prattle with her in the same tongue, and her familiarity with it is such
that you would hardly detect a French accent. I am not particularly
anxious that she should maintain her knowledge of French; still, should
a good opportunity occur, and a competent teacher be available, it might
be well for her to do so. In all such matters I should rely greatly on
your judgment.
"Now, my dear Johns,"--
Miss Eliza interrupts by saying, "I think your friend is very familiar,
Benjamin."
"Why not? why not, Eliza? We were boys together."
And he continues with the letter:--
"My dear Johns, I want you to consider this matter fairly; I need not
tell you that it is one that lies very near my heart. Should you
determine to accept the trust, there is a ship which will be due at this
port some four or five months from now, whose master I know well, and
with whom I should feel safe to trust my little Adele for the voyage,
providing at the same time a female attendant upon whom I can rely, and
who will not leave the little voyager until she is fairly under your
wing. In two or three years thereafter, at most, I hope to come to
receive her from you; and then, when she shall have made a return visit
to Europe, it is quite possible that I may establish myself in my own
country again. Should you wish it, I could arrange for the attendant
remain with her; but I confess that I should prefer the contrary. I want
to separate her for the time, so far as I can, from _all_ the influences
to which she has been subject here; and further than this, I have a
strong faith in that self-dependence which seems to me to grow out of
your old-fashioned New England training."
"That is all," said the Doctor, quietly folding the letter. "What do you
think of the proposal, Eliza?"
"I like it, Benjamin."
The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had it been proposed to
receive an ordinary pupil in the house for any pecuniary consideration,
her pride would have revolted on the instant. But here was a child of an
old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif, as it were, floating
toward them from that unbelieving world of France.
"Surely it will be a worthy and an honorable task for Benjamin" (so
thought Miss Eliza) "to redeem this little creature from its graceless
fortune; possibly, too, the companionship may soften that wild boy,
Reuben. This French girl, Adele, is rich, well-born; what if, from being
inmates of the same house, the two should come by-and-by to be joined by
some tenderer tie?"
The possibility, even, of such a dawn of sentiment under the spinster's
watchful tutelage was a delightful subject of reflection to her. It is
remarkable how even the cunningest and the coolest of practical-minded
women delight in watching the growth of sentiment in others,--and all
the more strongly, if they can foster it by their artifices and provoke
it into demonstration.
Miss Johns, too, without being imaginative, prefigured in her mind the
image of the little French stranger, with foreign air and dress,
tripping beside her up the meeting-house aisle, looking into her face
confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of the simple
townspeople in such sort that a distinction would belong to her
_protegee_ which would be pleasantly reflected upon herself. A love of
distinction was the spinster's prevailing sin,--a distinction growing
out of the working of good deeds, if it might be, but at any rate some
worthy and notable distinction. The Doctorate of her good brother, his
occasional discourses which had been subject of a public mention that
she never forgot, were objects of a more than sisterly fondness. If her
sins were ever to meet with a punishment in the flesh, they would know
no sharper one than in a humiliation of her pride.
"I think," said she, "that you can hardly decline the proposal of Mr.
Maverick, Benjamin."
"And you will take the home care of her?" asked the Doctor.
"Certainly. She would at first, I suppose, attend school with Reuben and
the young Elderkins?"
"Probably," returned the Doctor; "but the more special religious
training which I fear the poor girl needs must be given at home, Eliza."
"Of course, Benjamin."
It was further agreed between the two that a French attendant would make
a very undesirable addition to the household, as well as sadly
compromise their efforts to build up the little stranger in full
knowledge of the faith.
The Doctor was earnest in his convictions of the duty that lay before
him, and his sister's consent to share the charge left him free to act.
He felt all the best impulses of his nature challenged by the proposal.
Here, at least, was one chance to snatch a brand from the burning,--to
lead this poor little misguided wayfarer into those paths which are
"paths of pleasantness." No image of French grace or of French modes was
prefigured to the mind of the parson; his imagination had different
range. He saw a young innocent (so far as any child in his view could be
innocent) who prattled in the terrible language of Rousseau and
Voltaire, who by the providence of God had been born in a realm where
all iniquities flourished, and to whom, by the further and richer
providence of God, a means of escape was now offered. He would no more
have thought of declining the proposed service, even though the poor
girl were dressed in homespun and clattered in sabots, than he would
have closed his ear to the cry of a drowning child.
Within that very week the Doctor wrote his reply to Maverick. He assured
him that he would most gladly undertake the trust he had
proposed,--"hoping, by God's grace, to lead the little one away from the
delusions of sense and the abominations of Antichrist, to the fold of
the faithful."
"I could wish," he continued, "that you had given me more definite
information in regard to the character of her early religious
instruction, and told me how far the child may still remain under the
mother's influence in this respect; for, next to special interposition
of Divine Grace, I know no influence so strong in determining religious
tendencies as the early instruction or example of a mother.
"My sister has promised to give home care to the little stranger, and
will, I am sure, welcome her with zeal It will be our purpose to place
your daughter at the day-school of a worthy person, Miss Betsey Onthank,
who has had large experience, and under whose tuition my boy Reuben has
been for some time established. My sister and myself are both of opinion
that the presence of any French attendant upon the child would be
undesirable.
"I hope that God may have mercy upon the French people,--and that those
who dwell temporarily among them may be watched over and be graciously
snatched from the great destruction that awaits the ungodly."
XVII.
Meantime Reuben grew into a knowledge of all the town mischief, and into
the practice of such as came within the scope of his years. The proposed
introduction of the young stranger from abroad to the advantages of the
parsonage home did not weigh upon his thought greatly. The prospect of
such a change did not soften him, whatever might come of the event. In
his private talk with Esther, he had said, "I hope that French girl'll
be a _clever_ un; if she a'n't, I'll"----and he doubled up a little
fist, and shook it, so that Esther laughed outright.
Not that the boy had any cruelty in him, but he was just now learning
from his older companions of the village, who were more steeped in
iniquity, that defiant manner by which the Devil in all of us makes his
first pose preparatory to the onslaught that is to come.
"Nay, Ruby, boy," said Esther, when she had recovered from her laughter,
"you wouldn't hurt the little un, would ye? Don't ye want a little
playfellow, Ruby?"
"I don't play with girls, I don't," said Reuben. "But, I say, Esther,
what'll papa do, if she dances?"
"What makes the boy think she'll dance?" said Esther.
"Because the Geography says the French people dance; and Phil Elderkin
showed me a picture with girls dancing under a tree, and, says he, 'That
's the sort that's comin' to y'r house.'"
"Well, I don't know," said Esther, "but I guess your Aunt Eliza 'd cure
the dancin'."
"She wouldn't cure me, if I wanted to," said Reuben, who thought it
needful to speak in terms of bravado about the spinster, with whom he
kept up a series of skirmishing fights from week to week. The truth is,
the keen eye of the good lady ferreted out a great many of his pet plans
of mischief, and nipped them before they had time to ripen. Over and
over, too, she warned him against the evil associates whom he would find
about the village tavern, where he strayed from time to time to be
witness to some dog-fight, or to receive a commendatory glance of
recognition from one Nat Boody, the tavern-keeper's son, who had run
away two years before and made a voyage down the river in a sloop laden
with apples and onions to "York." He was a head taller than Reuben, and
the latter admired him intensely: we never cease admiring those "a head
taller" than ourselves. Reuben absolutely pined in longing wonderment at
the way in which Nat Boody could crack a coach-whip, and with a couple
of hickory sticks could "call the roll" upon a pine table equal to a
drum-major. Wonderful were the stories this boy could tell, to special
cronies, of his adventures in the city: they beat the Geography "all
hollow." Such an air, too, as this Boody had, leaning against the
pump-handle by his father's door, and making cuts at an imaginary span
of horses!--such a pair of twilled trousers, cut like a man's!--such a
jacket, with lapels to the pockets, which he said "the sailors wore on
the sloops, and called 'em monkey-jackets"!--such a way as he had of
putting a quid in his mouth! for Nat Boody chewed. It is not strange
that Reuben, feeling a little of ugly constraint under the keen eye of
the spinster Eliza, should admire greatly the free-and-easy manner of
the tavern-boy, who had such familiarity with the world and such large
range of action. The most of us never get over a wonderment at the
composure and complacency which spring from a wide knowledge of the
world; and the man who can crack his whip well, though only at an
imaginary pair of horses, is sure to have a throng of admirers.
