.
+
+“It is the great Scott's likeness that I have in my parlor,” he said; “I
+will show it to you if you will come with me.”
+
+Mr. Clement followed the Deacon into that sacred apartment.
+
+“That is the portrait of the great Scott,” he said, pointing to an
+engraving of a heavy-looking person whose phrenological developments
+were a somewhat striking contrast to those of the distinguished Sir
+Walter.
+
+“I will take good care that none of your young people see this volume,”
+ Mr. Clement said; “I trust you read it yourself, however, and found
+something to please you in it. I am sure you are safe from being harmed
+by any such book. Did n't you have to finish it, Deacon, after you had
+once begun?”
+
+“Well, I--I--perused a consid'able portion of the work,” the Deacon
+answered, in a way that led Mr. Clement to think he had not stopped much
+short of Finis. “Anything new in the city?”
+
+“Nothing except what you've all had,--Confederate States establishing
+an army and all that,--not very new either. What has been going on here
+lately, Deacon?”--
+
+“Well, Mr. Lindsay, not a great deal. My new barn is pretty nigh done.
+I've got as fine a litter of pigs as ever you see. I don't know whether
+you're a judge of pigs or no. The Hazard gal's come back, spilt, pooty
+much, I guess. Been to one o' them fashionable schools,--I 've heerd
+that she 's learnt to dance. I've heerd say that that Hopkins boy's
+round the Posey gal, come to think, she's the one you went with some
+when you was here,--I 'm gettin' kind o' forgetful. Old Doctor Hurlbut's
+pretty low,--ninety-four year old,--born in '67,--folks ain't ginerally
+very spry after they're ninety, but he held out wonderful.”
+
+“How's Mr. Bradshaw?”
+
+“Well, the young squire, he's off travellin' somewhere in the West, or
+to Washin'ton, or somewhere else,--I don't jestly know where. They say
+that he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's
+estate. I don' know much about it.”
+
+The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,
+generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived
+in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that
+young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick
+with each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had
+reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her
+young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his
+services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only
+a wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her
+constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.
+
+Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's
+popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner
+to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he
+had seen that Lindsay fellah raound taown with the darndest big stick y'
+ever did see. Looked kind o' savage and wild like. Another one told him
+that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had
+got the mittin was praowlin' abaout--with a pistil,--one o' them
+Darringers,--abaout as long as your thumb, an' fire a bullet as big as a
+p'tatah-ball,--'a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots
+y' right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his
+pocket. The stable-keeper, who, it may be remembered, once exchanged
+a few playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these
+unfeeling young men, and offered the resources of his stable to the
+youth supposed to be in peril.
+
+“I 've got a faast colt, Mr. Hopkins, that 'll put twenty mild betwixt
+you an' this here village, as quick as any four huffs 'll dew it in this
+here caounty, if you should want to get away suddin. I've heern tell
+there was some lookin' raound here that wouldn't be wholesome to
+meet,--jest say the word, Mr. Hopkins, an' I 'll have ye on that are
+colt's back in less than no time, an' start ye off full jump. There's a
+good many that's kind o' worried for fear something might happen to ye,
+Mr. Hopkins,--y' see fellahs don't like to have other chaps cuttin' on
+'em aout with their gals.”
+
+Gifted Hopkins had become excessively nervous by this time. It is true
+that everything in his intimacy with Susan Posey, so far, might
+come under the general head of friendship; but he was conscious
+that something more was in both their thoughts. Susan had given him
+mysterious hints that her relations with Clement had undergone a change,
+but had never had quite courage enough, perhaps had too much delicacy,
+to reveal the whole truth.
+
+Gifted was walking home, deeply immersed in thoughts excited by
+the hints which hail been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his
+imagination, when all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement
+Lindsay coming straight towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a
+pair of blunt scissors, which he carried habitually in his pocket. What
+should he do? Should he fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt
+to find himself scant o' breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise.
+His demeanor on the occasion did credit to his sense of his own virtuous
+conduct and his self-possession. He put his hand out, while yet at a
+considerable distance, and marched up towards Clement, smiling with all
+the native amiability which belonged to him.
+
+To his infinite relief, Clement put out his hand to grasp the one
+offered him, and greeted the young poet in the most frank and cordial
+manner.
+
+“And how is Miss Susan Posey, Mr. Hopkins?” asked Clement, in the most
+cheerful tone. “It is a long while since I have seen her, and you must
+tell her that I hope I shall not leave the village without finding time
+to call upon her. She and I are good friends always, Mr. Hopkins, though
+perhaps I shall not be quite so often at your mother's as I was during
+my last visit to Oxbow Village.”
+
+Gifted felt somewhat as the subject of one of those old-fashioned forms
+of argument, formerly much employed to convince men of error in matters
+of religion, must have felt when the official who superintended the
+stretching-machine said, “Slack up!”
+
+He told Mr. Clement all about Susan, and was on the point of saying that
+if he, Mr. Clement, did not claim any engrossing interest in her, he,
+Gifted, was ready to offer her the devotion of a poet's heart. Mr.
+Clement, however, had so many other questions to ask him about everybody
+in the village, more particularly concerning certain young persons in
+whom he seemed to be specially interested, that there was no chance to
+work in his own revelations of sentiment.
+
+Clement Lindsay had come to Oxbow Village with a single purpose. He
+could now venture to trust himself in the presence of Myrtle Hazard. He
+was free, and he knew nothing to show that she had lost the liberty
+of disposing of her heart. But after an experience such as he had gone
+through, he was naturally distrustful of himself, and inclined to be
+cautious and reserved in yielding to a new passion. Should he tell her
+the true relations in which they stood to each other,--that she owed her
+life to him, and that he had very nearly sacrificed his own in saving
+hers? Why not? He had a claim on her gratitude for what he had done in
+her behalf, and out of this gratitude there might naturally spring a
+warmer feeling.
+
+No, he could not try to win her affections by showing that he had paid
+for them beforehand. She seemed to be utterly unconscious of the fact
+that it was he who had been with her in the abyss of waters. If the
+thought came to her of itself, and she ever asked him, it would be time
+enough to tell her the story. If not, the moment might arrive when
+he could reveal to her the truth that he was her deliverer, without
+accusing himself of bribing her woman's heart to reward him for his
+services. He would wait for that moment.
+
+It was the most natural thing in the world that Mr. Lindsay, a young
+gentleman from the city, should call to see Miss Hazard, a young lady
+whom he had met recently at a party. To that pleasing duty he addressed
+himself the evening after his arrival.
+
+“The young gentleman's goin' a courtin', I calc'late,” was the remark of
+the Deacon's wife when she saw what a comely figure Mr. Clement showed
+at the tea-table.
+
+“A very hahnsome young mahn,” the Deacon replied, “and looks as if he
+might know consid'able. An architect, you know,--a sort of a builder.
+Wonder if he has n't got any good plans for a hahnsome pigsty. I suppose
+he 'd charge somethin' for one, but it couldn't be much, an' he could
+take it out in board.”
+
+“Better ask him,” his wife--said; “he looks mighty pleasant; there's
+nothin' lost by askin', an' a good deal got sometimes, grandma used to
+say.”
+
+The Deacon followed her advice. Mr. Clement was perfectly good-natured
+about it, asked the Deacon the number of snouts in his menagerie, got an
+idea of the accommodations required, and sketched the plaza of a
+neat, and appropriate edifice for the Porcellarium, as Master Gridley
+afterwards pleasantly christened it, which was carried out by
+the carpenter, and stands to this day a monument of his obliging
+disposition, and a proof that there is nothing so humble that taste
+cannot be shown in it.
+
+“What'll be your charge for the plan of the pigsty, Mr. Lindsay?” the
+Deacon inquired with an air of interest,--he might have become involved
+more deeply than he had intended. “How much should you call about right
+for the picter an' figgerin'?”
+
+“Oh, you're quite welcome to my sketch of a plan, Deacon. I've seen much
+showier buildings tenanted by animals not very different from those your
+edifice is meant for.”
+
+Mr. Clement found the three ladies sitting together in the chill, dim
+parlor at The Poplars. They had one of the city papers spread out on
+the table, and Myrtle was reading aloud the last news from Charleston
+Harbor. She rose as Mr. Clement entered, and stepped forward to meet
+him. It was a strange impression this young man produced upon her,--not
+through the common channels of the intelligence, not exactly that
+“magnetic” influence of which she had had experience at a former time.
+It did not over come her as at the moment of their second meeting. But
+it was something she must struggle against, and she had force and pride
+and training enough now to maintain her usual tranquillity, in spite of
+a certain inward commotion which seemed to reach her breathing and her
+pulse by some strange, inexplicable mechanism.
+
+Myrtle, it must be remembered, was no longer the simple country girl who
+had run away at fifteen, but a young lady of seventeen, who had learned
+all that more than a year's diligence at a great school could teach her,
+who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar
+with the style and manners of those who came from what considered
+itself the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for
+picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing
+modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not
+failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like
+Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no
+healthy nature to be educated, but in transformation, worry about
+their charges up to a certain period of their lives. Then, if the
+transformation does not come, they seem to think their cares and duties
+are at an end, and, considering their theories of human destiny, usually
+accept the situation with wonderful complacency. This was the stage
+which Miss Silence Withers had reached with reference to Myrtle. It made
+her infinitely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may
+choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting
+about her “responsibility.” She even began to take an interest in some
+of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now
+and then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as
+Myrtle would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay
+society she had frequented.
