Agate Bissell was the stern child of severe experience. Her father was poor, and would have been industrious but for an unfortunate habit of drinking. Her mother was a woman of decision, of pride of character, of high moral feeling, but subject from childhood to hard work, with only a little education. She grew up a kind of patient warrior against trouble. She had known trouble from childhood. Poverty before and poverty after her marriage, were but minor evils. She had seven childrеn. The third child, but first-born daughter, was Agate. No whеre except in New England could she have been called Agate. Her mother was an earnest reader of the Bible. In her continual troubles she resorted to it, literally as to a refuge. Isaiah above all writers had fired her imagination. There was something in the hopefulness of the stern prophet amidst abounding troubles that seemed peculiarly congenial to her. In particular she dwelt upon the fifty-fourth chapter; so often had she read it, so often had she stayed her sorrow on its exultant promises, that it had come to seem like a voice sounding out specially for her, and had her own name appeared in it she would scarcely have been surprised.
Here had she read, till they mingled with her waking and sleeping thoughts, those words of sublime consolation! Naturally high-minded and sensitive, every aspiration had been almost crushed. Her husband, a good-natured man, could not be redeemed from his cups, and to her proud spirit it seemed as if she were bound to a dead body. Awful thoughts sometimes rose up in her, a horror of temptation, which sent her flying to her chamber for prayer and scripture, like a dove flying from before a swift-pursuing hawk. Then she would read: “For thy Maker is thy husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name. * * * For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit. * * * For a small moment I have forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.”
On some days the clouds came low down, and there was no horizon of hope. Her little children were hungry, her husband drunk, her own strength giving way, and all the future like an on-coming storm. Then she would read, “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee! O, thou afflicted! tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold! I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of Agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.”
This touched to the quicki. For her husband there remained only the sentiment of duty. But all her garnered and wounded affections were poured forth upon her children. If by a living death she could save them, and gain a firm foothold for each of them in honorable life, she would willingly have died deaths daily.
In her poor little dwelling, it may be supposed, were no luxuries. No picture, no print so big as her baby’s hand, hung on the wall. She knew no rest, no amusement. Her whole being was a concentrated purpose to bring up her children so that their life should be happier than hers had been. For that, the sun shone—for that, summer and winter came—for that, the Sabbath inserted a seventh golden link in the iron chain of toil—for that, the whole world existed to her, and time itself drew on its train of days and nights! On her feet, in work, wrestling against poverty;—on her knees, in prayer, wrestling against temptations and despair, she reared her children, hoping in them at last to find an end of sorrow and a beginning of joy.
When Agate was just born, she looked upon her face with anguish. She seemed to see all her own miseries stored up for this child. She almost felt a pang of guilt for bringing another woman into life to take a place in that long procession of sufferers, of which women have constituted the largest portion. She hardly wished to look in her face. Long before the minister sprinkled this little new-comer, her mother had baptized her with tears.
As soon as she could sit up, (and the poor recover from the birth of children sooner than the prosperous!—A rigorous nurse art thou, oh Poverty!—a stern physician, and, though skilful, bitter cruel!) weak, sad, alone, except her little children, her days were darker than any thing but the nights. There was little difference in the twenty-four hours, except that the night was darkness plagued with dreams, and the day was darkness plagued with gloomy thoughts. The first day that she could read, her oldest boy brought her well-worn Bible to her. It opened of itself to her favorite chapter. The leaves there were like a travelled road. Let the book fall open a hundred times, and every time it would open at the same place. Then she read: “I will make thy windows agates.” A window is that by which light comes though upon our inward darkness, or by which we look out of darkness into light. If a window of God is made of agate, then, she thought, an agate must be something more clear and beautiful than glass. What agate was she knew not, but it must needs be something glorious and hopeful. “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord.” That was the very anguish-longing of her heart! She seemed to have it borne in upon her that children are the Lord’s windows, through which mothers look forth out of pain and darkness into hope and happiness! She seized the happy thought: “I will call her Agate. Perhaps the Lord will make her like a window to my darkness.” Thus she was named!
We smile at names. We weight them in the scale of the ear for sweetness or smoothness. We cull some, we reject others. We laugh at men’s odd and awkward names, and quite justly too, it may be; since capricious whims, and vagrant fancies, or mere carelessness, so often select them. But sometimes a name is a history. It is like a pictured vase. We see the figures without thinking in what furnace those colors were fastened, and by what fire the glazing was fused! Is there in any history a record of the heart more touching and simple than that of old? “And it came to pass as Rachel’s soul was departing, for she died, that she called his name Ben-oni”—Son of my Sorrow.
Growing up in such circumstances, it may well be supposed that Agate’s life was one which would bring her to more acquaintance with work and vigor of duty, than with those lighter graces which commonly belong to prosperous childhood.
With as much natural conscience as her mother, she had a less intense pride. She could not sympathize with that shuddering horror at her father’s presence, which her mother, with all her struggles, could never subdue. Agate stood between them, loving both, and was indeed a medium—a window—through which each looked upon the other, colored with the hues of the medium.
When at thirteen years of age, her father died—unreformed, stupefied—Agate really mourned. Her mother saw the turf placed upon his grave without a tear. Her soul said, God hath avenged me! For years, the mother and children struggled on. Agate, besides daily work, had, as it were, carried away captive a certain amount of education. No one but he who has tried it knows what power of learning there is, in a mind every faculty of which is tensely strained with desire and necessity. She read with eyes that pierced. What she read was as if it had been burned in. At seventeen, she taught the summer school in her neighborhood. Her brothers were her care at home as well. At twenty-two, her mother went to her rest. On the last day of her life her mind wandered back to her brief hours of early joy. She half-spake and half-whispered some fondling words, as if she were a girl in the days of courtship and love. Then, after a little, the life-long grief seemed again to overshadow her. “Agate—Agate— He’s come. Put him to bed. Oh God!” She dozed for an hour. When, after a time, Agate looked upon her mother, her eyes were opened wide, as if she beheld new and strange things. In a low and sweet voice she said: “Yes—I am coming.” Before the sun went down, she had departed, and her troubled day was over.
Agate Bissell was respected by all her neighbors. Her common sense, her energy, her truth—clear as crystal—her strong moral nature, would have made her a remarkable woman anywhere. She was not handsome by regularity of features; but she had what was better—the open and strong face of a sensible and kind-hearted woman. There was that in her face which one would not willingly see kindled. Her power of indignation was terrible. Young Templeton found that out. He had paid attention to Agate. Good-looking, capable of working, his father’s dissipation and example had not acted upon his self-indulgent nature as a like sad example had upon the sterner soul of Agate.
Yet a certain sympathy she had felt for him, from a somewhat similar experience of their lives. Her heart, bound around with cords of restraint, should it once go free, and love, would seek its mate as eagles fly.
It might have been. It never was. One evening he waited upon her to a meeting in Norwood. The way was long,—not too long for them. When they reached the village Agate’s step was light. Her face had lost something of its intensity. The light of gentle feelings rested upon it.
They returned home that night, Tom Templeton and Agate Bissell. Afterward they never again spoke to each other. What the history was neither ever said—he for shame, and she from scorn. For years his name kindled upon her face a look so stern and deep in moral indignation, that one would not willingly look upon it. That was the end of her dream of youth. When at thirty she assumed the care of Dr. Wentworth’s house, not a tongue in all Norwood dared even in sport to say that the doctor had a young housekeeper. One had better play with fire than with her name. And yet, under this strong-featured, pale face, who can tell what stores of love were lying, like gold undug, in fields over which the plough runs and vulgar harvests wave, because no one suspects the gold below or knows how to extract the treasure!