By this politic lad, Nat Boody, the innocent Reuben was decoyed into
many a little bargain which told more for the shrewdness of the tavern
than for that of the parsonage. Thus, he bartered one day a new
pocket-knife, the gift of his Aunt Mabel of Greenwich Street, for a knit
Scotch cap, half-worn, which the tavern traveller assured him could not
be matched for any money. And the parson's boy, going back with this
trophy on his head, looking very consciously at those who give an
admiring stare, is pounced upon at the very door-step by the
indefatigable spinster.
"What now, Reuben? Where in the world did you get that cap?"
"Bought it,"--in a grand way.
"But it's worn," says the aunt. "Ouf! whose was it?"
"Bought it of Nat Boody," says Reuben; "and he says there isn't another
can be had."
"Bah!" says the spinster, making a dash at the cap, which she seizes,
and, straightway rushing in-doors, souses in a kettle of boiling water.
After which comes off a new skirmish, followed by the partial defeat of
Reuben, who receives such a combing down (with sundry killed and
wounded) as he remembers for a month thereafter.
The truth is, that it was not altogether from admiration of the
accomplished Nat Boody that Reuben was prone to linger about the tavern
neighborhood. The spinster had so strongly and constantly impressed it
upon him that it was a low and vulgar and wicked place, that the boy,
growing vastly inquisitive in these years, was curious to find out what
shape the wickedness took; and as he walked by, sometimes at dusk, when
thoroughly infused with the last teachings of Miss Eliza, it seemed to
him that he might possibly catch a glimpse of the hoofs of some devil
(as he had seen devils pictured in an illustrated Milton) capering about
the doorway,--and if he had seen them, truth compels us to say that he
would have felt a strong inclination to follow them up, at a safe
distance, in order to see what kind of creatures might be wearing them.
But he was far more apt to see the lounging figure of the shoemaker from
down the street, or of Mr. Postmaster Troop, coming thither to have an
evening's chat about Vice-President Calhoun, or William Wirt and the
Anti-Masons. Or possibly, it might be, he would see the light heels of
Suke Boody, the pretty daughter of the tavern-keeper, who had been
pronounced by Phil Elderkin, who knew, (being a year his senior,) the
handsomest girl in the town. This might well be; for Suke was just
turned of fifteen, with pink arms and pink cheeks and blue eyes and a
great flock of brown hair: not very startling in her beauty on ordinary
days, when she appeared in a pinned-up quilted petticoat, and her curls
in papers, sweeping the tavern-steps; but of a Saturday afternoon, in
red and white calico, with the curls all streaming,--no wonder Phil
Elderkin, who was tall of his age, thought her handsome. So it happened
that the inquisitive Reuben, not finding any cloven feet in his furtive
observations, but encountering always either the rosy Suke, or "Scamp,"
(which was Nat's pet fighting-dog,) or the shoemaker, or the round-faced
Mr. Boody himself, could justify and explain his aunt's charge of the
tavern wickedness only by distributing it over them all. And when, one
Sunday, Miss Suke appeared at meeting (where she rarely went) in hat all
aflame with ribbons, Reuben, sorely puzzled at the sight, says to his
Aunt Eliza,--
"Why didn't the sexton put her out?"
"Put her out!" says the spinster, horrified,--"what do you mean,
Reuben?"
"Isn't she wicked?" says he; "she came from the tavern, and she lives at
the tavern."
"But don't you know that preaching is for the wicked, and that the good
had much better stay away than the bad?"
"Had they?" said Reuben, thoughtfully, pondering if there did not lie
somewhere in this averment the basis for some new moral adjustment of
his own conduct.
There are a vast many prim preachers, both male and female, in all
times, who imagine that certain styles of wickedness or vulgarity are to
be approached with propriety only across a church;--as if better
preaching did not lie, nine times out of ten, in the touch of a hand or
a whisper in the ear!
Pondering, as Reuben did, upon the repeated warnings of the spinster
against any familiarity with the tavern or tavern people, he came in
time to reckon the old creaking sign-board of Mr. Boody, and the pump in
the inn-yard, as the pivotal points of all the town wickedness, just as
the meeting-house was the centre of all the town goodness; and since the
great world was very wicked, as he knew from overmuch iteration at home,
and since communication with that wicked world was kept up mostly by the
stage-coach that stopped every noon at the tavern-door, it seemed to him
that relays of wickedness must flow into the tavern and town daily upon
that old swaying stage-coach, just as relays of goodness might come to
the meeting-house on some old lumbering chaise of a neighboring parson,
who once a month, perhaps, would "exchange" with the Doctor. And it
confirmed in Reuben's mind a good deal that was taught him about
natural depravity, when he found himself looking out with very much more
eagerness for the rumbling coach, that kept up a daily wicked activity
about the tavern, than he did for Parson Hobson, who snuffled in his
reading, and who drove an old, thin-tailed sorrel mare, with lopped ears
and lank jaws, that made passes at himself and Phil, if they teased her,
as they always did.
So, too, he came to regard, in virtue of misplaced home instruction, the
monkey-jacket of Nat Boody, and his fighting-dog "Scamp," and the pink
arms and pink cheeks and brown ringlets of Suke Boody, as so many types
of human wickedness; and, by parity of reasoning, he came to look upon
the two flat curls on either temple of his Aunt Eliza, and her pragmatic
way, and upon the yellow ribbons within the scoop-hat of Almira
Tourtelot, who sang treble and never went to the tavern, as the types of
goodness. What wonder, if he swayed more and more toward the broad and
easy path that lay around the tavern-pump, ("Scamp" lying there biting
at the flies,) and toward the barroom, with its flaming pictures of some
past menagerie-show, and big tumblers with lemons atop, rather than to
the strait and narrow path in which his Aunt Eliza and Miss Almira would
guide him with sharp voices, thin faces, and decoy of dyspeptic
doughnuts?
Phil and he sauntering by one day, Phil says,--
"Darst you go in, Reub?"
Phil was under no law of prohibition. And Reuben, glancing around the
Common, says,--
"Yes, _I_'ll go."
"Then," says Phil, "we'll call for a glass of lemonade. Fellows 'most
always order somethin', when they go in."
So Phil, swelling with his ten years, and tall of his age, walks to the
bar and calls for two tumblers of lemonade, which Old Boody stirs with
an appetizing rattle of the toddy-stick,--dropping, meantime, a query or
two about the Squire, and a look askance at the parson's boy, who is
trying very hard to wear an air as if _he_, too, were ten, and knew the
ropes.
"It's good, a'n't it?" says Phil, putting down his money, of which he
always had a good stock.
"Prime!" says Reuben, with a smack of the lips.