+
+Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw
+was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to
+poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.
+What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with
+her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?
+
+Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of
+strange, perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had
+found his marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing
+before him. This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit to
+model his proudest ideal from, her eyes melted him when they rested for
+an instant on his face,--her voice reached the hidden sensibilities of
+his inmost nature; those which never betray their existence until the
+outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message
+to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,--that
+cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating
+man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out
+of ten for the most romantic devotion?
+
+If he had known the impression he made, he would have felt less anxiety
+with reference to this particular possibility. Miss Silence expressed
+herself gratified with his appearance, and thought he looked like a good
+young man,--he reminded her of a young friend of hers who--[It was the
+same who had gone to one of the cannibal islands as a missionary,--and
+stayed there.] Myrtle was very quiet. She had nothing to say about
+Clement, except that she had met him at a party in the city, and found
+him agreeable. Miss Cynthia wrote a letter to Murray Bradshaw that very
+evening, telling him that he had better come back to Oxbow Village as
+quickly as he could, unless he wished to find his place occupied by an
+intruder.
+
+In the mean time, the country was watching the garrison in Charleston
+Harbor. All at once the first gun of the four years' cannonade hurled
+its ball against the walls of Fort Sumter. There was no hamlet in the
+land which the reverberations of that cannon-roar did not reach. There
+was no valley so darkened by overshadowing hills that it did not see the
+American flag hauled down on the 13th of April. There was no loyal
+heart in the North that did not answer to the call of the country to
+its defenders which went forth two days later. The great tide of feeling
+reached the locality where the lesser events of our narrative were
+occurring. A meeting of the citizens was instantly called. The venerable
+Father Pemberton opened it with a prayer that filled every soul with
+courage and high resolve. The young farmers and mechanics of that whole
+region joined the companies to which they belonged, or organized in
+squads and marched at once, or got ready to march, to the scene of
+conflict.
+
+The contagion of warlike patriotism reached the most peacefully inclined
+young persons.
+
+“My country calls me,” Gifted Hopkins said to Susan Posey, “and I am
+preparing to obey her summons. If I can pass the medical examination,
+which it is possible I may, though I fear my constitution _may_ be thought
+too weak, and if no obstacle impedes me, I think of marching in the
+ranks of the Oxbow Invincibles. If I go, Susan, and I fall, will you not
+remember me... as one who... cherished the tenderest... sentiments...
+towards you... and who had looked forward to the time when... when....”
+
+His eyes told the rest. He loved!
+
+Susan forgot all the rules of reserve to which she had been trained.
+What were cold conventionalities at such a moment? “Never! never!” she
+said, throwing her arms about his neck and mingling her tears with his,
+which were flowing freely. “Your country does not need your sword... but
+it does need... your pen. Your poems will inspire... our soldiers....
+The Oxbow Invincibles will march to victory, singing your songs.... If
+you go... and if you... fall... O Gifted!... I... I... yes, I shall die
+too!”
+
+His love was returned. He was blest!
+
+“Susan,” he said, “my own Susan, I yield to your wishes at every
+sacrifice. Henceforth they will be my law. Yes, I will stay and
+encourage my brave countrymen to go forward to the bloody field. My
+voice shall urge them on to the battle-ground. I will give my dearest
+breath to stimulate their ardor.
+
+“O Susan! My own, own Susan!”
+
+While these interesting events had been going on beneath the modest roof
+of the Widow Hopkins, affairs had been rapidly hastening to a similar
+conclusion under the statelier shadow of The Poplars. Clement Lindsay
+was so well received at his first visit that he ventured to repeat it
+several times, with so short intervals that it implied something more
+than a common interest in one of the members of the household. There was
+no room for doubt who this could be, and Myrtle Hazard could not help
+seeing that she was the object of his undisguised admiration. The belief
+was now general in the village that Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey
+were either engaged or on the point of being so; and it was equally
+understood that, whatever might be the explanation, she and her former
+lover had parted company in an amicable manner.
+
+Love works very strange transformations in young women. Sometimes it
+leads them to try every mode of adding to their attractions,--their
+whole thought is how to be most lovely in the eyes they would fill so
+as to keep out all other images. Poor darlings! We smile at their little
+vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last
+Congressman's speech or the great Election Sermon; but Nature knows well
+what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more
+for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.
+
+It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast
+of Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her
+consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the
+spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had
+inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from
+angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of
+shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a
+future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of
+which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a
+while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself
+that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and
+deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have
+known at a glance for the great passion.
+
+Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. “There is no
+time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this
+business is not put a stop to.”
+
+Love moves in an accelerating ratio; and there comes a time when the
+progress of the passion escapes from all human formulae, and brings
+two young hearts, which had been gradually drawing nearer and nearer
+together, into complete union, with a suddenness that puts an infinity
+between the moment when all is told and that which went just before.
+
+They were sitting together by themselves in the dimly lighted parlor.
+They had told each other many experiences of their past lives, very
+freely, as two intimate friends of different sex might do. Clement had
+happened to allude to Susan, speaking very kindly and tenderly of her.
+He hoped this youth to whom she was attached would make her life happy.
+“You know how simple-hearted and good she is; her image will always be a
+pleasant one in my memory,--second to but one other.”
+
+Myrtle ought, according to the common rules of conversation, to have
+asked, What other? but she did not. She may have looked as if she wanted
+to ask,--she may have blushed or turned pale, perhaps she could not
+trust her voice; but whatever the reason was, she sat still, with
+downcast eyes. Clement waited a reasonable time, but, finding it was of
+no use, began again.
+
+“Your image is the one other,--the only one, let me say, for all else
+fades in its presence,--your image fills all my thought. Will you trust
+your life and happiness with one who can offer you so little beside his
+love? You know my whole heart is yours.”
+
+Whether Myrtle said anything in reply or not, whether she acted like
+Coleridge's Genevieve,--that is, “fled to him and wept,” or suffered her
+feelings to betray themselves in some less startling confession, we will
+leave untold. Her answer, spoken or silent, could not have been a cruel
+one, for in another moment Clement was pressing his lips to hers, after
+the manner of accepted lovers.
+
+“Our lips have met to-day for the second time,” he said, presently.
+
+She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean? The second time! How
+assuredly he spoke! She looked him calmly in the face, and awaited his
+explanation.
+
+“I have a singular story to tell you. On the morning of the 16th of
+June, now nearly two years ago, I was sitting in my room at Alderbank,
+some twenty miles down the river, when I heard a cry for help coming
+from the river. I ran down to the bank, and there I saw a boy in an old
+boat--”
+
+When it came to the “boy” in the old boat, Myrtle's cheeks flamed so
+that she could not bear it, and she covered her face with both her
+hands. But Clement told his story calmly through to the end, sliding
+gently over its later incidents, for Myrtle's heart was throbbing
+violently, and her breath a little catching and sighing, as when she had
+first lived with the new life his breath had given her.
+
+“Why did you ask me for myself, when you could have claimed me?” she
+said.
+
+“I wanted a free gift, Myrtle,” Clement answered, “and I have it.”
+
+They sat in silence, lost in the sense of that new life which had
+suddenly risen on their souls.
+
+The door-bell rang sharply. Kitty Fagan answered its summons, and
+presently entered the parlor and announced that Mr. Bradshaw was in the
+library, and wished to see the ladies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. MURRAY BRADSHAW PLAYS HIS LAST CARD.
+
+“How can I see that man this evening, Mr. Lindsay?”
+
+“May I not be Clement, dearest? I would not see him at all, Myrtle.
+I don't believe you will find much pleasure in listening to his fine
+speeches.”
+
+“I cannot endure it.--Kitty, tell him I am engaged, and cannot see him
+this evening. No, no! don't say engaged, say very much occupied.”
+
+Kitty departed, communing with herself in this wise:--“Ockipied, is it?
+An' that's what ye cahl it when ye 're kapin' company with one young
+gintleman an' don't want another young gintleman to come in an' help the
+two of ye? Ye won't get y'r pigs to market to-day, Mr. Bridshaw, no, nor
+to-morrow, nayther, Mr. Bridshaw. It's Mrs. Lindsay that Miss Myrtle
+is goin' to be,--an' a big cake there'll be at the weddin' frosted all
+over,--won't ye be plased with a slice o' that, Mr. Bridshaw?”
+
+With these reflections in her mind, Mistress Kitty delivered her
+message, not without a gleam of malicious intelligence in her look that
+stung Mr. Bradshaw sharply. He had noticed a hat in the entry, and a
+little stick by it which he remembered well as one he had seen carried
+by Clement Lindsay. But he was used to concealing his emotions, and
+he greeted the two older ladies who presently came into the library so
+pleasantly, that no one who had not studied his face long and carefully
+would have suspected the bitterness of heart that lay hidden far down
+beneath his deceptive smile. He told Miss Silence, with much apparent
+interest, the story of his journey. He gave her an account of the
+progress of the case in which the estate of which she inherited the
+principal portion was interested. He did not tell her that a final
+decision which would settle the right to the great claim might be
+expected at any moment, and he did not tell her that there was very
+little doubt that it would be in favor of the heirs of Malachi Withers.
+He was very sorry he could not see Miss Hazard that evening,--hoped he
+should be more fortunate to-morrow forenoon, when he intended to call
+again,--had a message for her from one of her former school friends,
+which he was anxious to give her. He exchanged certain looks and hints
+with Miss Cynthia, which led her to withdraw and bring down the papers
+he had entrusted to her. At the close of his visit, she followed him
+into the entry with a lamp, as was her common custom.
