How happy are proud people! No. Rather how happy are people of pride! That does not hit it exactly.
How fortunate are people with a sovereign self-esteem! I appeal to every one who ever felt the quality, whether pride or self-esteem. Either of them covers or describes that peculiar faculty which inspires in men the sense of thеir own being, of personal worth, of eminеnt selfness—not necessarily selfishness.
Why are the fortunate? In such persons there is apt to be a central content. They are always consciously right. They always speak aright. Whatever they do is right. Whatever they own is of the best. Whatever submits itself to their protection is right. Righteousness is the very quality of their experience. Why should you reason with them? It is cruel and useless—cruel to disturb such profound self-satisfaction in a world not too much given to happiness; and useless, because it is an instinct, not a conviction—an involuntary feeling, and not a deduction of reason.
By not all of this tribe of self-esteem are so happy. All the worse for them. If this potent force allies itself with conscience, the possessor may as well make up his mind to be in bondage all his life. Then the sense of ownership and self-appropriation acts chiefly in the sphere of Duty.
Agate Bissell could not be said to have pride of character so much as Pride of Duty. She saw every thing in the light of duty, and she measured duty by the high requisitions of an intense pride. Every one may see that she had business on hand for the rest of her life. Nothing was good that had not in it some relation to duty. There was no good in the beautiful, unless in some way allied to practical duty. Happiness, springing from duty, was not altogether to be condemned; yet it must be watched, as likely to take the temper out of the cutting edge of duty.
There was no member of Dr. Wentworth’s family that did not feel the pressure of honest Agate’s conscience, and respect it, too. It made no difference that her good sense restrained her from meddling with other people’s consciences. It is impossible for an energetic nature to move about among men under the power of any great central faculty, and not electrify them. You may carry a torch for yourself, but cannot keep the light out of other people’s eyes.
“Rose, have you put away your night-clothes?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you sure you folded them up and laid them in their proper place?”
A smile came over Rose’s fair face, for she recollected that she had laid them on a chair, and not under the pillow.
“Rose, it is just as easy to do things right as wrong. Go right up and place them as they ought to be, and then come down to your lesson.” For, Rose was already a proficient with the needle, and for an hour in the morning and one in the afternoon, she was under Agate’s special instruction in reading and writing. But, on Saturday the lessons were in the Scriptures and the Catechism. Rose, by nature, was one of the fortunate ones who obeyed those in command, and yet always had her own way. To suppress one tendency was only to open another. She was of a nature so full and vital, that her happiness seemed little checked because stopped in this or that direction.
“The dear child,” said Agate, one day, to Mrs. Polly Marble, “is so good that I’m afraid she may not live. If she should die I don’t think the Doctor would be good for much.”
“I don’t think you need take on ’bout it, Agate,” said Mrs. Polly. “Mebbe you’ll find enough human natur in her to suit you, afore you get through. I’ve seen just such children before. There’s Hotchkiss—till his boy was ten years old, he was so good that his folks was afeered he wa’n’t long for this world. Ever since, tho’, they have felt easier, for if there ever was a critter that had his full share of total depravity, it is that Paul Hotchkiss. If he’s ever convarted, tho’, he’ll be a smart man, especially if he has it thorough.”
“That may be true, Mrs. Marble. In this world it is not safe to trust appearances.”
“That’s just what I say to my deacon. You know, Miss Agate, that there never was a kinder creetur nor a better man than he is, if it wa’n’t for that wicked levity. After all I’ve done for him, I don’t see that he’s got over it a mite. I tell him that nobody is sure, as long as he is livin’ in this world of temptation. When a man is safely in his coffin, then we may be comfortable—that is, if he had a hope.”
“I sometimes think,” said Agate, “that I should like Rose better if she had a little more—well, a little more nature:—some sparks flung off now and then makes you sure there’s fire, and that it is not all ashes.”
“Well, I really think I shouldn’t trouble myself about that. You can’t tell by the way a bean comes up what sort of leaves it’s goin’ to have afterwards. Some children are like poke weed. When it first comes up it’s just as good to bile as ’sparagus. But in a few weeks it’s so strong it would drive ye out of the house, if you was to put it in the pot. Now, you know that the child is depraved. Everybody is, even ministers have it, tho’ I reely don’t see but that grace has subdued it in Dr. Buell. Of course Rose is—and I shouldn’t worry a bit if I was you. It’ll come out in time.”
“Mrs. Marble, if there’s any such thing as spoiling her, the Doctor will do it. He’s the strangest man that I ever heard of. Sometimes I think his books and his foreign learning have unsettled his religious belief. Would it not be dreadful if he was unsound! I know Dr. Buell don’t think so. But you ought to hear him make fun of the Catechism! I have trouble enough with the children anyhow. The other Saturday morning, after I’d got through the questions, Dr. Wentworth called Rose.
“ ‘Rose, what do the apple-trees principally teach?’
“Rose understands her father, and her face looked funny all over; but she turned to me as if she didn’t want to make fun of the Catechism:
“ ‘Answer him, Rose,’ said I, ‘answer your father!’
