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.