+
+“What's the meaning of all this, Cynthia? Is that fellow making love to
+Myrtle?”
+
+“I'm afraid so, Mr. Bradshaw. He's been here several times, and they
+seem to be getting intimate. I couldn't do anything to stop it.”
+
+“Give me the papers,--quick!”
+
+Cynthia pulled the package from her pocket. Murray Bradshaw looked
+sharply at it. A little crumpled,--crowded into her pocket. Seal
+unbroken. All safe.
+
+“I shall come again to-morrow forenoon. Another day and it will be all
+up. The decision of the court will be known. It won't be my fault if
+one visit is not enough.--You don't suppose Myrtle is in love with this
+fellow?”
+
+“She acts as--if she might be. You know he's broke with Susan Posey, and
+there's nothing to hinder. If you ask my opinion, I think it's your last
+chance: she is n't a girl to half do things, and if she has taken to
+this man it will be hard to make her change her mind. But she's young,
+and she has had a liking for you, and if you manage it well there's no
+telling.”
+
+Two notes passed between Myrtle Hazard and Master Byles Gridley that
+evening. Mistress Kitty Fagan, who had kept her ears pretty wide open,
+carried them.
+
+Murray Bradshaw went home in a very desperate state of feeling. He had
+laid his plans, as he thought, with perfect skill, and the certainty of
+their securing their end. These papers were to have been taken from the
+envelope, and found in the garret just at the right moment, either by
+Cynthia herself or one of the other members of the family, who was to be
+led on, as it were accidentally, to the discovery. The right moment must
+be close at hand. He was to offer his hand--and heart, of course--to
+Myrtle, and it was to be accepted. As soon as the decision of the land
+case was made known, or not long afterwards, there was to be a search
+in the garret for papers, and these were to be discovered in a certain
+dusty recess, where, of course, they would have been placed by Miss
+Cynthia.
+
+And now the one condition which gave any value to these arrangements
+seemed like to fail. This obscure youth--this poor fool, who had been
+on the point of marrying a simpleton to whom he had made a boyish
+promise--was coming between him and the object of his long pursuit,--the
+woman who had every attraction to draw him to herself. It had been a
+matter of pride with Murray Bradshaw that he never lost his temper so as
+to interfere with the precise course of action which his cool judgment
+approved; but now he was almost beside himself with passion. His labors,
+as he believed, had secured the favorable issue of the great case so
+long pending. He had followed Myrtle through her whole career, if not as
+her avowed lover, at least as one whose friendship promised to flower
+in love in due season. The moment had come when the scene and the
+characters in this village drama were to undergo a change as sudden
+and as brilliant as is seen in those fairy spectacles where the dark
+background changes to a golden palace and the sober dresses are replaced
+by robes of regal splendor. The change was fast approaching; but he,
+the enchanter, as he had thought himself, found his wand broken, and his
+power given to another.
+
+He could not sleep during that night. He paced his room, a prey to
+jealousy and envy and rage, which his calm temperament had kept him from
+feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of
+all that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable
+anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her
+life on the spot, that she might never be another's,--that neither
+man nor woman should ever triumph over him,--the proud ambitious man,
+defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which
+only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her
+lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd
+complications, if anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The
+idea floated through his mind, for he thought of everything; but he
+was a lawyer, and not a fool, and had no idea of figuring in court as
+a criminal. Besides, he was not a murderer,--cunning was his natural
+weapon, not violence. He had a certain admiration of desperate crime in
+others, as showing nerve and force, but he did not feel it to be his own
+style of doing business.
+
+During the night he made every arrangement for leaving the village the
+next day, in case he failed to make any impression on Myrtle Hazard
+and found that his chance was gone. He wrote a letter to his partner,
+telling him that he had left to join one of the regiments forming in the
+city. He adjusted all his business matters so that his partner should
+find as little trouble as possible. A little before dawn he threw
+himself on the bed, but he could not sleep; and he rose at sunrise, and
+finished his preparations for his departure to the city.
+
+The morning dragged along slowly. He could not go to the office, not
+wishing to meet his partner again. After breakfast he dressed himself
+with great care, for he meant to show himself in the best possible
+aspect. Just before he left the house to go to The Poplars, he took the
+sealed package from his trunk, broke open the envelope, took from it a
+single paper,--it had some spots on it which distinguished it from
+all the rest,--put it separately in his pocket, and then the envelope
+containing the other papers. The calm smile he wore on his features as
+he set forth cost him a greater effort than he had ever made before to
+put it on. He was moulding his face to the look with which he meant to
+present himself; and the muscles had been sternly fixed so long that it
+was a task to bring them to their habitual expression in company,--that
+of ingenuous good-nature.
+
+He was shown into the parlor at The Poplars; and Kitty told Myrtle that
+he had called and inquired for her and was waiting down stairs.
+
+“Tell him I will be down presently,” she said. “And, Kitty, now mind
+just what I tell you. Leave your kitchen door open, so that you can
+hear anything fall in the parlor. If you hear a book fall,--it will be a
+heavy one, and will make some noise,--run straight up here to my little
+chamber, and hang this red scarf out of the window. The left-hand
+side-sash, mind, so that anybody can see it from the road. If Mr.
+Gridley calls, show him into the parlor, no matter who is there.”
+
+Kitty Fagan looked amazingly intelligent, and promised that she would
+do exactly as she was told. Myrtle followed her down stairs almost
+immediately, and went into the parlor, where Mr. Bradshaw was waiting.
+
+Never in his calmest moments had he worn a more insinuating smile on
+his features than that with which he now greeted Myrtle. So gentle, so
+gracious, so full of trust, such a completely natural expression of a
+kind, genial character did it seem, that to any but an expert it would
+have appeared impossible that such an effect could be produced by the
+skilful balancing of half a dozen pairs of little muscles that manage
+the lips and the corners of the mouth. The tones of his voice were
+subdued into accord with the look of his features; his whole manner was
+fascinating, as far as any conscious effort could make it so. It was
+just one of those artificially pleasing effects that so often pass with
+such as have little experience of life for the genuine expression of
+character and feeling. But Myrtle had learned the look that shapes
+itself on the features of one who loves with a love that seeketh not its
+own, and she knew the difference between acting and reality. She met his
+insinuating approach with a courtesy so carefully ordered that it was of
+itself a sentence without appeal. Artful persons often interpret sincere
+ones by their own standard. Murray Bradshaw thought little of this
+somewhat formal address,--a few minutes would break this thin film
+to pieces. He was not only a suitor with a prize to gain, he was a
+colloquial artist about to employ all the resources of his specialty.
+
+He introduced the conversation in the most natural and easy way,
+by giving her the message from a former school-mate to which he had
+referred, coloring it so delicately, as he delivered it, that it became
+an innocent-looking flattery. Myrtle found herself in a rose-colored
+atmosphere, not from Murray Bradshaw's admiration, as it seemed, but
+only reflected by his mind from another source. That was one of his
+arts, always, if possible, to associate himself incidentally, as it
+appeared, and unavoidably, with an agreeable impression.
+
+So Myrtle was betrayed into smiling and being pleased before he had said
+a word about himself or his affairs. Then he told her of the adventures
+and labors of his late expedition; of certain evidence which at the
+very last moment he had unearthed, and which was very probably the
+turning-point in the case. He could not help feeling that she must
+eventually reap some benefit from the good fortune with which his
+efforts had been attended. The thought that it might yet be so had been
+a great source of encouragement to him,--it would always be a great
+happiness to him to remember that he had done anything to make her
+happy.
+
+Myrtle was very glad that he had been so far successful,--she did not
+know that it made much difference to her, but she was obliged to him for
+the desire of serving her that he had expressed.
+
+“My services are always yours, Miss Hazard. There is no sacrifice I
+would not willingly make for your benefit. I have never had but one
+feeling toward you. You cannot be ignorant of what that feeling is.”
+
+“I know, Mr. Bradshaw, it has been one of kindness. I have to thank
+you for many friendly attentions, for which I hope I have never been
+ungrateful.”
+
+“Kindness is not all that I feel towards you, Miss Hazard. If that
+were all, my lips would not tremble as they do now in telling you my
+feelings.--I love you.”
+
+He sprang the great confession on Myrtle a little sooner than he had
+meant. It was so hard to go on making phrases! Myrtle changed color a
+little, for she was startled.
+
+The seemingly involuntary movement she made brought her arm against a
+large dictionary, which lay very near the edge of the table on which it
+was resting. The book fell with a loud noise to the floor.
+
+There it lay. The young man awaited her answer; he did not think of
+polite forms at such a moment.
+
+“It cannot be, Mr. Bradshaw,--it must not be. I have known you long,
+and I am not ignorant of all your brilliant qualities, but you must not
+speak to me of love. Your regard,--your friendly interest, tell me that
+I shall always have these, but do not distress me with offering more
+than these.”
+
+“I do not ask you to give me your love in return; I only ask you not
+to bid me despair. Let me believe that the time may come' when you will
+listen to me,--no matter how distant. You are young,--you have a
+tender heart,--you would not doom one who only lives for you to
+wretchedness,--so long that we have known each other. It cannot be that
+any other has come between us--”
+
+Myrtle blushed so deeply that there was no need of his finishing his
+question.
+
+“Do you mean, Myrtle Hazard, that you have cast me aside for
+another?--for this stranger--this artist--who was with you yesterday
+when I came, bringing with me the story of all I had done for you, yes,
+for you,--and was ignominiously refused the privilege of seeing you?”