And then Suke comes in, hunting over the room for last week's "Courant";
and the boys, with furtive glances at those pink cheeks and brown
ringlets, go down, the steps.
"A'n't she handsome?" says Phil.
Reuben is on the growth. And when he eats dinner that day, with the
grave Doctor carving the rib-roast and the prim aunt ladling out the
sauces, he is elated with the vague, but not unpleasant consciousness,
that he is beginning to be familiar with the world.
XVIII.
It was some four or five months after the despatch of the Doctor's
letter to Maverick before the reply came. His friend expressed the
utmost gratitude for the Doctor's prompt and hearty acceptance of his
proposal. With his little Adele frolicking by him, and fastening more
tenderly upon his heart every year, he was sometimes half-disposed to
regret the scheme; but, believing it to be for her good, and confident
of the integrity of those to whom he intrusted her, he reconciled
himself to the long separation.
It does not come within the limits of this simple New England narrative
to enter upon any extended review of the family relations or the life of
Maverick abroad. Whatever details may appear incidentally, as the story
progresses, the reader will please to regard as the shreds and ravelled
edges of another and distinct life, which cannot be fairly interwoven
with the homespun one of the parsonage, nor yet be wholly brushed clear
of our story.
"I want," said Maverick in his letter, "that Adele, while having a
thorough womanly education, should grow up with simple tastes. I think I
see a little tendency In her to a good many idle coquetries of dress,
(which you will set down, I know, to her French blood,) which I trust
your good sister will see the prudence of correcting. My fortune is now
such that I may reasonably hope to put luxuries within her reach, if
they be desirable; but of this I should prefer that she remain ignorant.
I want to see established in her what you would call those moral and
religious bases of character that will sustain her under any possible
reverses or disappointments. You will smile, perhaps, at _my_ talking in
this strain; but if I have been afloat in these matters, at least you
will do me the credit that may belong to hoping better things for my
little Adele. It's not much, I know; but I do sincerely desire that she
may find some rallying-point of courage and of faith within herself
against any possible misfortune. Is it too much to hope, that, under
your guidance, and under the quiet religious atmosphere of your little
town, she may find such, and that she may possess herself of the
consolations of the faith you teach, without sacrificing altogether her
natural French vivacity?
"And now, my dear Johns, I come to refer to a certain allusion in your
letter with some embarrassment. You speak of the weight of a mother's
religious influence, and ask what it may have been. Since extreme
childhood, Adele has been almost entirely under the care of her
godmother, a quiet old lady, who, though a devotee of the Popish Church,
you must allow me to say, is a downright good Christian woman. I am
quite sure that she has not pressed upon the conscience of little Adele
any bigotries of the Church. My wish in this matter I am confident that
she has religiously regarded, and while giving the example of her own
faith by constant and daily devotions, I think, as I said in my previous
letter, that you will find the heart of my little girl as open as the
sky. Why it is that the mother's relations with the child have been so
broken you will spare me the pain of explaining.
"Would to God, I think at times, that I had married years ago one
nurtured in our old-fashioned faith of New England,--some gentle, pure,
loving soul! Shall I confess it, Johns?--the little glimpse of your lost
Rachel gave me an idea of the tenderness and depth of devotion and
charming womanliness of many of those whom I had counted stiff and
utterly repulsive, which I never had before.
"Pardon me, my friend, for an allusion which may provoke your grief, and
which may seem utterly out of place in the talk of one who is just now
confiding to you his daughter.
"Johns, I have this faith in you, from our college-days: I know that on
the score of the things touched upon in the last paragraphs of my letter
you will not press me with inquiries. It is enough for you to know that
my life has not been all 'plain-sailing.' For the present, let us say
nothing of the griefs.
"As little Adele comes to me, and sits upon my knee, as I write, I
almost lose courage.
"'Adele,' I say, 'will you leave your father, and go far away over seas,
to stay perhaps for years?'
"'You talk nonsense, papa,' she says, and leaps into my arms.
"My heart cleaves strangely to her: I do not know wholly why. And yet
she must go: it is best.
"The vessel of which I spoke will sail in three weeks from the date of
my letter for the port of New York. I have made ample provision for her
comfort on the passage; and as the date of the ship's arrival in New
York is uncertain, I must beg you to arrange with some friend there, if
possible, to protect the little stranger, until you are ready to receive
her. I inclose my draft for three hundred dollars, which I trust may be
sufficient for a year's maintenance, seeing that she goes well provided
with clothing: if otherwise, you will please inform me."
Dr. Johns was not a man to puzzle himself with idle conjectures in
regard to the private affairs of his friend. With all kind feeling for
him,--and Maverick's confidence in the Doctor had insensibly given
large growth to it,--the parson dismissed the whole affair with this
logical reflection:--
"My poor friend has been decoyed into marrying a Frenchwoman.
Frenchwomen (like Frenchmen) are all children of Satan. He is now
reaping the bitter results.
"As for the poor child," thought the Doctor, and his heart glowed at the
thought, "I will plant her little feet upon safe places. With God's
help, she shall come into the fold of the elect."
He arranges with Mrs. Brindlock to receive the child temporarily upon
her arrival. Miss Eliza puts even more than her usual vigor and system
into her arrangements for the reception of the new comer. Nothing could
be neater than the little chamber, provided with its white curtains, its
spotless linen, its dark old mahogany furniture, its Testament and
Catechism upon the toilet-table; one or two vases of old china had been
brought up and placed upon brackets out of reach of the little hands
that might have been tempted by their beauty, and a coquettish porcelain
image of a flower-girl had been added to the other simple adornments
which the ambitious spinster had lavished upon the chamber. Her pride as
housekeeper was piqued. The young stranger must be duly impressed with
the advantages of her position at the start.
"There," said she to Esther, as she gave a finishing touch to the
disposal of the blue and white hangings about the high-post bedstead, "I
wonder if that will be to the taste of the little French lady!"
"I should think it might, Marm; it's the beautifullest room I ever see,
Marm."
Reuben, boy-like, passes in and out with an air of affected
indifference, as if the arrangements for the new arrival had no interest
for him; and he whistles more defiantly than ever.
XIX
In early September of 1829, when the orchard behind the parsonage was
glowing with its burden of fruit, when the white and crimson hollyhocks
were lifting their slanted pagodas of bloom all down the garden, and the
buckwheat was whitening with its blossoms broad patches of the hillsides
east and west of Ashfield, news came to the Doctor that his expected
guest had arrived safely in New York, and was waiting his presence there
at the elegant home of Mrs. Brindlock. And Sister Mabel writes to the
Doctor in the letter which conveys intelligence of the arrival,--"She's
a charming little witch; and if you don't like to take her with you, she
may stay here." Mrs. Brindlock had no children.
A visit to New York was an event for the parson. The spinster, eager for
his good appearance at the home of her stylish sister, insisted upon a
toilet that made the poor man more awkward than ever. Yet he did not
think of rebelling. He rejoiced, indeed, that he did not dwell where
such hardships would be daily demanded; but remembering that he was
bound to a city of strangers, he recalled the Scriptural
injunction,--"Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's."
The Brindlocks, well-meaning and showy people, received the parson with
an effervescence of kindness that disturbed him almost as much as the
stiff garniture in which he had been invested by the solicitude of Miss
Eliza; and when, in addition to his double embarrassment, a little
saucy-eyed, brown-faced girl, full of mirthful exuberance, with her dark
hair banded in a way that was utterly strange to him, and with
coquettish bows of ribbon at her throat, at either armlet of her jaunty
frock, and all down either side of her silk pinafore, came toward him
with a smiling air, as if she were confident of his caresses, the
awkwardness of the poor Doctor was complete.