“And, do you believe it, she looked at him with her great, full eyes, and said:
“ ‘They make me think how beautiful God is!’
“The Doctor didn’t ask her any more questions, but went off with her in his arms down into the garden.”
“Well, Agate, you needn’t be discouraged. You know you have the promises. Besides, his wife is a precious woman; and that’s in your favor.”
“It would almost break my trust in God, if Rose shouldn’t do well. No—nothing will ever do that, I hope! But then you can’t have such a child by you for six or seven years, and not have your heart bound up in her. I can tell you, Mrs. Marble, there’s more dangerous idols than those made of wood and stone.”
“A good deal worse! ‘Eyes have they, but they see not,’ saith the prophet. Now, them idols that have pretty eyes, and see out of them too, is a good deal more to be fear’d. I tell my boys so, of’en.”
“If any thing could spoil Rose, it would be the creatures the Doctor has ’round her. It seems to me as if he contrived to pick out the very worst folks, and let Rose run with them. There is that natural, Pete! I do believe Rose would go from me to him any day. The Doctor lets him carry her about the meadows, and woods, and down through the swamp, by half-days together.”
“Well, I’d never consent to that. I’d like to see Pete Sawmill about my house! He’d get a piece of my mind about the quickest! he don’t do her any goode!”
“The Doctor thinks Pete is a true child of Nature. He is not more’n half-witted anyhow. But the fellow is curious about knowin’ all sorts of things that are going on in the woods, especially if there is no use in them.”
“That’s what I tell the Deacon. ‘Deacon Marble,’ says I, ‘if you would shove out of ye all your knowins that ain’t worth knowin’, and then fill up with sober matter, you would be a sight better deacon, and a better man.’ ”
“That’s much so with folks in general.”
Yes; folks’ heads is pretty much like their garrets, where all the rubbish and broken things they’ve no use for down stairs are stored away.”
“As if Pete were not enough, Tommy Taft is round with Rose, and Hiram Beers rides her out every chance he can get. There’s about twenty people in this town that seems to think that they own Rose!”
No other person could be allowed to say these things but herself. Should a neighbor, or one whom she less confided in than Polly Marble, indulge in unfavorable reflections, Agate would soon enable them to understand that they were meddling with affairs that did not concern them.
Now and then, however, but with reserve, she intimated to Mrs. Wentworth her fears for Rose’s “bringing up;” for if there was one thing in this whole world which Agate had determined should come to pass, and had staked her life on it, it was that “Rose should grow up good and pious.”
“Do see that child! She’ll be stung to death, as sure as she’s alive. Rose, Rose, come away from those bees—come here this minute! I do believe that child is in league with all the animal creation. Nothing is afraid of her, and she is afraid of nothing. See her stepping up nearer and nearer to those hives! I should have had as many stings stuck into me by this time as a baked ham has cloves! She comes home with her pockets full of trash, and with vines hanging about her neck, and with her hands full of bugs and worms. I’ve given up trying to manage her. It’s in her and it will come out. If you stop her at one thing she just goes straight off to another. And she’s so good-natured and so quiet and sweet, that you never think it’s wilfulness. But she’s got her father’s will in her, if it is covered up. She knows what she’s about.”
“Only yesterday I was sitting,” said her mother, “in the bow window, just as twilight was coming on, with my sewing in my lap, it was getting too dark to see well, when Rose came marching in:—‘Ma, I’ve got something for you.’ ‘Bring it here, child,’ said I. And she emptied her apron into my lap, in a sober and satisfied way. Of all things in this world; it was a great toad, speckled, fat—ugh! I screamed and flounced it upon the floor. I was startled in good earnest, for if there is any thing disgustful, next to a snake, or a green worm, or a spider, it is a toad.”
“What did she do?”
“Do? She looked at me with surprise,—then demurely picked up the loathsome creature and walked out with it. I spoke so sharply that I was afraid I had hurt the poor child, and so I went out, and she was sitting on the offset laughing all over, as if it was the merriest experience of all her life!”
Quite unconscious of these remarks, the object of them, a chubby child of six years old, was standing by the very edge of the shelf on which scores of hives were ranged. Bees were flying out with great activity, and coming in, swinging heavily down, with laden thighs. At first a few whirled around Rose as if to warn her off. But seeing at a glance who it was, and reporting the news to their companions, their excitement and curiosity subsided, and the child was suffered to go as near as she pleased and to do as she liked. If one lit on her hand, she suffered it to creep over it undisturbed. Sometimes an in-flying bee would get caught in her hair; she took no pains to help it out; she suffered them to go and come as they would. Sometimes she would gather flowers and bring them toward the hives, and watch the workers as they eagerly sought the honey.
“That child is the doctor’s own self in petticoats,” said Agate Bissell. “I believe that the Doctor could stuff his pockets full of bees,” said his wife, “and they would be contented. But if I go near the bee shed, the angry things fly at me as Rex does at a beggar. They know I am afraid of them. They dash at me with such a way, that I never wait to see what they mean to do, and so they chase me fairly out of that part of the garden.”