+ Rage and jealousy had got the better of him this time. He rose as he
+spoke, and looked upon her with such passion kindling in his eyes that
+he seemed ready for any desperate act.
+
+“I have thanked you for any services you may have rendered me, Mr.
+Bradshaw,” Myrtle answered, very calmly, “and I hope you will add one
+more to them by sparing me this rude questioning. I wished to treat you
+as a friend; I hope you will not render that impossible.”
+
+He had recovered himself for one more last effort. “I was impatient:
+overlook it, I beg you. I was thinking of all the happiness I have
+labored to secure for you, and of the ruin to us both it would be if you
+scornfully rejected the love I offer you,--if you refuse to leave me any
+hope for the future,--if you insist on throwing yourself away on this
+man, so lately pledged to another. I hold the key of all your earthly
+fortunes in my hand. My love for you inspired me in all that I have
+done, and, now that I come to lay the result of my labors at your feet,
+you turn from me, and offer my reward to a stranger. I do not ask you
+to say this day that you will be mine,--I would not force your
+inclinations,--but I do ask you that you will hold yourself free of all
+others, and listen to me as one who may yet be more than a friend. Say
+so much as this, Myrtle, and you shall have such a future as you never
+dreamed of. Fortune, position, all that this world can give, shall be
+yours.”
+
+“Never! never! If you could offer me the whole world, or take away from
+me all that the world can give, it would make no difference to me. I
+cannot tell what power you hold over me, whether of life and death, or
+of wealth and poverty; but after talking to me of love, I should not
+have thought you would have wronged me by suggesting any meaner motive.
+It is only because we have been on friendly terms so long that I have
+listened to you as I have done. You have said more than enough, and I
+beg you will allow me to put an end to this interview.”
+
+She rose to leave the room. But Murray Bradshaw had gone too far to
+control himself,--he listened only to the rage which blinded him.
+
+“Not yet!” he said. “Stay one moment, and you shall know what your pride
+and self-will have cost you!”
+
+Myrtle stood, arrested, whether by fear, or curiosity, or the passive
+subjection of her muscles to his imperious will, it would be hard to
+say.
+
+Murray Bradshaw took out the spotted paper from his breast-pocket, and
+held it up before her. “Look here!” he exclaimed. “This would have made
+you rich,--it would have crowned you a queen in society,--it would have
+given you all, and more than all, that you ever dreamed of luxury, of
+splendor, of enjoyment; and I, who won it for you, would have taught you
+how to make life yield every bliss it had in store to your wishes. You
+reject my offer unconditionally?”
+
+Myrtle expressed her negative only by a slight contemptuous movement.
+
+Murray Bradshaw walked deliberately to the fireplace, and laid the
+spotted paper upon the burning coals. It writhed and curled, blackened,
+flamed, and in a moment was a cinder dropping into ashes. He folded his
+arms, and stood looking at the wreck of Myrtle's future, the work of his
+cruel hand. Strangely enough, Myrtle herself was fascinated, as it were,
+by the apparent solemnity of this mysterious sacrifice. She had kept her
+eyes steadily on him all the time, and was still gazing at the altar on
+which her happiness had been in some way offered up, when the door was
+opened by Kitty Fagan, and Master Byles Gridley was ushered into the
+parlor.
+
+“Too late, old man!” Murray Bradshaw exclaimed, in a hoarse and savage
+voice, as he passed out of the room, and strode through the entry and
+down the avenue. It was the last time the old gate of The Poplars was
+to open or close for him. The same day he left the village; and the next
+time his name was mentioned it was as an officer in one of the regiments
+just raised and about marching to the seat of war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV. THE SPOTTED PAPER.
+
+What Master Gridley may have said to Myrtle Hazard that served to
+calm her after this exciting scene cannot now be recalled. That Murray
+Bradshaw thought he was inflicting a deadly injury on her was plain
+enough. That Master Gridley did succeed in convincing her that no great
+harm had probably been done her is equally certain.
+
+Like all bachelors who have lived a lonely life, Master Byles Gridley
+had his habits, which nothing short of some terrestrial convulsion--or
+perhaps, in his case, some instinct that drove him forth to help
+somebody in trouble--could possibly derange. After his breakfast, he
+always sat and read awhile,--the paper, if a new one came to hand,
+or some pleasant old author,--if a little neglected by the world of
+readers, he felt more at ease with him, and loved him all the better.
+
+But on the morning after his interview with Myrtle Hazard, he had
+received a letter which made him forget newspapers, old authors, almost
+everything, for the moment. It was from the publisher with whom he had
+had a conversation, it may be remembered, when he visited the city, and
+was to this effect: That Our Firm propose to print and stereotype the
+work originally published under the title of “Thoughts on the Universe”;
+said work to be remodelled according to the plan suggested by the
+Author, with the corrections, alterations, omissions, and additions
+proposed by him; said work to be published under the following title,
+to wit: ________ ________: said work to be printed in 12mo, on paper
+of good quality, from new types, etc., etc., and for every copy thereof
+printed the author to receive, etc., etc.
+
+Master Gridley sat as in a trance, reading this letter over and over,
+to know if it could be really so. So it really was. His book had
+disappeared from the market long ago, as the elm seeds that carpet the
+ground and never germinate disappear. At last it had got a certain value
+as a curiosity for book-hunters. Some one of them, keener-eyed than the
+rest, had seen that there was a meaning and virtue in this unsuccessful
+book, for which there was a new audience educated since it had tried to
+breathe before its time. Out of this had grown at last the publisher's
+proposal. It was too much: his heart swelled with joy, and his eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+How could he resist the temptation? He took down his own particular
+copy of the book, which was yet to do him honor as its parent, and
+began reading. As his eye fell on one paragraph after another, he
+nodded approval of this sentiment or opinion, he shook his head as if
+questioning whether this other were not to be modified or left out,
+he condemned a third as being no longer true for him as when it was
+written, and he sanctioned a fourth with his hearty approval. The reader
+may like a few specimens from this early edition, now a rarity. He shall
+have them, with Master Gridley's verbal comments. The book, as its
+name implied, contained “Thoughts” rather than consecutive trains of
+reasoning or continuous disquisitions. What he read and remarked
+upon were a few of the more pointed statements which stood out in the
+chapters he was turning over. The worth of the book must not be judged
+by these almost random specimens.
+
+“THE BEST THOUGHT, LIKE THE MOST PERFECT DIGESTION, IS DONE
+UNCONSCIOUSLY.--Develop that.--Ideas at compound interest in the
+mind.--Be aye sticking in an idea,--while you're sleeping it'll be
+growing. Seed of a thought to-day,--flower to-morrow--next week--ten
+years from now, etc.--Article by and by for the....
+
+“CAN THE INFINITE BE SUPPOSED TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE
+ULTIMATE DESTINY OF ANY CREATED THING TO THE FINITE? OUR THEOLOGIANS
+PRETEND THAT IT CAN. I DOUBT.--Heretical. Stet.
+
+“PROTESTANTISM MEANS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. BUT IT IS AFRAID OF ITS OWN
+LOGIC.--Stet. No logical resting-place short of None of your business.
+
+“THE SUPREME SELF-INDULGENCE IS TO SURRENDER THE WILL TO A SPIRITUAL
+DIRECTOR.--Protestantism gave up a great luxury.--Did it though?
+
+“ASIATIC MODES OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH DO NOT EXPRESS THE 'RELATIONS IN
+WHICH THE AMERICAN FEELS HIM SELF TO STAND TO HIS SUPERIORS IN THIS OR
+ANY OTHER SPHERE OF BEING. REPUBLICANISM MUST HAVE ITS OWN RELIGIOUS
+PHRASEOLOGY, WHICH IS NOT THAT BORROWED FROM ORIENTAL DESPOTISMS.
+
+“IDOLS AND DOGMAS IN PLACE OF CHARACTER; PILLS AND THEORIES IN PLACE
+OF WHOLESOME LIVING. SEE THE HISTORIES OF THEOLOGY AND MEDICINE
+PASSIM.--Hits 'em.
+
+“'OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.' DO YOU MEAN TO SAY JEAN CHAUVIN,
+THAT          'HEAVEN LIES ABOUT US IN OUR INFANCY'?
+
+“WHY DO YOU COMPLAIN OF YOUR ORGANIZATION? YOUR SOUL WAS IN A HURRY, AND
+MADE A RUSH FOR A BODY. THERE ARE PATIENT SPIRITS THAT HAVE WAITED FROM
+ETERNITY, AND NEVER FOUND PARENTS FIT TO BE BORN OF.--How do you know
+anything about all that? Dele.
+
+“WHAT SWEET, SMOOTH VOICES THE NEGROES HAVE! A HUNDRED GENERATIONS FED
+ON BANANAS.--COMPARE THEM WITH OUR APPLE-EATING WHITE FOLKS!--It won't
+do. Bananas came from the West Indies.
+
+“TO TELL A MAN'S TEMPERAMENT BY HIS HANDWRITING. SEE IF THE DOTS OF HIS
+I'S RUN AHEAD OR NOT, AND IF THEY DO, HOW FAR.--I have tried that--on
+myself.
+
+“MARRYING INTO SOME FAMILIES IS THE NEXT THING TO BEING CANONIZED.--Not
+so true now as twenty or thirty years ago. As many bladders, but more
+pins.
+
+“FISH AND DANDIES ONLY KEEP ON ICE.--Who will take? Explain in note how
+all warmth approaching blood heat spoils fops and flounders.