But, catching sight of a certain frank outlook in the little face which
reminded him of his friend Maverick, he felt his heart stirred within
him, and in his grave way dropped a kiss upon her forehead, while he
took both her hands in his.
"This, then, is little Adaly?"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Adele, merrily, and, turning round to her new-found
friends, says,--"My new papa calls me Adaly!"
The straightforward parson was, indeed, as inaccessible to French words
as to French principles. Adele had somehow a smack in it of the Gallic
Pandemonium: Adaly, to his ear, was a far honester sound.
And the child seemed to fancy it,--whether for its novelty, or the
kindliness that beamed on her from the gravest face she had ever seen,
it would be hard to say.
"Call me Adaly, and I will call you New Papa," said she.
And though the parson was not a bargaining man, every impulse of his
heart went to confirm this arrangement. It was flattering to his
self-love, if not to his principles, to have apparent sanction to his
prejudices against French forms of speech; and the "New Papa" on the
lips of this young girl touched him to the quick. Wifeless men are more
easily accessible to demonstrations of even apparent affection on the
part of young girls than those whose sympathies are hedged about by
matrimonial relations.
From all this it chanced that the best possible understanding was
speedily established between the Doctor and his little ward from beyond
the seas. For an hour after his arrival, the little creature hung upon
his chair, asking questions about her new home, about the schools, about
her playmates, patting the great hand of the Doctor with her little
fingers, and reminding him sadly of days utterly gone.
Mrs. Brindlock, with her woman's curiosity, seizes an occasion, before
they leave, to say privately to the Doctor,--
"Benjamin, the child must have a strange mother to allow this long
separation, and the little creature so loving as she is."
"It would be strange enough for any but a Frenchwoman," said he.
"But Adele is full of talk about her father and her godmother; yet she
can tell me scarce anything of her mother. There's a mystery about it,
Benjamin."
"There's a mystery in all our lives, Mabel, and will be until the last
day shall come."
The parson said this with extreme gravity, and then added,--
"He has written me regarding it,--a very unfortunate marriage, I fear.
Only this much he has been disposed to communicate; and for myself, I am
only concerned to redeem his little girl from gross worldly attachments
to the truths which take hold upon heaven."
The next day the Doctor set off homeward upon the magnificent new
steamboat Victory, which, with two wonderful smoke-pipes, was then
plying through the Sound and up the Connecticut River. It was an object
of almost as much interest to the parson as to his little companion. A
sober costume had now replaced the coquettish one with its furbelows,
which Adele had worn in the city; but there was a bright lining to her
little hat that made her brown face more piquant than ever. And as she
inclined her head jauntily to this side or that, in order to a better
listening to the old gentleman's somewhat tedious explanations, or with
a saucy smile cut him short in the midst of them, the parson felt his
heart warming more and more toward this poor child of heathen France.
Nay, he felt almost tempted to lay his lips to the little white ears
that peeped forth from the masses of dark hair and seemed fairly to
quiver with the eagerness of their listening.
With daylight of next morning came sight of the rambling old towns that
lay at the river's mouth,--being little more than patches of gray and
white, strewed over an almost treeless country, with some central spire
rising above them. Then came great stretches of open pasture, scattered
over with huge gray rocks, amid which little flocks of sheep were
rambling; or some herd of young cattle, startled by the splashing of the
paddles, and the great plumes of smoke, tossed their tails in the air,
and galloped away in a fright,--at which Adele clapped her hands, and
broke into a laugh that was as cheery as the new dawn. Next
came low, flat meadows of sedge, over which the tide oozed slowly, and
where flocks of wild ducks, scared from their feeding-ground, rose by
scores, and went flapping off seaward in long, black lines. And from
between the hills on either side came glimpses of swamp woodland, in the
midst of which some maple, earlier than its green fellows, had taken a
tinge of orange, and flamed in the eyes of the little traveller with a
gorgeousness she had never seen in the woods of Provence. Then came
towns nestling under bluffs of red quarry-stones, towns upon wooded
plains,--all with a white newness about them; and a brig, with horses on
its deck, piled over with bales of hay, comes drifting lazily down with
the tide, to catch an offing for the West Indies; and queer-shaped
flat-boats, propelled by broad-bladed oars, surge slowly athwart the
stream, ferrying over some traveller, or some fish-peddler bound to the
"P'int" for "sea-food".
Toward noon the travellers land at a shambling dock that juts into the
river, from which point they are to make their way, in such country
vehicle as the little village will supply, across to Ashfield. And when
they are fairly seated within, the parson, judging that acquaintance has
ripened sufficiently to be put to serious uses, says, with more than
usual gravity,--
"I trust, Adaly, that you are grateful to God for having protected you
from all the dangers of the deep."
"Do you think there was much danger, New Papa?"
"There's always danger, said the parson, gravely. "The Victory might
have been blown in pieces last night, and we all been killed, Adaly."
"Oh, terrible!" says Addle. "And did such a thing ever really happen?"
"Yes, my child."
"Tell me all about it, New Papa, please"; and she put her little hand in
his.
"Not now, Adaly,--not now. I want to know if you have been taught about
God, in your old home."
"Oh, the good God! To be sure I have, over and over and over"; and she
made a little piquant gesture, as if the teaching had been sometimes
wearisome.
This gayety of speech on such a theme was painful to the Doctor.
"And you have been taught to pray, Adaly?"
"Oh, yes! Listen now. Shall I tell you one of my prayers, New Papa?
<i>Voyons</i>, how is it"--
"Never mind,--never mind, Adaly; not here, not here. We are taught to
enter into our closets when we pray."
"Closets?"
"Yes, my child,--to be by ourselves, and to be solemn."
"I don't like solemn people much," said Adele, in a quiet tone.
"But do you love God, my child?"
"Love Him? To be sure I do"; and after a little pause--"All good
children love Him; and I m good, you know, New Papa, don't you?"--and
she turned her eyes up toward him with a half-coaxing, half-mischievous
look that came near to drive away all his solemnity.
"Ah, Adaly! Adaly! we are all wicked!" said he.
Adele stared at him in amazement.
"You, too! Yet papa told me you were so good! Ah, you are telling me now
a little--what you call--lie! a'n't you, New Papa?"
And she looked at him with such a frank, arch smile,--so like the memory
he cherished of the college-boy, Maverick,--that he could argue the
matter no further, but only patted her little hand, as it lay upon the
cushion of the carriage, as much as to say,--"Poor thing! poor thing!
Upon this, he fell away into a train of grave reflection on the method
which it would be best to pursue in bringing this little benighted
wanderer into the fold of the faithful.
And he was still musing thus, when suddenly the spire of Ashfield broke
upon the view.
"There it is, Adaly! There is to be your new home!"
"Where? where?" says Adele, eagerly.
And straightway she is all aglow with excitement. Her swift questions
patter on the ears of the old gentleman thick as rain-drops. She
looks at the houses, the hills, the trees, the face of every
passer-by,--wondering how she shall like them all; fashioning to herself
some image of the boy Reuben and of the Aunt Eliza who are to meet her;
yet, through all the torrent of her vexed fancies, carrying a great glow
of hope, and entering, with all her fresh, girlish enthusiasms
unchecked, upon that new phase of life, so widely different from
anything she has yet experienced, under the grave atmosphere of a New
England parsonage.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
V.
LITTLE FOXES.--PART IV.
PERSISTENCE.
