The Guardian Angel

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> The Guardian Angel

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

by Oliver Wendell Holmes



TO MY READERS.

"A new Preface" is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any
among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral
appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I
have to say here.

This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may
remember, entitled "Elsie Venner." Like that,--it is intended for two
classes of readers, of which the smaller one includes the readers of the
"Morals" in Aesop and of this Preface.

The first of the two stories based itself upon an experiment which some
thought cruel, even on paper. It imagined an alien element introduced
into the blood of a human being before that being saw the light. It
showed a human nature developing itself in conflict with the ophidian
characteristics and instincts impressed upon it during the pre-natal
period. Whether anything like this ever happened, or was possible,
mattered little: it enabled me, at any rate, to suggest the limitations
of human responsibility in a simple and effective way.

The story which follows comes more nearly within the range of common
experience. The successive development of inherited bodily aspects and
habitudes is well known to all who have lived long enough to see families
grow up under their own eyes. The same thing happens, but less obviously
to common observation, in the mental and moral nature. There is something
frightful in the way in which not only characteristic qualities, but
particular manifestations of them, are repeated from generation to
generation. Jonathan Edwards the younger tells the story of a brutal
wretch in New Haven who was abusing his father, when the old man cried
out, "Don't drag me any further, for I did n't drag my father beyond this
tree." [The original version of this often-repeated story may be found
in Aristotle's Ethics, Book 7th, Chapter 7th.] I have attempted to show
the successive evolution of some inherited qualities in the character of
Myrtle Hazard, not so obtrusively as to disturb the narrative, but
plainly enough to be kept in sight by the small class of preface-readers.

If I called these two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its
higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the
learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against the
scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human action
from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of the
cabinet-keepers of our doctrinal museums. By saying nothing about it,
the large majority of those whom my book reaches, not being
preface-readers, will never suspect anything to harm them beyond the
simple facts of the narrative.

Should any professional alarmist choose to confound the doctrine of
limited responsibility with that which denies the existence of any
self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of
intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our
new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of
scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into
the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the
bodily functions, without being accused of laying "all that we are evil
in to a divine thrusting on," we had better return at once to our old
demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
time-honored prerogatives.

As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may be needed
here to make some of my characters and statements appear probable. The
long-pending question involving a property which had become in the mean
time of immense value finds its parallel in the great De Haro land-case,
decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in progress (May 14th,
1867). The experiment of breaking the child's will by imprisonment and
fasting is borrowed from a famous incident, happening long before the
case lately before one of the courts of a neighboring Commonwealth, where
a little girl was beaten to death because she would not say her prayers.
The mental state involving utter confusion of different generations in a
person yet capable of forming a correct judgment on other matters, is
almost a direct transcript from nature. I should not have ventured to
repeat the questions of the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle
Hazard about her family conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of
fortune and position mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school
history of one of her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in
reproducing Myrtle Hazard's "Vision," but for a singular experience of
his own related to me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.

Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent correspondent
of mine. I have also received a good many communications, signed with
various names, which must have been from near female relatives of that
young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical letter to the whole
family connection; but as the delusion under which they labor is still
common, and often leads to the wasting of time, the contempt of honest
study or humble labor, and the misapplication of intelligence not so far
below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording a respectable return
when employed in the proper direction, I thought this picture from life
might also be of service. When I say that no genuine young poet will
apply it to himself, I think I have so far removed the sting that few or
none will complain of being wounded.

It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine and
the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect. If,
in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and its
publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make me
question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
every month or two, since my story has been in the course of publication,
by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors than any with
which I should have thought of staining my pages.

There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer finds
it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in telling
a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in this
narrative must stand for many whom I have known and loved, and some of
whom I count to-day among my most valued friends. I hope the best and
wisest of them will like this story and approve it. If they cannot all
do this, I know they will recognize it as having been written with a
right and honest purpose.

BOSTON, 1867.




PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

It is a quarter of a century since the foregoing Preface was written, and
that is long enough to allow a story to be forgotten by the public, and
very possibly by the writer of it also. I will not pretend that I have
forgotten all about "The Guardian Angel," but it is long since I have
read it, and many of its characters and incidents are far from being
distinct in my memory. There are, however, a few points which hold their
place among my recollections. The revolt of Myrtle Hazard from the
tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty now breaking up in all directions has
found new illustrations since this tale was written. I need only refer
to two instances of many. The first is from real life. Mr. Robert C.
Adams's work, "Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason," is the outcome
of the teachings of one of the most intransigeant of our New England
Calvinists, the late Reverend Nehemiah Adams. For an example in
fiction,--fiction which bears all the marks of being copied from real
life,--I will refer to "The Story of an African Farm." The boy's honest,
but terrible outburst, "I hate God," was, I doubt not, more acceptable in
the view of his Maker than the lying praise of many a hypocrite who,
having enthroned a demon as Lord of the Universe, thinks to conciliate
his favor by using the phrases which the slaves of Eastern despots are in
the habit of addressing to their masters. I have had many private
letters showing the same revolt of reasoning natures against doctrines
which shock the more highly civilized part of mankind in this nineteenth
century and are leading to those dissensions which have long shown as
cracks, and are fast becoming lines of cleavage in some of the largest
communions of Protestantism.

The principle of heredity has been largely studied since this story was
written. This tale, like "Elsie Venner," depends for its deeper
significance on the ante-natal history of its subject. But the story was
meant to be readable for those who did not care for its underlying
philosophy. If it fails to interest the reader who ventures upon it, it
may find a place on an unfrequented bookshelf in common with other
"medicated novels."

Perhaps I have been too hard with Gifted Hopkins and the tribe of
rhymesters to which he belongs. I ought not to forget that I too
introduced myself to the reading world in a thin volume of verses; many
of which had better not have been written, and would not be reprinted
now, but for the fact that they have established a right to a place among
my poems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, although the writing of
verses is often a mark of mental weakness, I cannot forget that Joseph
Story and George Bancroft each published his little book, of rhymes, and
that John Quincy Adams has left many poems on record, the writing of
which did not interfere with the vast and important labors of his
illustrious career.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 7, 1891.
O. W. H.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL




CHAPTER I.

AN ADVERTISEMENT.

On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the "State Banner and Delphian
Oracle," published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres
in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement which
involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of a small
community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking of heads, such gatherings
at corners, such halts of complaining, rheumatic wagons, and dried-up,
chirruping chaises, for colloquy of their still-faced tenants, had not
been known since the rainy November Friday, when old Malachi Withers was
found hanging in his garret up there at the lonely house behind the
poplars.

The number of the "Banner and Oracle" which contained this advertisement
was a fair specimen enough of the kind of newspaper to which it belonged.
Some extracts from a stray copy of the issue of the date referred to will
show the reader what kind of entertainment the paper was accustomed to
furnish its patrons, and also serve some incidental purposes of the
writer in bringing into notice a few personages who are to figure in this
narrative.

The copy in question was addressed to one of its regular
subscribers,--"B. Gridley, Esq." The sarcastic annotations at various
points, enclosed in brackets and italicised that they may be
distinguished from any other comments, were taken from the pencilled
remarks of that gentleman, intended for the improvement of a member of
the family in which he resided, and are by no means to be attributed to
the harmless pen which reproduces them.

Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted
with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster, a
college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,--a man of
learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be
found, except in old, unmarried students,--the double flowers of college
culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life of
the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles
Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the
good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known
much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the
importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of
course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers
and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,--perhaps
not in any village where a score or two of families are brought
together,--enough of them, at any rate, to furnish the ordinary
characters of a real-life stock company.

The old Master of Arts was a permanent boarder in the house of a very
worthy woman, relict of the late Ammi Hopkins, by courtesy Esquire, whose
handsome monument--in a finished and carefully colored lithograph,
representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed willow--hung
in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental parlor. Her
household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of age, of whom
more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon her doorstep
when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken in for the
night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by the good soul
as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at school at the
"Academy" in another part of the same town, a distant relative, boarding
with her.

What the old scholar took the village paper for it would be hard to
guess, unless for a reason like that which carried him very regularly to
hear the preaching of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, colleague of the
old minister of the village parish; namely, because he did not believe a
word of his favorite doctrines, and liked to go there so as to growl to
himself through the sermon, and go home scolding all the way about it.