“I wonder the doctor will keep them; at any rate so many. There must be as many as fifty hives, and more coming on.”
“Oh, it’s his music. He would not hear a word against his bees. On bright days, that are still and warm, he lies down by the window yonder on purpose to hear them hum and buzz. And, I confess, if I am only safe out of their reach, it is a pleasant wound. Though I do not want them to appropriate him, or make a hive out of his hat. Do you know he looked for it yesterday a half hour, and found it among the bees? He says Rose carried it thither. I say Rose’s father did. But the doctor, you know, likes pleasant sounds, as a kind of mental stimulus. The pleasure of music, he says, consists in the thoughts and feelings which it excites in us. I don’t know what bees can make him think of. But, if any thing troubles him he likes to get where he can hear the bees, and then he seems to grow quiet.”
“That is better than to brace up with some things,” said Agate.
“After that dreadful surgical case he came home looking like a dead man. His face was stern and ghastly. He could[n’t] eat on that day before he operated, and trembled when he left the house like a leaf. But they say as soon as he took the knife his hand was firm and his body like steel. When he reached home I could not get him food quick enough—he almost cried for it, and was sharp and peevish, till he had eaten enough, which I thought he never could do, and then he went out by the window, where he could see the verbenas and the beds of petunia, and the rows of gladiolus, and lay down, and let the bees chant to him. I quite forgave the creatures their spite at me, when I saw how much comfort he took. After a while he fell asleep, and woke up in half an hour as fresh and merry as he always is.”
“I hope Rose will have his knack of being happy. Isn’t it queer that she takes so to Pete? She is so peculiar about liking and not liking. I think they are a match. He is as fond of curious notions as she is. But, then, I don’t like her going off with him all day, wandering in the woods and poking into the swamps, and following brooks.”
“The doctor will not have you say a word about poor Pete. He thinks him the only Christian on the place.”
“Except when he’s in liquor.”
“Yes, he owns that he has one fault. But then he has such outlandish ways, and knows so much about the animal kind, and is so unfit to take care of himself he’s so foolish about every thing that most folks care about, and so very knowing about things that are of no sort of use to regular and respectable people, that the doctor thinks he’s inspired.”
“I do wonder how so good a man as Dr. Wentworth is, should have so many queer notions. Well, we all have our faults.”
It is doubtful whether Mrs. Wentworth thought so. There was not a woman in the town that hovered about her husband with such a stream of opposition as she did. She rallied him and chid him, and laughed at him; she put upon him all manner of humorous and grotesque imaginations, invented speeches and imagined situations in which the doctor figured ludicrously. But there was within it all such an unmistakable fondness, and such playfulness, that no one failed to see that she worshipped as well as loved. All this persiflage was her way of hiding or showing, as the case might be, the strength of her attachment. For all the years they had lived together, not a line was less distinct, not a color was faded, not a form was withdrawn from the picture which love first drew. One word in the morning of earnest love filled the whole day with happiness. With increasing power came also a growing sensibility. Never when he first spoke of affection was it so hard, with open face, to listen, as now after eight years of intimacy. The blush came more deeply than at first, the eye fell more quickly, the nerve trembled fore freely. Whatever there was in her nature susceptible of development, was wholly commanded by her husband. She honored his strength. She rejoiced in his growing influence. She sympathized with his tastes so far as their unlike natures would permit. But to have owned these feelings would have been as impossible as to have spoken in the tongue of angels. It would seem as if, while her whole life centred upon his love, she would hide the precious secret by flinging over it vines and flowers, by mirth and raillery, as a bird hides its nest under tufts of grass, and behind leaves and vines, as a fence against prying eyes.
The garden was the doctor’s paradise. Every day, therefore, he heard from his wife some amusing narration of his conduct. Birds and insects were near of kin to him. Of course, birds and insects every day were made to answer for all manner of curious faults. Every day the indictment varied. Now the flowers had beguiled him. Now the bees had infatuated him; now the birds had quite flown away with his wit; now Rose had bewitched him, or he had gone utterly a gadding with Pete Sawmill.
Mrs. Wentworth talked both with quickness and emphasis. Her voice was ringing, but very sweet. No fibre springing from combativeness was twined into the chord, and so its sounding was never sharp or harsh.
A single hour’s acquaintance would suffice to discriminate and sharply to separate her from shallow, talkative women, whose tongues, like a turnpike, lie open to all the travel that comes along. It was full of kindness even when bantering. It was often witty, and always shrewd. It ran on as a vine grows,—a morning glory, or a cypress vine,—twining round and round whatever it may touch, and throwing out buds and blossoms at every joint.
“There is Rose, mounted and riding. It is the last we shall see of her till dinner,” said Agate Bissell.
“Longer than that. She goes out to Cathcart’s, you remember, for the day. Of Course Pete is her carriage.”