My little foxes are interesting little beasts; and I only hope my reader
will not get tired of my charming menagerie before I have done showing
him their nice points. He must recollect there are seven of them, and as
yet we have shown up only three; so let him have patience.
As before stated, little foxes are the little pet sins of us educated
good Christians, who hope that we have got above and far out of sight of
stealing, lying, and those other gross evils against which we pray every
Sunday, when the Ten Commandments are read. They are not generally
considered of dignity enough to be fired at from the pulpit; they seem
to us too trifling to be remembered in church; they are like the red
spiders on plants,--too small for the perception of the naked eye, and
only to be known by the shrivelling and dropping of leaf after leaf that
ought to be green and flourishing.
I have another little fox in my eye, who is most active and most
mischievous in despoiling the vines of domestic happiness,--in fact, who
has been guilty of destroying more grapes than anybody knows of. His
name I find it difficult to give with exactness. In my enumeration I
called him _Self-Will_; another name for him--perhaps a better
one--might be _Persistence_.
Like many another, this fault is the overaction of a most necessary and
praiseworthy quality. The power of firmness is given to man as the very
granite foundation of life. Without it, there would be nothing
accomplished; all human plans would be unstable as water on an inclined
plane. In every well-constituted nature there must be a power of
tenacity, a gift of perseverance of will; and that man might not be
without a foundation for so needful a property, the Creator has laid it
in an animal faculty, which he possesses in common with the brutes.
The animal power of firmness is a brute force, a matter of brain and
spinal cord, differing in different animals. The force by which a
bulldog holds on to an antagonist, the persistence with which a mule
will plant his four feet and set himself against blows and menaces, are
good examples of the pure animal phase of a property which exists in
human beings, and forms the foundation for that heroic endurance, for
that perseverance, which carries on all the great and noble enterprises
of life.
The domestic fault we speak of is the wild, uncultured growth of this
faculty, the instinctive action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or
conscience,--in common parlance, the being "_set in one's way_." It is
the _animal_ instinct of being "set in one's way" which we mean by
self-will or persistence; and in domestic life it does the more mischief
from its working as an instinct unwatched by reason and unchallenged by
conscience.
In that pretty new cottage which you see on yonder knoll are a pair of
young people just in the midst of that happy bustle which attends the
formation of a first home in prosperous circumstances, and with all the
means of making it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, upholsterers, and
artificers await their will; and there remains for them only the
pleasant task of arranging and determining where all their pretty and
agreeable things shall be placed. Our Hero and Leander are decidedly
nice people, who have been through all the proper stages of being in
love with each other for the requisite and suitable time. They have
written each other a letter every day for two years, beginning with "My
dearest," and ending with "Your own," etc.; they have sent each other
flowers and rings and locks of hair; they have worn each other's
pictures on their hearts; they have spent hours and hours talking over
all subjects under the sun, and are convinced that never was there such
sympathy of souls, such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reasonable,
perfect foundation for mutual esteem.
Now it is quite true that people may have a perfect agreement and
sympathy in their higher intellectual nature,--may like the same books,
quote the same poetry, agree in the same principles, be united in the
same religion,--and nevertheless, when they come together in the
simplest affair of every-day business, may find themselves jarring and
impinging upon each other at every step, simply because there are to
each person, in respect of daily personal habits and personal likes and
dislikes, a thousand little individualities with which reason has
nothing to do, which are not subjects for the use of logic, and to which
they never think of applying the power of religion,--which can only be
set down as the positive ultimate facts of existence with two people.
Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During
courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on
the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue
summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in
comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling
tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business
relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the
only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die
there in a month of damp and rheumatism. She never heard of going to
housekeeping in anything but a nice little pendulous bag swinging down
from under the branches of a breezy elm; he is sure he should have water
on the brain before summer was over, from constant vertigo, in such
swaying, unsteady quarters,--he would be a sea-sick blue-jay on land,
and he cannot think of it. She knows now he don't love her, or he never
would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy hole picked out of
rotten wood; and _he_ knows she doesn't love him, or she never would
want to make him uncomfortable all his days by tilting and swinging him
about as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both are dead-set in their
own way and opinion; and how is either to be convinced that the way
which seemeth right unto the other is not best? Nature knows this, and
therefore, in her feathered tribes, blue-jays do not mate with orioles;
and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace.
But men and women as diverse in their physical tastes and habits as
blue-jays and orioles are wooing and wedding every day, and coming to
the business of nest-building, _alias_ housekeeping, with predilections
as violent, and as incapable of any logical defence, as the oriole's
partiality for a swing-nest and the jay's preference of rotten wood.
Our Hero and Leander, then, who are arranging their cottage to-day, are
examples just in point. They have both of them been only children,--both
the idols of circles where they have been universally deferred to. Each
in his or her own circle has been looked up to as a model of good taste,
and of course each has the habit of exercising and indulging very
distinct personal tastes. They truly, deeply esteem, respect, and love
each other, and for the very best of reasons,--because there are
sympathies of the very highest kind between them. Both are generous and
affectionate,--both are highly cultured in intellect and taste,--both
are earnestly religious; and yet, with all this, let me tell you that
the first year of their married life will be worthy to be recorded as _a
year of battles_. Yes, these friends so true, these lovers so ardent,
these individuals in themselves so admirable, cannot come into the
intimate relations of life without an effervescence as great as that of
an acid and alkali; and it will be impossible to decide which is most in
fault, the acid or the alkali, both being in their way of the very best
quality.
The reason of it all is, that both are intensely "_set in their way_,"
and the ways of no two human beings are altogether coincident. Both of
them have the most sharply defined, exact tastes and preferences. In the
simplest matter both have _a way_,--an exact way,--which seems to be
dear to them as life's blood. In the simplest appetite or taste they
know exactly what they want, and cannot, by any argument, persuasion, or
coaxing, be made to want anything else.
For example, this morning dawns bright upon them, as she, in her tidy
morning wrapper and trimly laced boots, comes stepping over the bales
and boxes which are discharged on the verandah; while he, for joy of his
new acquisition, can hardly let her walk on her own pretty feet, and is
making every fond excuse to lift her over obstacles and carry her into
her new dwelling in triumph.
Carpets are put down, the floors glow under the hands of obedient
workmen, and now the furniture is being wheeled in.
"Put the piano in the bow-window," says the lady.
"No, not in the bow-window," says the gentleman.
"Why, my dear, of course it must go in the bow-window. How awkward it
would look anywhere else! I have always seen pianos in bow-windows."
"My love, certainly you would not think of dashing that beautiful
prospect from the bow-window by blocking it up with the piano. The
proper place is just here, in the corner of the room. Now try it."
"My dear, I think it looks dreadfully there; it spoils the appearance of
the room."
"Well, for my part, my love, I think the appearance of the room would be
spoiled, if you filled up the bow-window. Think what a lovely place that
would be to sit in!"
"Just as if we couldn't sit there behind the piano, if we wanted to!"
says the lady.
"But then, how much more ample and airy the room looks as you open the
door, and see through the bow-window down that little glen, and that
distant peep of the village-spire!"
"But I never could be reconciled to the piano standing in the corner in
that way," says the lady. "_I insist_ upon it, it ought to stand in the
bow-window: it's the way mamma's stands, and Aunt Jane's, and Mrs.
Wilcox's; everybody has their piano so."
"If it comes to _insisting_," says the gentleman, "it strikes me that is
a game two can play at."
"Why, my dear, you know a lady's parlor is her own ground."
"Not a married lady's parlor, I imagine. I believe it is at least
equally her husband's, as he expects to pass a good portion of his time
there."
