_Sept. 27th_. A very dull day. "You are as sober as a judge," said
Flora at breakfast. I caught Etty's eye,--but it said nothing. Aunt
Tabitha, who yesterday evidently thought me in desperate case, and
once inquired about my income very significantly, now suspected a
quarrel between Flora and me. I was embarrassed, and overturned the
cream. "No great loss," said Etty, seeing that I was chagrined. "As
easy made up as a lovers' quarrel," said Aunt Tabitha. Silly old
woman! No, silly young fellow! Flora has revenged herself on me as she
meant to do, for defying her power. She has turned my head; made me
act like a simpleton. But "Richard's himself again," and wiser than he
was.
_P.M_. I endeavored to talk more with Miss Etty, that the change in my
manner might be less observed. It was all natural that I should be as
grave as a judge when I addressed myself to so quiet a member of
society. She seemed to divine my object, and sustained the dialogue; I
never knew her to do it before. It is not diffidence, it seems, that
has been the cause of this reserve; I was the more diffident of the
two, failing to express my thoughts well, from a hurry and uncertainty
of mind which I am not often troubled withal. It was partly
astonishment, in truth, that confused me. Little Ugly and I actually
exchanging ideas! I shall call her Little Ugly still, however, for I
could not make her look at me as she spoke, nor answer my wit by a
change of countenance.
_Sept. 28th_. Little Handsome cannot be convinced that the flirtation
is over,--absolutely at an end. She alternately rails at my capricious
solemnity, and pretends to be grieved at it. I can see that nothing
but my avoidance of a _tete-a-tete_ is my safety. Should the
sentimental tone prevail, and tears come into those beautiful eyes, I
am a gone man. At my earnest request, (I have grown humble or _bold_
enough to ask a favor,) Miss Etty has brought, or rather dragged, her
work-basket into the parlor. A great basket it is, so great, that I
imagine in her own apartment she gets into the middle of it bodily. I
sat down to watch the motions of her adroit little digits in darning
stockings, and mending homely garments. I imagined, rather than saw, a
humorous gleam in her eye, as I did so, and there was certainly a
slight contraction of her mouth in length, as if to counteract an
inclination of the muscles to move in the opposite direction.
Flora fluttered about the room like a bright-hued butterfly, pausing a
moment at a window or a bookcase, or resting awhile to play a few
capricious notes on the piano, and sometimes coming to view Miss
Etty's employment, as if it were a branch of industry she was
unacquainted with, and curious about.
The maples are turning red already. The setting sun threw a glorious
light through their tinted foliage, and the still bosom of the lake
reflected it in a softened, changeable hue of mingled crimson and
silver. Flora was standing at the door. I somehow found myself there
also; but I talked over my shoulder to Aunt Tabitha about potatoes.
"I have a fancy for a walk round the pond," said Flora. After a pause,
she looked at me, as much as to say, "Don't you see, you monster, it
is too late for me to go alone?"
"Miss Flora, I will second your wish, if you can drum up a third
party," said I, point-blank.
Flora blushed, and pouted for a moment, then beckoned to Little Ugly,
who disobligingly suggested that the grass would be wet. It so
happened there was no dew, and Flora convinced her of the fact by
running in the grass, and then presenting the sole of her shoe for her
inspection. Miss Etty, her ill-chosen objection being vanquished, went
for her bonnet, and we set forth, Miss Flora's arm in mine as a matter
of course, and Miss Etty's in hers, save where the exigencies of the
woodland path gave her an excuse to drop behind. A little boat tied to
a stump, suggested to Flora a new whim. Instead of going round the
pond, which I now began to like doing, I must weary myself with rowing
her across. I was ready enough to do it, however, had not Miss Etty
quietly observed that the pond was muddy, and the boat unseaworthy.
Flora would not have yielded to twenty feet of water,--but mud! She
sighed, and resumed my arm. I, offering the other to Miss Etty in so
determined a way, that she could not waive accepting it, marched
forward with spirits rising into high glee and loquacity. Presently,
feeling a sudden irritation at the feather-like lightness with which
Little Ugly's fingers just touched my elbow, as if she disdained any
support from me, I caught her hand and drew it through my arm, and
when I relinquished it, pressed her arm to my side with mine, thinking
she would snatch it away, and walk alone in offended dignity. Whether
she was too really dignified for that, or took my rebuke as it was
intended, I know not, but she leaned on my arm with somewhat greater
confidence during the remainder of our walk, and now and then even
volunteered a remark. Before we finished the circumambulation of the
pond, she had quite forgotten her sulky reserve, and talked with much
earnestness and animation, Flora subsiding into a listener, with a
willing interest which raised her in my estimation considerably.