+
+“FLYING IS A LOST ART AMONG MEN AND REPTILES. BATS FLY, AND MEN
+OUGHT TO. TRY A LIGHT TURBINE. RISE A MILE STRAIGHT, FALL HALF A MILE
+SLANTING,--RISE HALF A MILE STRAIGHT, FALL HALF A MILE SLANTING, AND SO
+ON. OR SLANT UP AND SLANT DOWN.--Poh! You ain't such a fool as to think
+that is new,--are you?
+
+“Put in my telegraph project. Central station. Cables with insulated
+wires running to it from different quarters of the city. These form
+the centripetal system. From central station, wires to all the livery
+stables, messenger stands, provision shops, etc., etc. These form the
+centrifugal system. Any house may have a wire in the nearest cable at
+small cost.
+
+“DO YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED AFTER THE CONTINENTS HAVE GONE UNDER, AND
+COME UP AGAIN, AND DRIED, AND BRED NEW RACES? HAVE YOUR NAME STAMPED ON
+ALL YOUR PLATES AND CUPS AND SAUCERS. NOTHING OF YOU OR YOURS WILL LAST
+LIKE THOSE. I NEVER SIT DOWN AT MY TABLE WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE CHINA
+SERVICE, AND SAYING, 'HERE ARE MY MONUMENTS. THAT BUTTER-DISH IS MY
+URN. THIS SOUP-PLATE IS MY MEMORIAL TABLET.' NO NEED OF A SKELETON AT MY
+BANQUETS! I FEED FROM MY TOMBSTONE AND READ MY EPITAPH AT THE BOTTOM OF
+EVERY TEACUP.--Good.”
+
+He fell into a revery as he finished reading this last sentence. He
+thought of the dim and dread future,--all the changes that it would
+bring to him, to all the living, to the face of the globe, to the order
+of earthly things. He saw men of a new race, alien to all that had
+ever lived, excavating with strange, vast engines the old ocean-bed now
+become habitable land. And as the great scoops turned out the earth they
+had fetched up from the unexplored depths, a relic of a former simple
+civilization revealed the fact that here a tribe of human beings had
+lived and perished.--Only the coffee-cup he had in his hand half an hour
+ago.--Where would he be then? and Mrs. Hopkins, and Gifted, and Susan,
+and everybody? and President Buchanan? and the Boston State-House?
+and Broadway?--O Lord, Lord, Lord! And the sun perceptibly smaller,
+according to the astronomers, and the earth cooled down a number of
+degrees, and inconceivable arts practised by men of a type yet undreamed
+of, and all the fighting creeds merged in one great universal--
+
+A knock at his door interrupted his revery. Miss Susan Posey informed
+him that a gentleman was waiting below who wished to see him.
+
+“Show him up to my study, Susan Posey, if you please,” said Master
+Gridley.
+
+Mr. Penhallow presented himself at Mr. Gridley's door with a countenance
+expressive of a very high state of excitement.
+
+“You have heard the news, Mr. Gridley, I suppose?”
+
+“What news, Mr. Penhallow?”
+
+“First, that my partner has left very unexpectedly to enlist in a
+regiment just forming. Second, that the great land case is decided in
+favor of the heirs of the late Malachi Withers.”
+
+“Your partner must have known about it yesterday?”
+
+“He did, even before I knew it. He thought himself possessed of a very
+important document, as you know, of which he has made, or means to
+make, some use. You are aware of the artifice I employed to prevent any
+possible evil consequences from any action of his. I have the genuine
+document, of course. I wish you to go over with me to The Poplars, and I
+should be glad to have good old Father Pemberton go with us; for it is
+a serious matter, and will be a great surprise to more than one of the
+family.”
+
+They walked together to the old house, where the old clergyman had lived
+for more than half a century. He was used to being neglected by the
+people who ran after his younger colleague; and the attention paid him
+in asking him to be present on an important occasion, as he understood
+this to be, pleased him greatly. He smoothed his long white locks,
+and called a grand-daughter to help make him look fitly for such an
+occasion, and, being at last got into his grandest Sunday aspect, took
+his faithful staff, and set out with the two gentlemen for The Poplars.
+On the way, Mr. Penhallow explained to him the occasion of their visit,
+and the general character of the facts he had to announce. He wished
+the venerable minister to prepare Miss Silence Withers for a revelation
+which would materially change her future prospects. He thought it might
+be well, also, if he would say a few words to Myrtle Hazard, for whom
+a new life, with new and untried temptations, was about to open. His
+business was, as a lawyer, to make known to these parties the facts just
+come to his own knowledge affecting their interests. He had asked Mr.
+Gridley to go with him, as having intimate relations with one of the
+parties referred to, and as having been the principal agent in securing
+to that party the advantages which were to accrue to her from the new
+turn of events. “You are a second parent to her, Mr. Gridley,” he said.
+“Your vigilance, your shrewdness, and your-spectacles have saved her. I
+hope she knows the full extent of her obligations to you, and that she
+will always look to you for counsel in all her needs. She will want a
+wise friend, for she is to begin the world anew.”
+
+What had happened, when she saw the three grave gentlemen at the door
+early in the forenoon, Mistress Kitty Fagan could not guess. Something
+relating to Miss Myrtle, no doubt: she wasn't goin' to be married right
+off to Mr. Clement,--was she,--and no church, nor cake, nor anything?
+The gentlemen were shown into the parlor. “Ask Miss Withers to go into
+the library, Kitty,” said Master Gridley. “Dr. Pemberton wishes to speak
+with her.” The good old man was prepared for a scene with Miss Silence.
+He announced to her, in a kind and delicate way, that she must make up
+her mind to the disappointment of certain expectations which she had
+long entertained, and which, as her lawyer, Mr. Penhallow, had come to
+inform her and others, were to be finally relinquished from this hour.
+
+To his great surprise, Miss Silence received this communication almost
+cheerfully. It seemed more like a relief to her than anything else. Her
+one dread in this world was her “responsibility “; and the thought that
+she might have to account for ten talents hereafter, instead of one,
+had often of late been a positive distress to her. There was also in her
+mind a secret disgust at the thought of the hungry creatures who would
+swarm round her if she should ever be in a position to bestow patronage.
+This had grown upon her as the habits of lonely life gave her more and
+more of that fastidious dislike to males in general, as such, which
+is not rare in maidens who have seen the roses of more summers than
+politeness cares to mention.
+
+Father Pemberton then asked if he could see Miss Myrtle Hazard a few
+moments in the library before they went into the parlor, where they were
+to meet Mr. Penhallow and Mr. Gridley, for the purpose of receiving the
+lawyer's communication.
+
+What change was this which Myrtle had undergone since love had touched
+her heart, and her visions of worldly enjoyment had faded before the
+thought of sharing and ennobling the life of one who was worthy of her
+best affections,--of living for another, and of finding her own noblest
+self in that divine office of woman? She had laid aside the bracelet
+which she had so long worn as a kind of charm as well as an ornament.
+One would have said her features had lost something of that look of
+imperious beauty which had added to her resemblance to the dead woman
+whose glowing portrait hung upon her wall. And if it could be that,
+after so many generations, the blood of her who had died for her faith
+could show in her descendants veins, and the soul of that elect lady
+of her race look out from her far-removed offspring's dark eyes, such a
+transfusion of the martyr's life and spiritual being might well seem to
+manifest itself in Myrtle Hazard.
+
+The large-hearted old man forgot his scholastic theory of human nature
+as he looked upon her face. He thought he saw in her the dawning of
+that grace which some are born with; which some, like Myrtle, only reach
+through many trials and dangers; which some seem to show for a while
+and then lose; which too many never reach while they wear the robes of
+earth, but which speaks of the kingdom of heaven already begun in
+the heart of a child of earth. He told her simply the story of the
+occurrences which had brought them together in the old house, with the
+message the lawyer was to deliver to its inmates. He wished to prepare
+her for what might have been too sudden a surprise.
+
+But Myrtle was not wholly unprepared for some such revelation. There was
+little danger that any such announcement would throw her mind from its
+balance after the inward conflict through which she had been passing.
+For her lover had left her almost as soon as he had told her the story
+of his passion, and the relation in which he stood to her. He, too, had
+gone to answer his country's call to her children, not driven away by
+crime and shame and despair, but quitting all--his new-born happiness,
+the art in which he was an enthusiast, his prospects of success and
+honor--to obey the higher command of duty. War was to him, as to so many
+of the noble youth who went forth, only organized barbarism, hateful but
+for the sacred cause which alone redeemed it from the curse that blasted
+the first murderer. God only knew the sacrifice such young men as he
+made.
+
+How brief Myrtle's dream had been! She almost doubted, at some moments,
+whether she would not awake from it, as from her other visions, and find
+it all unreal. There was no need of fearing any undue excitement of her
+mind after the alternations of feeling she had just experienced. Nothing
+seemed of much moment to her which could come from without,--her real
+world was within, and the light of its day and the breath of its life
+came from her love, made holy by the self-forgetfulness on both sides
+which was born with it.
+
+Only one member of the household was in danger of finding the excitement
+more than she could bear. Miss Cynthia knew that all Murray Bradshaw's
+plans, in which he had taken care that she should have a personal
+interest, had utterly failed. What he had done with the means of revenge
+in his power,--if, indeed, they were still in his power,--she did not
+know. She only knew that there had been a terrible scene, and that he
+had gone, leaving it uncertain whether he would ever return. It was with
+fear and trembling that she heard the summons which went forth, that the
+whole family should meet in the parlor to listen to a statement from Mr.