The leading article of the "Banner and Oracle" for June 18th must have
been of superior excellence, for, as Mr. Gridley remarked, several of the
"metropolitan" journals of the date of June 15th and thereabout had
evidently conversed with the writer and borrowed some of his ideas before
he gave them to the public. The Foreign News by the Europa at Halifax,
15th, was spread out in the amplest dimensions the type of the office
could supply. More battles! The Allies victorious! The King and
General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned
in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of
conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious
digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby
won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for!
Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to the
Holy Land. Letter from our own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West
Minkville?] Cotton advanced. Breadstuffs declining.--Deacon Rumrill's
barn burned down on Saturday night. A pig missing; supposed to have
"fallen a prey to the devouring element." [Got roasted.] A yellow
mineral had been discovered on the Doolittle farm, which, by the report
of those who had seen it, bore a strong resemblance to California gold
ore. Much excitement in the neighborhood in consequence [Idiots! Iron
pyrites!] A hen at Four Corners had just laid an egg measuring 7 by 8
inches. Fetch on your biddies! [Editorial wit!] A man had shot an eagle
measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his wings.--Crops
suffering for want of rain [Always just so. "Dry times, Father Noah!"]
The editors had received a liberal portion of cake from the happy couple
whose matrimonial union was recorded in the column dedicated to Hymen.
Also a superior article of [article of! bah!] steel pen from the
enterprising merchant [shopkeeper] whose advertisement was to be found on
the third page of this paper.--An interesting Surprise Party [cheap
theatricals] had transpired [bah!] on Thursday evening last at the house
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The parishioners had donated [donated! GIVE is
a good word enough for the Lord's Prayer. DONATE our daily bread!] a bag
of meal, a bushel of beans, a keg of pickles, and a quintal of salt-fish.
The worthy pastor was much affected, etc., etc. [Of course. Call'em.
SENSATION parties and done with it!] The Rev. Dr. Pemberton and the
venerable Dr. Hurlbut honored the occasion with their presence.--We learn
that the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, rector of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, has
returned from his journey, and will officiate to-morrow.

Then came strings of advertisements, with a luxuriant vegetation of
capitals and notes of admiration. More of those PRIME GOODS! Full
Assortments of every Article in our line! [Except the one thing you
want!] Auction Sale. Old furniture, feather-beds, bed-spreads [spreads!
ugh!], setts [setts!] crockery-ware, odd vols., ullage bbls. of this and
that, with other household goods, etc., etc., etc.,--the etceteras
meaning all sorts of insane movables, such as come out of their
bedlam-holes when an antiquated domestic establishment disintegrates
itself at a country "vandoo."--Several announcements of "Feed," whatever
that may be,--not restaurant dinners, anyhow,--also of "Shorts,"--terms
mysterious to city ears as jute and cudbear and gunnybags to such as
drive oxen in the remote interior districts.--Then the marriage column
above alluded to, by the fortunate recipients of the cake. Right
opposite, as if for matrimonial ground-bait, a Notice that Whereas my
wife, Lucretia Babb, has left my bed and board, I will not be
responsible, etc., etc., from this date.--Jacob Penhallow (of the late
firm Wibird and Penhallow) had taken Mr. William Murray Bradshaw into
partnership, and the business of the office would be carried on as usual
under the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came the
standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut,
the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this, hideous
quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of Honorables,
Esquires, and Clergymen.--Then a cow, strayed or stolen from the
subscriber.--Then the advertisement referred to in our first paragraph:

MYRTLE HAZARD has been missing from her home in this place since Thursday
morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly for her
age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features, pleasant
smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a black and
white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon. It is feared
she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering at large in a
state of temporary mental alienation. Any information relating to the
missing child will be gratefully received and properly rewarded by her
afflicted aunt,

MISS SILENCE WITHERS, Residing at the Withers Homestead, otherwise known
as "The Poplars," in this village.




CHAPTER II.

GREAT EXCITEMENT

The publication of the advertisement in the paper brought the village
fever of the last two days to its height. Myrtle Hazard's disappearance
had been pretty well talked round through the immediate neighborhood, but
now that forty-eight hours of search and inquiry had not found her, and
the alarm was so great that the young girl's friends were willing to
advertise her in a public journal, it was clear that the gravest
apprehensions were felt and justified. The paper carried the tidings to
many who had not heard it. Some of the farmers who had been busy all the
week with their fields came into the village in their wagons on Saturday,
and there first learned the news, and saw the paper, and the placards
which were posted up, and listened, open-mouthed, to the whole story.