And now that I am alone in my room, and journalizing, it behooves me
to gather up and record some of those words, precious from their
rarity. Flora and I, in our merry nonsense, had a mock dispute, and
referred the matter to Miss Etty for arbitration.
"Etty, mind you side with me," said Flora.
"Be an impartial umpire, Miss Etty," said I, "and you will be on my
side."
Little Ugly was obliged to confess that she had not heard a word of
the matter, her thoughts being elsewhere, intently engaged.
"I must request you to excuse my inattention," she said, "and to
repeat what you were saying."
"The latter request I scorn to grant," said I, "and the former we will
consider about when we have heard what thoughts have been preferred to
our most edifying conversation."
"You shall tell us," said Flora. "Yes, or we till go off and leave you
to your meditations, here in the dark woods, with the owls and the
tree-toads, whom you probably prefer for company."
Miss Etty condescended to confess she should be frightened without my
manful protection.--Quite a triumph!
"I must thank you," she said, "for the novelty of an evening walk in
the woods. I enjoy it, I confess, very highly. Look at those dark,
mysterious vistas, and those deepening shadows blending the bank with
its mirror; how different from the trite daylight truth! It took
strong hold of my imagination."
"Go on. And so you were thinking--"
"I was hardly doing so much as thinking. I was seeing it to remember."
"Etty draws like an artist," said Flora, in a whisper.
"I was taking a mental daguerreotype of my companions, by twilight,
and of all the scene round, too, in the same grey tint, just to look
at some ten or fifteen years hence, when--"
"Let us all three agree," said I, "on the 28th of September, 18--, to
remember this evening. I am certain _I_ shall look back to it with
pleasure."
"O horrid!" shrieked Flora; "how can you talk so! By that time you
will be a shocking, middle-aged sort of person! I always wonder how
people can be resigned to live, when they have lost youth, and with it
all that makes life bearable! Fifteen years! Dismal thought! I shall
have outlived every thing I care about in life!" So moaned Little
Handsome.
"But you may have found new sources of interest," suggested I, perhaps
a little too tenderly, for I had some sympathy with her dread of that
particular phase of existence, middle-agedness. "Perhaps as the
mistress of a household--"
"Worse and worse!" screamed Flora. "A miserable comforter you are! As
if it were not enough merely to grow old, but one must be a slave and
a martyr, never doing any thing one would prefer to do, nor going
anywhere that one wants to go,--bound for ever to one spot, and one
perpetual companion--"
"Planning dinners every day for cooks hardly less ignorant than
yourself," added I, laughing at her selfish horror of matronly
bondage, yet provoked at it. "Miss Etty, would _you_, if you could,
stand still instead of going forward?"
"My happiness is altogether different from Flora's," she replied,
"though we were brought up side by side. What has taught me to be
independent of the world and its notice was my being continually
compared with her, and assured, with compassionate regret, that I had
none of those qualifications which could give me success in general
society."
"Which was a libel--" I began.
"Without the last syllable," said Flora, catching up the word.
"At any rate, I knew I was plain and shy, and made friends slowly. So
I chose such pleasures as should be under my own control, and could
never fail me. They make my life so much happier and more precious
than it was ten years ago, that I feel certain I shall have a wider
and fuller enjoyment of the same ten years hence."
What they are, I partly guess, and partly drew from her, in her
uncommonly frank mood. I begin to perceive that I, as well as Flora,
have been cherishing most mistaken and unsatisfactory aims. My surly
old inner self has often hinted as much, but I would not hear him.
Etty may have _her_ mistaken views too, but she has set me thinking.
Well, you crusty old curmudgeon, what has been my course since the awe
of the schoolmaster ceased to be a sort of external conscience?
"You told me study was none of my business," says Conscience, "and a
pretty piece of work you have made of it without me. Idle in college,
and, when you began to perceive the connection between study and what
people call success in life, overworking yourself, here you are, and
just beginning to bethink yourself that I might have furnished just
the right degree of stimulus, if you had but allowed it."--
Hark! hark! It is the duet! That silvery second is Etty's. I will
steal down stairs, and when they have ended, pop in, and it shall go
hard but I will have another song.