+Penhallow. They all gathered as requested, and sat round the room, with
+the exception of Mistress Kitty Fagan, who knew her place too well to
+be sittin' down with the likes o' them, and stood with attentive ears in
+the doorway.
+
+Mr. Penhallow then read from a printed paper the decision of the Supreme
+Court in the land case so long pending, where the estate of the late
+Malachi Withers was the claimant, against certain parties pretending to
+hold under an ancient grant. The decision was in favor of the estate.
+
+“This gives a great property to the heirs,” Mr. Penhallow remarked, “and
+the question as to who these heirs are has to be opened. For the will
+under which Silence Withers, sister of the deceased, has inherited is
+dated some years previous to the decease, and it was not very strange
+that a will of later date should be discovered. Such a will has been
+discovered. It is the instrument I have here.”
+
+Myrtle Hazard opened her eyes very widely, for the paper Mr. Penlallow
+held looked exactly like that which Murray Bradshaw had burned, and,
+what was curious, had some spots on it just like some she had noticed on
+that.
+
+“This will,” Mr. Penhallow said, “signed by witnesses dead or absent
+from this place, makes a disposition of the testator's property in some
+respects similar to that of the previous one, but with a single change,
+which proves to be of very great importance.”
+
+Mr. Penhallow proceeded to read the will. The important change in the
+disposition of the property was this: in case the land claim was decided
+in favor of the estate, then, in addition to the small provision made
+for Myrtle Hazard, the property so coming to the estate should all go
+to her. There was no question about the genuineness and the legal
+sufficiency of this instrument. Its date was not very long after the
+preceding one, at a period when, as was well known, he had almost given
+up the hope of gaining his case, and when the property was of little
+value compared to that which it had at present.
+
+A long silence followed this reading. Then, to the surprise of all, Miss
+Silence Withers rose, and went to Myrtle Hazard, and wished her joy
+with every appearance of sincerity. She was relieved of a great
+responsibility. Myrtle was young and could bear it better. She
+hoped that her young relative would live long to enjoy the blessings
+Providence had bestowed upon her, and to use them for the good of the
+community, and especially the promotion of the education of deserving
+youth. If some fitting person could be found to advise Myrtle, whose
+affairs would require much care, it would be a great relief to her.
+
+They all went up to Myrtle and congratulated her on her change of
+fortune. Even Cynthia Badlam got out a phrase or two which passed muster
+in the midst of the general excitement. As for Kitty Fagan, she could
+not say a word, but caught Myrtle's hand and kissed it as if it belonged
+to her own saint; and then, suddenly applying her apron to her eyes,
+retreated from a scene which was too much for her, in a state of
+complete mental beatitude and total bodily discomfiture.
+
+Then Silence asked the old minister to make a prayer, and he stretched
+his hands up to Heaven, and called down all the blessings of Providence
+upon all the household, and especially upon this young handmaiden, who
+was to be tried with prosperity, and would need all aid from above to
+keep her from its dangers.
+
+Then Mr. Penhallow asked Myrtle if she had any choice as to the friend
+who should have charge of her affairs. Myrtle turned to Master Byles
+Gridley, and said, “You have been my friend and protector so far, will
+you continue to be so hereafter?”
+
+Master Gridley tried very hard to begin a few words of thanks to her
+for her preference, but finding his voice a little uncertain, contented
+himself with pressing her hand and saying, “Most willingly, my dear
+daughter!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI. CONCLUSION.
+
+The same day the great news of Myrtle Hazard's accession to fortune came
+out, the secret was told that she had promised herself in marriage to
+Mr. Clement Lindsay. But her friends hardly knew how to congratulate her
+on this last event. Her lover was gone, to risk his life, not improbably
+to lose it, or to come home a wreck, crippled by wounds, or worn out
+with disease.
+
+Some of them wondered to see her so cheerful in such a moment of trial.
+They could not know how the manly strength of Clement's determination
+had nerved her for womanly endurance. They had not learned that a great
+cause makes great souls, or reveals them to themselves,--a lesson taught
+by so many noble examples in the times that followed. Myrtle's only
+desire seemed to be to labor in some way to help the soldiers and their
+families. She appeared to have forgotten everything for this duty; she
+had no time for regrets, if she were disposed to indulge them, and she
+hardly asked a question as to the extent of the fortune which had fallen
+to her.
+
+The next number of the “Banner and Oracle” contained two announcements
+which she read with some interest when her attention was called to them.
+They were as follows:
+
+“A fair and accomplished daughter of this village comes, by the late
+decision of the Supreme Court, into possession of a property estimated
+at a million of dollars or more. It consists of a large tract of land
+purchased many years ago by the late Malachi Withers, now become of
+immense value by the growth of a city in its neighborhood, the opening
+of mines, etc., etc. It is rumored that the lovely and highly educated
+heiress has formed a connection looking towards matrimony with a certain
+distinguished artist.”
+
+“Our distinguished young townsman, William Murray Bradshaw, Esq., has
+been among the first to respond to the call of the country for champions
+to defend her from traitors. We understand that he has obtained a
+captaincy in the __th regiment, about to march to the threatened seat of
+war. May victory perch on his banners!”
+
+The two lovers, parted by their own self-sacrificing choice in the very
+hour that promised to bring them so much happiness, labored for the
+common cause during all the terrible years of warfare, one in the camp
+and the field, the other in the not less needful work which the good
+women carried on at home, or wherever their services were needed.
+Clement--now Captain Lindsay--returned at the end of his first campaign
+charged with a special office. Some months later, after one of the great
+battles, he was sent home wounded. He wore the leaf on his shoulder
+which entitled him to be called Major Lindsay. He recovered from his
+wound only too rapidly, for Myrtle had visited him daily in the military
+hospital where he had resided for treatment; and it was bitter parting.
+The telegraph wires were thrilling almost hourly with messages of death,
+and the long pine boxes came by almost every train,--no need of asking
+what they held.
+
+Once more he came, detailed on special duty, and this time with the
+eagle on his shoulder,--he was Colonel Lindsay. The lovers could not
+part again of their own free will. Some adventurous women had followed
+their husbands to the camp, and Myrtle looked as if she could play the
+part of the Maid of Saragossa on occasion. So Clement asked her if she
+would return with him as his wife; and Myrtle answered, with as
+much willingness to submit as a maiden might fairly show under such
+circumstances, that she would do his bidding. Thereupon, with the
+shortest possible legal notice, Father Pemberton was sent for, and the
+ceremony was performed in the presence of a few witnesses in the large
+parlor at The Poplars, which was adorned with flowers, and hung round
+with all the portraits of the dead members of the family, summoned
+as witnesses to the celebration. One witness looked on with unmoved
+features, yet Myrtle thought there was a more heavenly smile on her
+faded lips than she had ever seen before beaming from the canvas,--it
+was Ann Holyoake, the martyr to her faith, the guardian spirit of
+Myrtle's visions, who seemed to breathe a holier benediction than
+any words--even those of the good old Father Pemberton himself--could
+convey.
+
+They went back together to the camp. From that period until the end of
+the war, Myrtle passed her time between the life of the tent and that of
+the hospital. In the offices of mercy which she performed for the sick
+and the wounded and the dying, the dross of her nature seemed to be
+burned away. The conflict of mingled lives in her blood had ceased.
+No lawless impulses usurped the place of that serene resolve which had
+grown strong by every exercise of its high prerogative. If she had
+been called now to die for any worthy cause, her race would have been
+ennobled by a second martyr, true to the blood of her who died under the
+cruel Queen.
+
+Many sad sights she saw in the great hospital where she passed some
+months at intervals,--one never to be forgotten. An officer was
+brought into the ward where she was in attendance. “Shot through the
+lungs,--pretty nearly gone.”
+
+She went softly to his bedside. He was breathing with great difficulty;
+his face was almost convulsed with the effort, but she recognized him in
+a moment; it was Murray Bradshaw,--Captain Bradshaw, as she knew by the
+bars on his coat flung upon the bed where he had just been laid.
+
+She addressed him by name, tenderly as if he had been a dear brother;
+she saw on his face that hers were to be the last kind words he would
+ever hear.
+
+He turned his glazing eyes upon her. “Who are you?” he said in a feeble
+voice.
+
+“An old friend,” she answered; “you knew me as Myrtle Hazard.”
+
+He started. “You by my bedside! You caring for me!--for me, that burned
+the title to your fortune to ashes before your eyes! You can't forgive
+that,--I won't believe it! Don't you hate me, dying as I am?”
+
+Myrtle was used to maintaining a perfect calmness of voice and
+countenance, and she held her feelings firmly down. “I have nothing
+to forgive you, Mr. Bradshaw. You may have meant to do me wrong, but
+Providence raised up a protector for me. The paper you burned was not
+the original,--it was a copy substituted for it--”
+
+“And did the old man outwit me after all?” he cried out, rising suddenly
+in bed, and clasping his hands behind his head to give him a few more
+gasps of breath. “I knew he was cunning, but I thought I was his match.
+It must have been Byles Gridley,--nobody else. And so the old man beat
+me after all, and saved you from ruin! Thank God that it came out so!
+Thank God! I can die now. Give me your hand, Myrtle.”
+
+She took his hand, and held it until it gently loosed its hold, and he
+ceased to breathe. Myrtle's creed was a simple one, with more of trust
+and love in it than of systematized articles of belief. She cherished
+the fond hope that these last words of one who had erred so miserably
+were a token of some blessed change which the influences of the better
+world might carry onward until he should have outgrown the sins and the
+weaknesses of his earthly career.