Saturday was therefore a day of much agitation in Oxbow Village, and some
stir in the neighboring settlements. Of course there was a great variety
of comment, its character depending very much on the sense, knowledge,
and disposition of the citizens, gossips, and young people who talked
over the painful and mysterious occurrence.

The Withers Homestead was naturally the chief centre of interest. Nurse
Byloe, an ancient and voluminous woman, who had known the girl when she
was a little bright-eyed child, handed over "the baby" she was holding to
another attendant, and got on her things to go straight up to The
Poplars. She had been holding "the baby" these forty years and more, but
somehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.

"Have you heerd anything yet, Kitty Fagan?" asked Nurse Byloe.

"Niver a blissed word," said she. "Miss Withers is upstairs with Miss
Bathsheby, a cryin' and a lamentin'. Miss Badlam's in the parlor. The
men has been draggin' the pond. They have n't found not one thing, but
only jest two, and that was the old coffeepot and the gray cat,--it's
them nigger boys hanged her with a string they tied round her neck and
then drownded her." [P. Fagan, Jr., Aet. 14, had a snarl of similar
string in his pocket.]

Mistress Fagan opened the door of the best parlor. A woman was sitting
there alone, rocking back and forward, and fanning herself with the
blackest of black fans.

"Nuss Byloe, is that you? Well, to be sure, I'm glad to see you, though
we 're all in trouble. Set right down, Nuss, do. Oh, it's dreadful
times!"

A handkerchief which was in readiness for any emotional overflow was here
called on for its function.

Nurse Byloe let herself drop into a flaccid squab chair with one of those
soft cushions, filled with slippery feathers, which feel so fearfully
like a very young infant, or a nest of little kittens, as they flatten
under the subsiding person.

The woman in the rocking-chair was Miss Cynthia Badlam, second-cousin of
Miss Silence Withers, with whom she had been living as a companion at
intervals for some years. She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more
or less, and looked not badly for that stage of youth, though of course
she might have been handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with women.
She wore a not unbecoming cap; frequent headaches had thinned her locks
somewhat of late years. Features a little too sharp, a keen, gray eye, a
quick and restless glance, which rather avoided being met, gave the
impression that she was a wide-awake, cautious, suspicious, and, very
possibly, crafty person.

"I could n't help comin'," said Nurse Byloe, "we do so love our
babies,--how can we help it, Miss Badlam?"

The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive
pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech.

"I never tended children as you have, Nuss," she said. "But I 've known
Myrtle Hazard ever since she was three years old, and to think she should
have come to such an end,--'The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked,'"--and she wept.

"Why, Cynthy Badlam, what do y' mean?" said Nurse Byloe. "Y' don't think
anything dreadful has come o' that child's wild nater, do ye?"

"Child!" said Cynthia Badlam,--"child enough to wear this very gown I
have got on and not find it too big for her neither." [It would have
pinched Myrtle here and there pretty shrewdly.]

The two women looked each other in the eyes with subtle interchange of
intelligence, such as belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty.
Talk without words is half their conversation, just as it is all the
conversation of the lower animals. Only the dull senses of men are dead
to it as to the music of the spheres.

Their minds travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through
whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths of thought
ripened in both their souls into articulate speech, consentingly, as the
movement comes after the long stillness of a Quaker meeting.

Their lips opened at the same moment. "You don't mean"--began Nurse
Byloe, but stopped as she heard Miss Badlam also speaking.

"They need n't drag the pond," she said. "They need n't go beating the
woods as if they were hunting a patridge,--though for that matter Myrtle
Hazard was always more like a patridge than she was like a pullet.
Nothing ever took hold of that girl,--not catechising, nor advising, nor
punishing. It's that dreadful will of hers never was broke. I've always
been afraid that she would turn out a child of wrath. Did y' ever watch
her at meetin' playing with posies and looking round all the time of the
long prayer? That's what I've seen her do many and many a time. I'm
afraid--Oh dear! Miss Byloe, I'm afraid to say--what I'm afraid of. Men
are so wicked, and young girls are full of deceit and so ready to listen
to all sorts of artful creturs that take advantage of their ignorance and
tender years." She wept once more, this time with sobs that seemed
irrepressible.