Parlor dark and empty. I fancied I heard Flora giggling somewhere, but
I might be mistaken. Yet the voices sounded as if they came from that
quarter--and--and I am sure I heard one note on the piano to give the
pitch. Hark! I hear the parlor door softly shut, and now the stairs
creak, and betray them stealing up, as they probably betrayed me
stealing down. They only blew out the lights and kept perfectly
still.--Witches!--Donkey!
Etty, your voice is still with me, clear, sweet, and penetrating, as
it was when you talked so eloquently to-night, in our dreamy ramble.--
What if I had early adopted her idea, that with every conscious power
is bound up both the duty and the pleasure of developing it? Might I
not now have reached higher ground, with health of body and mind?
Ambition is an unhealthy stimulus. A wretchedly uneasy guest too, in
the breast of an invalid. I would fain have a purer motive, which
shall dismiss or control it.
Etty,--what are the uses to be made of _her_ talents, while she lives
thus withdrawn into a world of her own? Certainly, she is wrong; I
shall convince her of it, when our friendship, now fairly planted, I
trust, shall have taken root. Now we shall be the best friends in the
world, and I will confide to her my--my--O, I am nodding over my
paper, and that click says the old clock at the stair-head is making
ready to announce midnight.
_Sept. 29th_. Capricious are the ways of womankind! Little Ugly is
more thoroughly self-occupied and undemonstrative than ever. I am
chagrined,--I think I am an ill-used man. I am downright angry and
have half a mind to flirt with Little Handsome, out of spite. Only
Miss Etty is too indifferent to care. I did but leave my old aunt to
Flora, and step back to remark that it was a pleasant Sunday, that the
sermon was homely and dull, and that the singing was discordant. Miss
Etty assented, but very coldly, and presently she bolted into an old
red house, and left me to go home by myself. When we started for
church again, she was among the missing, and we found her in the pew,
on our arrival. Thus pointedly to avoid me!--It might be accident,
however, for she did not refuse to sing from the same hymn-book with
me, and pointed to a verse on the other page, quaint, but
excellent. After all, old Watts has written the best hymns in the
language.
_Evening_. Without choice, I found myself walking round the pond
again. It was as smooth as glass, and the leaves scarcely trembled on
the trees and bushes round it. And in my heart reigned a similar calm.
A strange quiet has fallen on my usually restless and anxious mind. I
thought that in future I could be content not to look beyond the
present duty, and, having done my best in all circumstances, that I
could leave the results to follow as God wills. At that moment I could
sincerely say, "Let him set me high or low, wherever he has work for
me to perform." If I can remain thus quiet in mind, my health will
soon return, I feel assured.
"_If!_" A well-founded distrust, I fear. This peace must be only a
mood, to pass away when my natural spirits return. The fever of
covetousness, of rivalry, of envy, and ambitious earthly aspirations,
will come back. Like waves upon the lake, these uneasy feelings will
chase each other over my soul. I picked up a little linen wristband at
this moment, which I recognized. "She does not deserve to have it
again, sulky Little Ugly!" said I. "I will put it in my pocket-book,
and keep it as a remembrancer, for--I am glad to perceive--this is the
very spot where we stood when we agreed to remember it and each other
fifteen years hence. We will see what I shall be then, and I shall
have some aid from this funny little talisman; it will speak to me
quite as intelligibly and distinctly as its owner in a _silent_ mood,
at any rate."--
Heigh-ho! How lonely I feel to-night! Every human soul is--must be--a
hermit, yet there might be something nearer companionship than I have
found for mine as yet. No one knows me. My real self--Ha! old fellow,
I like you better than I did; let us be good friends.
_Sept. 30th_. A golden sunrise. How much one loses under a false idea
of its being a luxury to sleep in the morning! Reclining under Farmer
Puddingstone's elm, and looking upon the glassy pond, in which the
glowing sky mirrored itself, my soul was fired with poetic
inspiration. On the blank page of a letter, I wrote:
"How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,"--
and threw down my paper, being suddenly quenched by self-ridicule, as
I was debating whether to write "To Ethelind" over the top. Returning
that way after my ramble, I found the following conclusion pinned to
the tree by a jackknife:--
"How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,--
When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn,
The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo,
And the childen chimes in with their plaintive boo-hoo.
"How holy the calm, in the stillness of neune,
When the pot is a singin its silvery teune,--
Its soft, woolly teune, jest like Aribi's Darter,
While the tea-kettle plays up the simperny arter.
"How holy the calm, in the stillness of night,
When the moon, like a punkin, looks yaller and bright;
While the aowls an' the katydids, screeching like time,
Jest brings me up close to the eend o' my rhyme."