+
+Soon after this she rejoined her husband in the camp. From time to time
+they received stray copies of the “Banner and Oracle,” which, to Myrtle
+especially, were full of interest, even to the last advertisement. A
+few paragraphs may be reproduced here which relate to persons who have
+figured in this narrative.
+
+                    “TEMPLE OF HYMEN.
+
+“Married, on the 6th instant, Fordyce Hurlbut, M. D., to Olive, only
+daughter of the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth. The editor of this paper returns
+his acknowledgments for a bountiful slice of the wedding-cake. May their
+shadows never be less!”
+
+Not many weeks after this appeared the following:
+
+“Died in this place, on the 28th instant, the venerable Lemuel Hurlbut,
+M. D., at the great age of XCVI years.
+
+“'With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding.'”
+
+Myrtle recalled his kind care of her in her illness, and paid the
+tribute of a sigh to his memory,--there was nothing in a death like his
+to call for any aching regret.
+
+The usual routine of small occurrences was duly recorded in the village
+paper for some weeks longer, when she was startled and shocked by
+receiving a number containing the following paragraph:
+
+                    CALAMITOUS ACCIDENT
+
+“It is known to our readers that the steeple of the old meeting-house
+was struck by lightning about a month ago. The frame of the building was
+a good deal jarred by the shock, but no danger was apprehended from the
+injury it had received. On Sunday last the congregation came together
+as usual. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was alone m the pulpit, the Rev. Doctor
+Pemberton having been detained by slight indisposition. The sermon was
+from the text, 'The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
+shall lie down with the kid.' (Isaiah xi. 6.) The pastor described the
+millennium as--the reign of love and peace, in eloquent and impressive
+language. He was in the midst of the prayer which follows the sermon,
+and had jest put up a petition that the spirit of affection and faith
+and trust might grow up and prevail among the flock of which he was the
+shepherd, more especially those dear lambs whom he gathered with his
+arm, and carried in his bosom, when the old sounding-board, which had
+hung safely for nearly a century,--loosened, no doubt by the bolt which
+had fallen on the church,--broke from its fastenings, and fell with
+a loud crash upon the pulpit, crushing the Rev. Mr. Stoker under its
+ruins. The scene that followed beggars description. Cries and shrieks
+resounded through the horse. Two or three young women fainted entirely
+away. Mr. Penhallow, Deacon Rumrill, Gifted Hopkins, Esq., and others,
+came forward immediately, and after much effort succeeded in removing
+the wreck of the sounding-board, and extricating their unfortunate
+pastor. He was not fatally injured, it is hoped; but, sad to relate, he
+received such a violent blow upon the spine of the back, that palsy of
+the lower extremities is like to ensue. He is at present lying entirely
+helpless. Every attention is paid to him by his affectionately devoted
+family.”
+
+Myrtle had hardly got over the pain which the reading of this
+unfortunate occurrence gave her, when her eyes were gladdened by the
+following pleasing piece of intelligence, contained in a subsequent
+number of the village paper:
+
+                    IMPOSING CEREMONY.
+
+“The Reverend Doctor Pemberton performed the impressive rite of baptism
+upon the first-born child of our distinguished townsman, Gifted Hopkins,
+Esq., the Bard of Oxbow Village, and Mrs. Susan P. Hopkins, his amiable
+and respected lady. The babe conducted himself with singular propriety
+on this occasion. He received the Christian name of Byron Tennyson
+Browning. May he prove worthy of his name and his parentage!”
+
+The end of the war came at last, and found Colonel Lindsay among its
+unharmed survivors. He returned with Myrtle to her native village, and
+they established themselves, at the request of Miss Silence Withers,
+in the old family mansion. Miss Cynthia, to whom Myrtle made a generous
+allowance, had gone to live in a town not many miles distant, where she
+had a kind of home on sufferance, as well as at The Poplars. This was a
+convenience just then, because Nurse Byloe was invited to stay with them
+for a month or two; and one nurse and two single women under the same
+roof keep each other in a stew all the time, as the old dame somewhat
+sharply remarked.
+
+Master Byles Gridley had been appointed Myrtle's legal protector, and,
+with the assistance of Mr. Penhallow, had brought the property she
+inherited into a more manageable and productive form; so that, when
+Clement began his fine studio behind the old mansion, he felt that at
+least he could pursue his art, or arts, if he chose to give himself
+to sculpture, without that dreadful hag, Necessity, standing by him to
+pinch the features of all his ideals, and give them something of her own
+likeness.
+
+Silence Withers was more cheerful now that she had got rid of her
+responsibility. She embellished her spare person a little more than
+in former years. These young people looked so happy! Love was not so
+unendurable, perhaps, after all. No woman need despair,--especially if
+she has a house over her, and a snug little property. A worthy man, a
+former missionary, of the best principles, but of a slightly jocose and
+good-humored habit, thought that he could piece his widowed years with
+the not insignificant, fraction of life left to Miss Silence, to their
+mutual advantage. He came to the village, therefore, where Father
+Pemberton was very glad to have him supply the pulpit in the place of
+his unfortunate disabled colleague. The courtship soon began, and was
+brisk enough; for the good man knew there was no time to lose at his
+period of life,--or hers either, for that matter. It was a rather odd
+specimen of love-making; for he was constantly trying to subdue his
+features to a gravity which they were not used to, and she was as
+constantly endeavoring to be as lively as possible, with the innocent
+desire of pleasing her light-hearted suitor.
+
+“Vieille fille fait jeune mariee.” Silence was ten years younger as a
+bride than she had seemed as a lone woman. One would have said she had
+got out of the coach next to the hearse, and got into one some half
+a dozen behind it,--where there is often good and reasonably cheerful
+conversation going on about the virtues of the deceased, the probable
+amount of his property, or the little slips he may have committed, and
+where occasionally a subdued pleasantry at his expense sets the four
+waistcoats shaking that were lifting with sighs a half-hour ago in
+the house of mourning. But Miss Silence, that was, thought that two
+families, with all the possible complications which time might bring,
+would be better in separate establishments. She therefore proposed
+selling The Poplars to Myrtle and her husband, and removing to a house
+in the village, which would be large enough for them, at least for the
+present. So the young folks bought the old house, and paid a mighty good
+price for it; and enlarged it, and beautified and glorified it, and one
+fine morning went together down to the Widow Hopkins's, whose residence
+seemed in danger of being a little crowded,--for Gifted lived there with
+his Susan,--and what had happened might happen again,--and gave Master
+Byles Gridley a formal and most persuasively worded invitation to come
+up and make his home with them at The Poplars.
+
+Now Master Gridley has been betrayed into palpable and undisguised
+weakness at least once in the presence of this assembly, who are looking
+upon him almost for the last time before they part from him, and see his
+face no more. Let us not inquire too curiously, then, how he received
+this kind proposition. It is enough, that, when he found that a new
+study had been built on purpose for him, and a sleeping-room attached to
+it so that he could live there without disturbing anybody if he
+chose, he consented to remove there for a while, and that he was there
+established amidst great rejoicing.
+
+Cynthia Badlam had fallen of late into poor health. She found at last
+that she was going; and as she had a little property of her own,--as
+almost all poor relations have, only there is not enough of it,--she
+was much exercised in her mind as to the final arrangements to be made
+respecting its disposition. The Rev. Dr. Pemberton was one day surprised
+by a message, that she wished to have an interview with him. He rode
+over to the town in which she was residing, and there had a long
+conversation with her upon this matter. When this was settled, her mind
+seemed too be more at ease. She died with a comfortable assurance that
+she was going to a better world, and with a bitter conviction that it
+would be hard to find one that would offer her a worse lot than being a
+poor relation in this.
+
+Her little property was left to Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton and Jacob
+Penhallow, Esq., to be by them employed for such charitable purposes as
+they should elect, educational or other. Father Pemberton preached an
+admirable funeral sermon, in which he praised her virtues, known to this
+people among whom she had long lived, and especially that crowning act
+by which she devoted all she had to purposes of charity-and benevolence.
+
+The old clergyman seemed to have renewed his youth since the misfortune
+of his colleague had incapacitated him from labor. He generally preached
+in the forenoon now, and to the great acceptance of the people,--for the
+truth was that the honest minister who had married Miss Silence was
+not young enough or good-looking enough to be an object of personal
+attentions like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, and the old minister
+appeared to great advantage contrasted with him in the pulpit. Poor Mr.
+Stoker was now helpless, faithfully and tenderly waited upon by his own
+wife, who had regained her health and strength,--in no small measure,
+perhaps, from the great need of sympathy and active aid which her
+unfortunate husband now experienced. It was an astonishment to herself
+when she found that she who had so long been served was able to serve
+another. Some who knew his errors thought his accident was a judgment;
+but others believed that it was only a mercy in disguise,--it snatched
+him roughly from his sin, but it opened his heart to gratitude towards
+her whom his neglect could not alienate, and through gratitude to
+repentance and better thoughts. Bathsheba had long ago promised herself
+to Cyprian Eveleth; and, as he was about to become the rector of a
+parish in the next town, the marriage was soon to take place.
+
+How beautifully serene Master Byles Gridley's face was growing! Clement
+loved to study its grand lines, which had so much strength and fine
+humanity blended in them. He was so fascinated by their noble expression
+that he sometimes seemed to forget himself, and looked at him more
+like an artist taking his portrait than like an admiring friend. He
+maintained that Master Gridley had a bigger bump of benevolence and as
+large a one of cautiousness as the two people most famous for the size
+of these organs on the phrenological chart he showed him, and proved it,
+or nearly proved it, by careful measurements of his head. Master Gridley
+laughed, and read him a passage on the pseudo-sciences out of his book.