"But I don't think you ought to insist on an arrangement that really is
disagreeable to me," says the lady.
And now Hero's cheeks flush, and the spirit burns within, as she says,--
"Well, if you insist upon it, I suppose it must be as you say; but I
shall never take any pleasure in playing on it"; and Hero sweeps from
the apartment, leaving the victor very unhappy in his conquest.
He rushes after her, and finds her up-stairs, sitting disconsolate and
weeping on a packing-box.
"Now, Hero, how silly! Do have it your own way. I'll give it up."
"No,--let it be as you say. I forgot that it was a wife's duty to
submit."
"Nonsense, Hero! Do talk like a rational woman. Don't let us quarrel
like children."
"But it's so evident that I was in the right."
"My dear, I cannot concede that you were in the right; but I am willing
it should be as you say."
"Now I perfectly wonder, Leander, that you don't see how awkward your
way is. It would make me nervous every time I came into the room, and it
would be so dark in that corner that I never could see the notes."
"And I wonder, Hero, that a woman of your taste don't see how shutting
up that bow-window spoils the parlor. It's the very prettiest feature of
the room."
And so round and round they go, stating and restating their arguments,
both getting more and more nervous and combative, both declaring
themselves perfectly ready to yield the point as an oppressive exaction,
but to do battle for their own opinion as right and reason,--the animal
instinct of self-will meanwhile rising and rising and growing stronger
and stronger on both sides. But meanwhile in the heat of argument some
side-issues and personal reflections fly out like splinters in the
shivering of lances. He tells her, in his heat, that her notions are
formed from deference to models in fashionable life, and that she has no
idea of adaptation,--and she tells him that he is domineering, and
dictatorial, and wanting to have everything his own way; and in fine,
this battle is fought off and on through the day, with occasional
armistices of kisses and makings-up,--treacherous truces, which are all
broken up by the fatal words, "My dear, after all, you must admit _I_
was in the right," which of course is the signal to fight the whole
battle over again.
One such prolonged struggle is the parent of many lesser ones,--the
aforenamed splinters of injurious remark and accusation, which flew out
in the heat of argument, remaining and festering and giving rise to
nervous soreness; yet, where there is at the foundation real, genuine
love, and a good deal of it, the pleasure of making up so balances the
pain of the controversy that the two do not perceive exactly what they
are doing, nor suspect that so deep and wide a love as theirs can be
seriously affected by causes so insignificant.
But the cause of difficulty in both, the silent, unwatched, intense
power of self-will in trifles, is all the while precipitating them into
new encounters. For example, in a bright hour between the showers, Hero
arranges for her Leander a repast of peace and good-will, and compounds
for him a salad which is a _chef d'oeuvre_ among salads. Leander is
also bright and propitious; but after tasting the salad, he pushes it
silently away.
"My dear, you don't like your salad."
"No, my dear; I never eat anything with salad oil in it."
"Not eat salad oil? How absurd! I never heard of a salad without oil."
And the lady looks disturbed.
"But, my dear, as I tell you, I never take it. I prefer simple sugar and
vinegar."
"Sugar and vinegar! Why, Leander, I'm astonished! How very _bourgeois!_
You must really try to like my salad"--(spoken in a coaxing tone).
"My dear, I _never_ try to like anything new. I am satisfied with my old
tastes."
"Well, Leander, I must say that is very ungracious and disobliging of
you."
"Why any more than for you to annoy me by forcing on me what I don't
like?"
"But you would like it, if you would only try. People never like olives
till they have eaten three or four, and then they become passionately
fond of them."
"Then I think they are very silly to go through all that trouble, when
there are enough things that they do like."
"Now, Leander, I don't think that seems amiable or pleasant at all. I
think we ought to try to accommodate ourselves to the tastes of our
friends."
"Then, my dear, suppose you try to like your salad with sugar and
vinegar."
"But it's so _gauche_ and unfashionable! Did you ever hear of a salad
made with sugar and vinegar on a table in good society?"
"My mother's table, I believe, was good society, and I learned to like
it there. The truth is, Hero, for a sensible woman, you are too fond of
mere fashionable and society notions."
"Yes, you told me that last week, and I think it was very unjust,--_very
unjust, indeed_"--(uttered with emphasis).
"No more unjust than your telling me that I was dictatorial and
obstinate."
"Well, now, Leander, dear, you must confess that you are rather
obstinate."
"I don't see the proof."
"You insist on your own ways and opinions so, heaven and earth won't
turn you."
"Do I insist on mine more than you on yours?"
"Certainly, you do."
"I don't think so."
Hero casts up her eyes and repeats with expression,--
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"
"Precisely," says Leander. "I would that prayer were answered in your
case, my dear."
"I think you take pleasure in provoking me," says the lady.
"My dear, how silly and childish all this is!" says the gentleman. "Why
can't we let each other alone?"
"You began it."
"No, my dear, begging your pardon, I did not."
"Certainly, Leander, you did."
Now a conversation of this kind may go on hour after hour, as long as
the respective parties have breath and strength, both becoming secretly
more and more "set in their way". On both sides is the consciousness
that they might end it at once by a very simple concession.
She might say,--"Well, dear, you shall always have your salad as you
like"; and he might say,--"My dear, I will try to like your salad, if
you care much about it"; and if either of them would utter one of these
sentences, the other would soon follow. Either would give up, if the
other would set the example; but as it is, they remind us of nothing so
much as two cows that we have seen standing with locked horns in a
meadow, who can neither advance nor recede an inch. It is a mere
deadlock of the animal instinct of firmness; reason, conscience,
religion have nothing to do with it.
The questions debated in this style by our young couple were
surprisingly numerous: as, for example, whether their favorite copy of
Turner should hang in the parlor or in the library,--whether their pet
little landscape should hang against the wall, or be placed on an
easel,--whether the bust of Psyche should stand on the marble table in
the hall, or on a bracket in the library; all of which points were
debated with a breadth of survey, a richness of imagery, a vigor of
discussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to any one who did not
know how much two very self-willed argumentative people might
find to say on any point under heaven. Everything in classical
antiquity,--everything in Kugler's "Hand-Book of Painting,"--every
opinion of living artists,--besides questions social, moral, and
religious,--all mingled in the grand _melee_: because there is nothing
in creation that is not somehow connected with everything else.
Dr. Johnson has said,--"There are a thousand familiar disputes which
reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make
logic ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little
can be said."
With all deference to the great moralist, we must say that this
statement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk
possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly
pitted against each other in practical questions; the logic may indeed
be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero and Leander find no cases
under the sun where something is to be done, yet where little can be
said. And these wretched wranglings, this interminable labyrinth of
petty disputes, waste and crumble away that high ideal of truth and
tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies and actual worth of their
characters entitled them to form. Their married life is not what they
expected; at times they are startled by the reflection that they nave
somehow grown unlovely to each other; and yet, if Leander goes away to
pass a week, and thinks of his Hero in the distance, he can compare no
other woman to her; and the days seem long and the house empty to Hero
while he is gone; both wonder at themselves when they look over their
petty bickerings, but neither knows exactly how to catch the little fox
that spoils their vines.
It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how little
purpose,--how very clever people will talk and wonder about themselves
and each other, and yet go on year after year, not knowing how to use
either themselves or each other,--not having as much practical
philosophy in the matter of their own characters and that of their
friends as they have in respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or
the management of their water-pipes.
"But _I_ won't have any such scenes with _my_ wife," says Don Positive.
"I won't marry one of your clever women; they are always positive and
disagreeable. _I_ look for a wife of a gentle and yielding nature, that
shall take her opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes to mine."
