It was dull work, of course, for such a young girl to live with an old
spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this;
for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of
weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or
other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this
flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober,
human berry, but for the intervention of friendly assistance and counsel.
In the town where she lived was a lady of honorable condition, somewhat
past middle age, who was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated
tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary character, and of more
than common accomplishments. The gentleman in black broadcloth and white
neckerchief only echoed the common voice about her, when he called her,
after enjoying, beneath her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea,
with certain elegances and luxuries he was unaccustomed to, “The Model of
all the Virtues.”
She deserved this title as well as almost any woman. She did really
bristle with moral excellences. Mention any good thing she had not done;
I should like to see you try! There was no handle of weakness to take
hold of her by; she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a
billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial table, where she had
been knocked about, like all of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced
from every human contact, and “caromed” from one relation to another,
and rebounded from the stuffed cushion of temptation, with such exact and
perfect angular movements, that the Enemy’s corps of Reporters had long
given up taking notes of her conduct, as there was no chance for their
master.
What an admirable person for the patroness and directress of a slightly
self-willed child, with the lightning zigzag line of genius running like
a glittering vein through the marble whiteness of her virgin nature! One
of the lady-patroness’s peculiar virtues was calmness. She was resolute
and strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for every duty; she
was as true as steel. She was kind-hearted and serviceable in all the
relations of life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more conversation,
as well as more goodness, than all the partners you have waltzed with
this winter put together.
Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered himself
to her in marriage. It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to vindicate
my character as a philosopher and an observer of Nature by accounting for
this apparently extraordinary fact.
You may remember certain persons who have the misfortune of presenting to
the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind in
which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital powers
that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor
of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes
out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a
powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo.
“The Model of all the Virtues” had a pair of searching eyes as clear as
Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her
features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface-smile, but
never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult
of a laugh,——which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features,——and
propriety the magistrate who reads the riot-act. She carried the brimming
cup of her inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, and an eye
always on them, to see that they did not spill. Then she was an admirable
judge of character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests and
reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her intellectual
eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. I think
there has rarely been a more admirable woman. Of course, Miss Iris was
immensely and passionately attached to her.——Well,——these are two highly
oxygenated adverbs,——grateful,——suppose we say,——yes,——grateful, dutiful,
obedient to her wishes for the most part,——perhaps not quite up to the
concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra of the virtues.
We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it
much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than
is good for them, or use anything but dictionary words, are admirable
subjects for biographies. But we don’t always care most for those
flat-pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.
This immaculate woman,——why couldn’t she have a fault or two? Isn’t there
any old whisper which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of saintly
perfection? Doesn’t she carry a lump of opium in her pocket? Isn’t her
cologne-bottle replenished oftener than its legitimate use would require?
It would be such a comfort!