+
+The disposal of Miss Cynthia's bequest was much discussed in the
+village. Some wished the trustees would use it to lay the foundations of
+a public library. Others thought it should be applied for the relief of
+the families of soldiers who had fallen in the war. Still another set
+would take it to build a monument to the memory of those heroes. The
+trustees listened with the greatest candor to all these gratuitous
+hints. It was, however, suggested, in a well-written anonymous article
+which appeared in the village paper, that it was desirable to follow the
+general lead of the testator's apparent preference. The trustees were
+at liberty to do as they saw fit; but, other things being equal, same
+educational object should be selected.
+
+If there were any orphan children in the place, it would seem to be
+very proper to devote the moderate sum bequeathed to educating them. The
+trustees recognized the justice of this suggestion. Why not apply it
+to the instruction and maintenance of those two pretty and promising
+children, virtually orphans, whom the charitable Mrs. Hopkins had cared
+for so long without any recompense, and at a cost which would soon
+become beyond her means? The good people of the neighborhood accepted
+this as the best solution of the difficulty. It was agreed upon at
+length by the trustees, that the Cynthia Badlam Fund for Educational
+Purposes should be applied for the benefit of the two foundlings, known
+as Isosceles and Helminthia Hopkins.
+
+Master Bytes Gridley was greatly exercised about the two “preposterous
+names,” as he called them, which in a moment of eccentric impulse he had
+given to these children of nature. He ventured to hint as much to Mrs.
+Hopkins. The good dame was vastly surprised. She thought they was about
+as pooty names as anybody had had given 'em in the village. And they was
+so handy, spoke short, Sossy and Minthy,--she never should know how to
+call 'em anything else.
+
+“But my dear Mrs. Hopkins,” Master Gridley urged, “if you knew the
+meaning they have to the ears of scholars, you would see that I did very
+wrong to apply such absurd names to my little fellow-creatures, and that
+I am bound to rectify my error. More than that, my dear madam, I mean
+to consult you as to the new names; and if we can fix upon proper and
+pleasing ones, it is my intention to leave a pretty legacy in my will to
+these interesting children.”
+
+“Mr. Gridley,” said Mrs. Hopkins, “you're the best man I ever see, or
+ever shall see, ... except my poor dear Ammi.... I 'll do jest as you say
+about that, or about anything else in all this livin' world.”
+
+“Well, then, Mrs. Hopkins, what shall be the boy's name?”
+
+“Byles Gridley Hopkins!” she answered instantly.
+
+“Good Lord!” said Mr. Gridley, “think a minute, my dear madam. I will
+not say one word,--only think a minute, and mention some name that will
+not suggest quite so many winks and whispers.”
+
+She did think something less than a minute, and then said aloud,
+“Abraham Lincoln Hopkins.”
+
+“Fifteen thousand children have been so christened during the past year,
+on a moderate computation.”
+
+“Do think of some name yourself, Mr. Gridley; I shall like anything
+that you like. To think of those dear babes having a fund--if that's the
+right name--on purpose for 'em, and a promise of a legacy, I hope they
+won't get that till they're a hundred year old!”
+
+“What if we change Isosceles to Theodore, Mrs. Hopkins? That means the
+gift of God, and the child has been a gift from Heaven, rather than a
+burden.”
+
+Mrs. Hopkins seized her apron, and held it to her eyes. She was weeping.
+“Theodore!” she said, “Theodore! My little brother's name, that I buried
+when I was only eleven year old. Drownded. The dearest little child that
+ever you see. I have got his little mug with Theodore on it now. Kep' o'
+purpose. Our little Sossy shall have it. Theodore P. Hopkins,--sha'n't
+it be, Mr. Gridley?”
+
+“Well, if you say so; but why that P., Mrs. Hopkins? Theodore Parker, is
+it?”
+
+“Doesn't P. stand for Pemberton, and isn't Father Pemberton the best man
+in the world--next to you, Mr. Gridley?”
+
+“Well, well, Mrs. Hopkins, let it be so, if you are suited, I am. Now
+about Helminthia; there can't be any doubt about what we ought to call
+her,--surely the friend of orphans should be remembered in naming one of
+the objects of her charity.”
+
+“Cynthia Badlam Fund Hopkins,” said the good woman triumphantly,--“is
+that what you mean?”
+
+“Suppose we leave out one of the names,--four are too many. I think the
+general opinion will be that Hehninthia should unite the names of her
+two benefactresses,--Cynthia Badlam Hopkins.”
+
+“Why, law! Mr. Gridley, is n't that nice?--Minthy and Cynthy,--there
+ain't but one letter of difference! Poor Cynthy would be pleased if she
+could know that one of our babes was to be called after her. She was
+dreadful fond of children.”
+
+On one of the sweetest Sundays that ever made Oxbow Village lovely, the
+Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Pemberton was summoned to officiate at three most
+interesting ceremonies,--a wedding and two christenings, one of the
+latter a double one.
+
+The first was celebrated at the house of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, between
+the Rev. Cyprian Eveleth and Bathsheba, daughter of the first-named
+clergyman. He could not be present on account of his great infirmity,
+but the door of his chamber was left open that he might hear the
+marriage service performed. The old, white-haired minister, assisted,
+as the papers said, by the bridegroom's father, conducted the ceremony
+according to the Episcopal form. When he came to those solemn words in
+which the husband promises fidelity to the wife so long as they both
+shall live, the nurse, who was watching, near the poor father, saw him
+bury his face in his pillow, and heard him murmur the words, “God be
+merciful to me a sinner!”
+
+The christenings were both to take place at the same service, in the old
+meeting-house. Colonel Clement Lindsay and Myrtle his wife came in, and
+stout Nurse Byloe bore their sturdy infant in her arms. A slip of
+paper was handed to the Reverend Doctor on which these words were
+written:--“The name is Charles Hazard.”
+
+The solemn and touching rite was then performed; and Nurse Byloe
+disappeared with the child, its forehead glistening with the dew of its
+consecration.
+
+Then, hand in hand, like the babes in the wood, marched up the broad
+aisle--marshalled by Mrs. Hopkins in front, and Mrs. Gifted Hopkins
+bringing up the rear--the two children hitherto known as Isosceles and
+Helminthia. They had been well schooled, and, as the mysterious and to
+them incomprehensible ceremony was enacted, maintained the most stoical
+aspect of tranquillity. In Mrs. Hopkins's words, “They looked like
+picters, and behaved like angels.”
+
+That evening, Sunday evening as it was, there was a quiet meeting of
+some few friends at The Poplars. It was such a great occasion that
+the Sabbatical rules, never strict about Sunday evening,--which was,
+strictly speaking, secular time,--were relaxed. Father Pemberton
+was there, and Master Byles Gridley, of course, and the Rev. Ambrose
+Eveleth, with his son and his daughter-in-law, Bathsheba, and her
+mother, now in comfortable health, aunt Silence and her husband, Doctor
+Hurlbut and his wife (Olive Eveleth that was), Jacob Penhallow, Esq.,
+Mrs. Hopkins, her son and his wife (Susan Posey that was), the
+senior deacon of the old church (the admirer of the great Scott), the
+Editor-in-chief of the “Banner and Oracle,” and in the background Nurse
+Byloe and the privileged servant, Mistress Kitty Fagan, with a few
+others whose names we need not mention.
+
+The evening was made pleasant with sacred music, and the fatigues of two
+long services repaired by such simple refections as would not turn the
+holy day into a day of labor. A large paper copy of the new edition of
+Byles Gridley's remarkable work was lying on the table. He never looked
+so happy,--could anything fill his cup fuller? In the course of the
+evening Clement spoke of the many trials through which they had passed
+in common with vast numbers of their countrymen, and some of those
+peculiar dangers which Myrtle had had to encounter in the course of a
+life more eventful, and attended with more risks, perhaps, than most of
+them imagined. But Myrtle, he said, had always been specially cared for.
+He wished them to look upon the semblance of that protecting spirit who
+had been faithful to her in her gravest hours of trial and danger. If
+they would follow him into one of the lesser apartments up stairs they
+would have an opportunity to do so.
+
+Myrtle wondered a little, but followed with the rest. They all ascended
+to the little projecting chamber, through the window of which her
+scarlet jacket caught the eyes of the boys paddling about on the
+river in those early days when Cyprian Eveleth gave it the name of the
+Fire-hang-bird's Nest.
+
+The light fell softly but clearly on the dim and faded canvas from
+which looked the saintly features of the martyred woman, whose continued
+presence with her descendants was the old family legend. But underneath
+it Myrtle was surprised to see a small table with some closely covered
+object upon it. It was a mysterious arrangement, made without any
+knowledge on her part.
+
+“Now, then, Kitty!” Mr. Lindsay said.
+
+Kitty Fagan, who had evidently been taught her part, stepped forward,
+and removed the cloth which concealed the unknown object. It was a
+lifelike marble bust of Master Byles Gridley.
+
+“And this is what you have been working at so long,--is it, Clement?”
+ Myrtle said.
+
+“Which is the image of your protector, Myrtle?”, he answered, smiling.
+
+Myrtle Hazard Lindsay walked up to the bust and kissed its marble
+forehead, saying, “This is the face of my Guardian Angel.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Guardian Angel, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
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