And so Don Positive goes and marries a pretty little pink-and-white
concern, so lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite sure she
cannot have a will of her own. She is the moon of his heavens, to shine
only by his reflected light.
We would advise our gentlemen friends who wish to enjoy the felicity of
having their own way not to try the experiment with a pretty fool; for
the obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of
folly and inanity.
Let our friend once get in the seat opposite to him at table a pretty
creature who cries for the moon, and insists that he don't love her
because he doesn't get it for her; and in vain may he display his
superior knowledge of astronomy, and prove to her that the moon is not
to be got. She listens with her head on one side, and after he has
talked himself quite out of breath, repeats the very same sentence she
began the discussion with, without variation or addition.
If she wants darling Johnny taken away from school, because cruel
teachers will not give up the rules of the institution for his pleasure,
in vain does Don Positive, in the most select and superior English,
enlighten her on the necessity of habits of self-control and order for a
boy,--the impossibility that a teacher should make exceptions for their
particular darling,--the absolute, perishing need that the boy should
begin to do something. She hears him all through, and then says, "I
don't know anything about that. I know what I want: I want Johnny taken
away." And so she weeps, sulks, storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has
long fits of sick-headache,--in short, shows that a pretty animal,
without reason or cultivation, can be, in her way, quite as formidable
an antagonist as the most clever of her sex.
Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero in fair fight by the weapons of
good logic, because she is a woman capable of appreciating reason, and
able to feel the force of the considerations he adduces; and when he
does vanquish and carry her captive by his bow and spear, he feels that
he has gained a victory over no ignoble antagonist, and he becomes a
hero in his own eyes. Though a woman of much will, still she is a woman
of much reason; and if he has many vexations with her pertinacity, he is
never without hope in her good sense; but alas for him whose wife has
only the animal instinct of firmness, without any development of the
judgment or reasoning faculties! The conflicts with a woman whom a man
respects and admires are often extremely trying; but the conflicts with
one whom he cannot help despising become in the end simply disgusting.
But the inquiry now arises, What shall be done with all the questions
Dr. Johnson speaks of, which reason cannot decide, which elude
investigation, and make logic ridiculous,--cases where something must be
done, and where little can be said?
Read Mrs. Ellis's "Wives of England," and you have one solution of the
problem. The good women of England are there informed that there is to
be no discussion, that everything in the _menage_ is to follow the rule
of the lord, and that the wife has but one hope, namely, that grace may
be given him to know exactly what his own will is. "_L'etat, c'est
moi_," is the lesson which every English husband learns of Mrs. Ellis,
and we should judge from the pictures of English novels that this "awful
right divine" is insisted on in detail in domestic life.
Miss Edgeworth makes her magnificent General Clarendon talk about his
"commands" to his accomplished and elegant wife; and he rings the
parlor-bell with such an air, calls up and interrogates trembling
servants with such awful majesty, and lays about him generally in so
very military and tremendous a style, that we are not surprised that
poor little Cecilia is frightened into lying, being half out of her wits
in terror of so very martial a husband.
During his hours of courtship he majestically informs her mother that he
never could consent to receive as _his_ wife any woman who has had
another attachment; and so the poor puss, like a naughty girl, conceals
a little school-girl flirtation of bygone days, and thus gives rise to
most agonizing and tragic scenes with her terrible lord, who petrifies
her one morning by suddenly drawing the bed-curtains and flapping an old
love-letter in her eyes, asking, in tones of suppressed thunder,
"Cecilia, is this your writing?"
The more modern female novelists of England give us representations of
their view of the right divine no less stringent. In a very popular
story, called "Agatha's Husband," the plot is as follows. A man marries
a beautiful girl with a large fortune. Before the marriage, he discovers
that his brother, who has been guardian of the estate, has fraudulently
squandered the property, so that it can only be retrieved by the
strictest economy. For the sake of getting her heroine into a situation
to illustrate her moral, the authoress now makes her hero give a solemn
promise not to divulge to his wife or to any human being the fraud by
which she suffers.
The plot of the story then proceeds to show how very badly the young
wife behaves when her husband takes her to mean lodgings, deprives her
of wonted luxuries and comforts, and obstinately refuses to give any
kind of sensible reason for his conduct. Instead of looking up to him
with blind faith and unquestioning obedience, following his directions
without inquiry, and believing not only without evidence, but against
apparent evidence, that he is the soul of honor and wisdom, this
perverse Agatha murmurs, complains, thinks herself very ill-used, and
occasionally is even wicked enough, in a very mild way, to say
so,--whereat her husband looks like a martyr and suffers in silence; and
thus we are treated to a volume of mutual distresses, which are at last
ended by the truth coming out, the abused husband mounting the throne in
glory, and the penitent wife falling in the dust at his feet, and
confessing what a wretch she has been all along to doubt him.
The authoress of Jane Eyre describes the process of courtship in much
the same terms as one would describe the breaking of a horse. Shirley is
contumacious and self-willed, and Moore, her lover and tutor, gives her
"_Le Cheval dompte_" for a French lesson, as a gentle intimation of the
work he has in hand in paying her his addresses; and after long
struggling against his power, when at last she consents to his love, he
addresses her thus, under the figure of a very fierce leopardess:--
"Tame or wild, fierce or subdued, you are _mine_."
And she responds:--
"I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I
follow, only his hand shall manage me, only at his feet will I repose."
The accomplished authoress of "Nathalie" represents the struggles of a
young girl engaged to a man far older than herself, extremely dark and
heroic, fond of behaving in a very unaccountable manner, and declaring,
nevertheless, in very awful and mysterious tones, that he has such a
passion for being believed in, that, if any one of his friends, under
the most suspicious circumstances, admits _one doubt_ of his honor, all
will be over between them forever.
After establishing his power over Nathalie fully, and amusing himself
quietly for a time with the contemplation of her perplexities and
anxieties, he at last unfolds to her the mysterious counsels of his will
by declaring to another of her lovers, in her presence, that he "has the
intention of asking this young lady to become his wife." During the
engagement, however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity by
insisting prematurely on the right divine of husbands, and, as she
proves fractious, announces to her, that, much as he loves her, he sees
no prospect of future happiness in their union, and that they had better
part.
The rest of the story describe the struggles and anguish of the two, who
pass through a volume of distresses, he growing more cold, proud,
severe, and misanthropic than ever, all of which is supposed to be the
fault of naughty Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint of him,
could she only have found her highest pleasure in letting him have his
own way. Her conscience distresses her; it is all her fault; at last,
worn out in the strife, she resolves to be a good girl, goes to his
library, finds him alone, and, in spite of an insulting reception,
humbles herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty pride, begs to be
allowed to wait on him as a handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously
announcing, that, since she will stay with him at all events, she _may_
stay as his wife; and the story leaves her in the last sentence sitting
in what we are informed is the only true place of happiness for a woman,
at her husband's feet.
This is the solution which the most cultivated women of England give of
the domestic problem, according to these fair interpreters of English
ideas.
The British lion on his own domestic hearth, standing in awful majesty
with his back to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, can be
supposed to have no such disreputable discussions as we have described;
since his partner, as Miss Bronte says, has learned to know her keeper,
and her place at his feet, and can conceive no happiness so great as
hanging the picture and setting the piano exactly as he likes.
Of course this will be met with a general shriek of horror on the part
of our fair republican friends, and an equally general disclaimer on the
part of our American gentlemen, who, so far as we know, would be quite
embarrassed by the idea of assuming any such pronounced position at the
fireside.
The genius of American institutions is not towards a display of
authority. All needed authority exists among us, but exists silently,
with as little external manifestation as possible.
Our President is but a fellow-citizen, personally the equal of other
citizens. We obey him because we have chosen him, and because we find it
convenient, in regulating our affairs, to have one final appeal and one
deciding voice.
The position in which the Bible and the marriage service place the
husband in the family amounts to no more. He is the head of the family
in all that relates to its material interests, its legal relations, its
honor and standing in society; and no true woman who respects herself
would any more hesitate to promise to yield to him this position and the
deference it implies than an officer of State to yield to the President.
But because Mr. Lincoln is officially above Mr. Seward, it does not
follow that there can be nothing between them but absolute command on
the one part and prostrate submission on the other; neither does it
follow that the superior claims in all respects to regulate the affairs
and conduct of the inferior. There are still wide spheres of individual
freedom, as there are in the case of husband and wife; and no sensible
man but would feel himself ridiculous in entering another's proper
sphere with the voice of authority.
The inspired declaration, that "the husband is the head of the wife,
even as Christ is the head of the Church," is certainly to be qualified
by the evident points of difference in the subjects spoken of. It
certainly does not mean that any man shall be invested with the rights
of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply that in the family state he
is the head and protector, even as in the Church is the Saviour. It is
merely the announcement of a great natural law of society which obtains
through all the tribes and races of men,--a great and obvious fact of
human existence.
The silly and senseless reaction against this idea in some otherwise
sensible women is, I think, owing to the kind of extravagances and
overstatements to which we have alluded. It is as absurd to cavil at the
word _obey_ in the marriage ceremony as for a military officer to set
himself against the etiquette of the army, or a man to refuse the
freeman's oath.
Two young men every way on a footing of equality and friendship may be
one of them a battalion-commander and the other a staff-officer. It
would be alike absurd for the one to take airs about not obeying a man
every way his equal, and for the other to assume airs of lordly
dictation out of the sphere of his military duties. The mooting of the
question of marital authority between two well-bred, well-educated
Christian people of the nineteenth century is no less absurd.
While the husband has a certain power confided to him for the support
and maintenance of the family, and for the preservation of those
relations which involve its good name and well-being before the world,
he has no claim to an authoritative exertion of will in reference to the
little personal tastes and habits of the interior. He has no divine
right to require that everything shall be arranged to please him, at the
expense of his wife's preferences and feelings, any more than if he were
not the head of the household. In a thousand indifferent matters which
do not touch the credit and respectability of the family, he is just as
much bound sometimes to give up his own will and way for the comfort of
his wife as she is in certain other matters to submit to his decisions.
In a large number of cases the husband and wife stand as equal human
beings before God, and the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate
self-will on either side is a sin.
It is my serious belief that writings such as we have been considering
do harm both to men and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one an
idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness and self-will, and in the
other an irrational and indiscreet servility.
Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife of his bosom the
flatterer of his egotism, the acquiescent victim of his little selfish
exactions, to be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults and
fault-findings, and to see everybody falling prostrate before his will
in the domestic circle? Is this the true way to make him a manly and
Christ-like man? It is my belief that many so-called good wives have
been accessory to making their husbands very bad Christians.
However, then, the little questions of difference in every-day life are
to be disposed of between two individuals, it is in the worst possible
taste and policy to undertake to settle them by mere authority. All
romance, all poetry, all beauty are over forever with a couple between
whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. No, there is no way out
of difficulties of this description but by the application, on both
sides, of good sense and religion to the little differences of life.
A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that
setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of
self-will, and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
Everyman and every woman, in their self-training and self-culture,
should study the art of giving up with a good grace. The charm of polite
society is formed by that sort of freedom and facility in all the
members of a circle which makes each one pliable to the influences of
the others, and sympathetic to slide into the moods and tastes of others
without a jar.
In courteous and polished circles, there are no stiff railroad-tracks,
cutting straight through everything, and grating harsh thunders all
along their course, but smooth, meandering streams, tranquilly bending
hither and thither to every undulation of the flowery banks. What makes
the charm of polite society would make no less the charm of domestic
life; but it can come only by watchfulness and self-discipline in each
individual.
Some people have much more to struggle with in this way than others.
Nature has made them precise and exact. They are punctilious in their
hours, rigid in their habits, pained by any deviation from regular rule.
Now Nature is always perversely ordering that men and women of just this
disposition should become desperately enamored of their exact opposites.
The man of rules and formulas and hours has his heart carried off by a
gay, careless little chit, who never knows the day of the month, tears
up the newspaper, loses the door-key, and makes curlpapers out of the
last bill; or, _per contra_, our exact and precise little woman, whose
belongings are like the waxen cells of a bee, gives her heart to some
careless fellow, who enters her sanctum in muddy boots, upsets all her
little nice household divinities whenever he is going on a hunting or
fishing bout, and can see no manner of sense in the discomposure she
feels in the case.
What can such couples do, if they do not adopt the compromises of reason
and sense,--if each arms his or her own peculiarities with the back
force of persistent self-will, and runs them over the territories of the
other?
A sensible man and woman, finding themselves thus placed, can govern
themselves by a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on a
life-battle, can modify their own tastes and requirements, turn their
eyes from traits which do not suit them to those which do, resolving, at
all events, however reasonable be the taste or propensity which they
sacrifice, to give up all rather than have domestic strife.
There is one form which persistency takes that is peculiarly trying: I
mean that persistency of opinion which deems it necessary to stop and
raise an argument in self-defence on the slightest personal criticism.
John tells his wife that she is half an hour late with her breakfast
this morning, and she indignantly denies it.
"But look at my watch!"
"Your watch isn't right."
"I set it by railroad time."
"Well, that was a week ago; that watch of yours always gains."
"No, my dear, you're mistaken."
"Indeed I'm not. Did I not hear you telling Mr. B---- about it?"
"My dear, that was a year ago,--before I had it cleaned."
"How can you say so, John? It was only a month ago."
"My dear, you are mistaken."
And so the contest goes on, each striving for the last word.
This love of the last word has made more bitterness in families and
spoiled more Christians than it is worth. A thousand little differences
of this kind would drop to the ground, if either party would let them
drop. Suppose John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late,--suppose
that fifty of the little criticisms which we make on one another are
well- or ill-founded, are they worth a discussion? Are they worth
ill-tempered words, such as are almost sure to grow out of a discussion?
Are they worth throwing away peace and love for? Are they worth the
destruction of the only fair ideal left on earth,--a quiet, happy home?
Better let the most unjust statements pass in silence than risk one's
temper in a discussion upon them.
Discussions, assuming the form of warm arguments, are never pleasant
ingredients of domestic life, never safe recreations between near
friends. They are, generally speaking, mere unsuspected vents for
self-will, and the cases are few where they do anything more than to
make both parties more positive in their own way than they were before.
A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair statement of reasons on
either side, may be valuable; but when warmth and heat and love of
victory and pride of opinion come in, good temper and good manners are
too apt to step out.
And now Christopher, having come to the end of his subject, pauses for a
sentence to close with. There are a few lines of a poet that sum up so
beautifully all he has been saying that he may be pardoned for closing
with them.
"Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love;
Hearts that the world has vainly tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something light as air, a look,
A word unkind, or wrongly taken,--
Oh, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken!
For ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin,
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day,
And voices lose the tone which shed
A tenderness round all they said,--
Till, fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts so lately mingled seem
Like broken clouds, or like the stream,
That, smiling, left the mountain-brow
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever."
NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A
STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF.