The Guardian Angel

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


"Dear suz!" said the nurse, "I won't believe no sech thing as wickedness
about Myrtle Hazard. You mean she's gone an' run off with some
good-for-nothin' man or other? If that ain't what y' mean, what do y'
mean? It can't be so, Miss Badlam: she's one o' my babies. At any rate,
I handled her when she fust come to this village,--and none o' my babies
never did sech a thing. Fifteen year old, and be bringin' a whole family
into disgrace! If she was thirty year old, or five-an'-thirty or more,
and never'd had a chance to be married, and if one o' them artful creturs
you was talkin' of got hold of her, then, to be sure,--why, dear
me!--law! I never thought, Miss Badlam!--but then of course you could
have had your pickin' and choosin' in the time of it; and I don't mean to
say it's too late now if you felt called that way, for you're better
lookin' now than some that's younger, and there's no accountin' for
tastes."

A sort of hysteric twitching that went through the frame of Cynthia
Badlam dimly suggested to the old nurse that she was not making her
slightly indiscreet personality much better by her explanations. She
stopped short, and surveyed the not uncomely person of the maiden lady
sitting before her with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and one
hand clenching the arm of the reeking-chair, as if some spasm had clamped
it there. The nurse looked at her with a certain growing interest she
had never felt before. It was the first time for some years that she had
had such a chance, partly because Miss Cynthia had often been away for
long periods,--partly because she herself had been busy professionally.
There was no occasion for her services, of course, in the family at The
Poplars; and she was always following round from place to place after
that everlasting migratory six-weeks or less old baby.

There was not a more knowing pair of eyes, in their way, in a circle of
fifty miles, than those kindly tranquil orbs that Nurse Byloe fixed on
Cynthia Badlam. The silver threads in the side fold of hair, the
delicate lines at the corner of the eye, the slight drawing down at the
angle of the mouth,--almost imperceptible, but the nurse dwelt upon
it,--a certain moulding of the features as of an artist's clay model
worked by delicate touches with the fingers, showing that time or pain or
grief had had a hand in shaping them, the contours, the adjustment of
every fold of the dress, the attitude, the very way of breathing, were
all passed through the searching inspection of the ancient expert,
trained to know all the changes wrought by time and circumstance. It
took not so long as it takes to describe it, but it was an analysis of
imponderables, equal to any of Bunsen's with the spectroscope.

Miss Badlam removed her handkerchief and looked in a furtive, questioning
way, in her turn, upon the nurse.

"It's dreadful close here,--I'm 'most smothered," Nurse Byloe said; and,
putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of
gold beads she had worn since she was a baby,--a bead having been added
from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large
neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when
her husband was run over by an ox-team.

At this moment Miss Silence Withers entered, followed by Bathsheba
Stoker, daughter of Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.

She was the friend of Myrtle, and had come to comfort Miss Silence, and
consult with her as to what further search they should institute. The
two, Myrtle's aunt and her friend, were as unlike as they could well be.
Silence Withers was something more than forty years old, a shadowy,
pinched, sallow, dispirited, bloodless woman, with the habitual look of
the people in the funeral carriage which follows next to the hearse, and
the tone in speaking that may be noticed in a household where one of its
members is lying white and still in a cool, darkened chamber overhead.
Bathsheba Stoker was not called handsome; but she had her mother's
youthful smile, which was so fresh and full of sweetness that she seemed
like a beauty while she was speaking or listening; and she could never be
plain so long as any expression gave life to her features. In perfect
repose, her face, a little prematurely touched by sad experiences,--for
she was but seventeen years old,--had the character and decision stamped
in its outlines which any young man who wanted a companion to warn, to
comfort, and command him, might have depended on as warranting the
courage, the sympathy, and the sense demanded for such a responsibility.
She had been trying her powers of consolation on Miss Silence. It was a
sudden freak of Myrtle's. She had gone off on some foolish but innocent
excursion. Besides, she was a girl that would take care of herself; for
she was afraid of nothing, and nimbler than any boy of her age, and
almost as strong as any. As for thinking any bad thoughts about her,
that was a shame; she cared for none of the young fellows that were round
her. Cyprian Eveleth was the one she thought most of; but Cyprian was as
true as his sister Olive, and who else was there?

To all this Miss Silence answered only by sighing and moaning, For two
whole days she had been kept in constant fear and worry, afraid every
minute of some tragical message, perplexed by the conflicting advice of
all manner of officious friends, sleepless of course through the two
nights, and now utterly broken down and collapsed.

Bathsheba had said all she could in the way of consolation, and hastened
back to her mother's bedside, which she hardly left, except for the
briefest of visits.

"It's a great trial, Miss Withers, that's laid on you," said Nurse Byloe.

"If I only knew that she was dead, and had died in the Lord," Miss
Silence answered,--"if I only knew that but if she is living in sin, or
dead in wrong--doing, what is to become of me?--Oh, what is to become of
me when 'He maketh inquisition far blood'?"

"Cousin Silence," said Miss Cynthia, "it is n't your fault, if that young
girl has taken to evil ways. If going to meeting three times every
Sabbath day, and knowing the catechism by heart, and reading of good
books, and the best of daily advice, and all needful discipline, could
have corrected her sinful nature, she would never have run away from a
home where she enjoyed all these privileges. It's that Indian blood,
Cousin Silence. It's a great mercy you and I have n't got any of it in
our veins! What can you expect of children that come from heathens and
savages? You can't lay it to yourself, Cousin Silence, if Myrtle Hazard
goes wrong"--

"The Lord will lay it to me,--the Lord will lay it to me," she moaned.
"Did n't he say to Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?'"

Nurse Byloe was getting very red in the face. She had had about enough
of this talk between the two women. "I hope the Lard 'll take care of
Myrtle Hazard fust, if she's in trouble, 'n' wants help," she said; "'n'
then look out for them that comes next. Y' 're too suspicious, Miss
Badlam; y' 're too easy to believe stories. Myrtle Hazard was as pretty
a child and as good a child as ever I see, if you did n't rile her; 'n'
d' d y' ever see one o' them hearty lively children, that had n't a
sperrit of its own? For my part, I'd rather handle one of 'em than a
dozen o' them little waxy, weak-eyed, slim-necked creturs that always do
what they tell 'em to, and die afore they're a dozen year old; and never
was the time when I've seen Myrtle Hazard, sence she was my baby, but
what it's always been, 'Good mornin', Miss Byloe,' and 'How do you do,
Miss Byloe? I'm so glad to see you.' The handsomest young woman, too,
as all the old folks will agree in tellin' you, s'ence the time o' Judith
Pride that was,--the Pride of the County they used to call her, for her
beauty. Her great-grandma, y' know, Miss Cynthy, married old King David
Withers. What I want to know is, whether anything has been heerd, and
jest what's been done about findin' the poor thing. How d' ye know she
has n't fell into the river? Have they fired cannon? They say that
busts the gall of drownded folks, and makes the corpse rise. Have they
looked in the woods everywhere? Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not
till y' must,--least of all of them that come o' the same folks, partly,
and has lived with yo all their days. I tell y', Myrtle Hazard's jest as
innocent of all what y' 've been thinkin' about,--bless the poor child;
she's got a soul that's as clean and sweet-well, as a pond-lily when it
fust opens of a mornin', without a speck on it no more than on the fust
pond-lily God Almighty ever made!"

That gave a turn to the two women's thoughts, and their handkerchiefs
went up to their faces. Nurse Byloe turned her eyes quickly on Cynthia
Badlam, and repeated her close inspection of every outline and every
light and shadow in her figure. She did not announce any opinion as to
the age or good looks or general aspect or special points of Miss
Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which real
folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!--a sort of half-suppressed
labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which
might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if
there is to be any talking.

Friends and neighbors were coming in and out; and the next person that
came was the old minister, of whom, and of his colleague, the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker, some account may here be introduced.

The Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton Father Pemberton as brother ministers called
him, Priest Pemberton as he was commonly styled by the country
people--would have seemed very old, if the medical patriarch of the
village had not been so much older. A man over ninety is a great comfort
to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme
outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy
must get by him before he can come near their camp. Dr. Hurlbut, at
ninety-two, made Priest Pemberton seem comparatively little advanced; but
the college catalogue showed that he must be seventy-five years old, if,
as we may suppose, he was twenty at the time of his graduation.

He was a man of noble presence always, and now, in the grandeur of his
flowing silver hair and with the gray shaggy brows overhanging his serene
and solemn eyes, with the slow gravity of motion and the measured dignity
of speech which gave him the air of an old pontiff, he was an imposing
personage to look upon, and could be awful, if the occasion demanded it.
His creed was of the sternest: he was looked up to as a bulwark against
all the laxities which threatened New England theology. But it was a
creed rather of the study and of the pulpit than of every-day application
among his neighbors. He dealt too much in the lofty abstractions which
had always such fascinations for the higher class of New England divines,
to busy himself as much as he might have done with the spiritual
condition of individuals. He had also a good deal in him of what he used
to call the Old Man, which, as he confessed, he had never succeeded in
putting off,--meaning thereby certain qualities belonging to humanity, as
much as the natural gifts of the dumb creatures belong to them, and
tending to make a man beloved by his weak and erring fellow-mortals.

In the olden time he would have lived and died king of his parish,
monarch, by Divine right, as the noblest, grandest, wisest of all that
made up the little nation within hearing of his meeting-house bell. But
Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.

If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the charity,
the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father Pemberton, he would
have found a small remnant of the "Old Man," as the good clergyman would
have called it, which was never in harmony with the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The
younger divine felt his importance, and made his venerable colleague feel
that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair chance at rainy Sundays and
hot summer-afternoon services; but the junior pushed him aside without
ceremony whenever he thought there was like to be a good show in the
pews. As for those courtesies which the old need, to soften the sense of
declining faculties and failing attractions, the younger pastor bestowed
them in public, but was negligent of them, to say the least, when not on
exhibition.

Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
signify?

Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a
gift in prayer, was considered eloquent, was fond of listening to their
spiritual experiences, and had a sickly wife. This is what Byles Gridley
said; but he was apt to be caustic at times.

Father Pemberton visited his people but rarely. Like Jonathan Edwards,
like David Osgood, he felt his call to be to study-work, and was
impatient of the egotisms and spiritual megrims, in listening to which,
especially from the younger females of his flock, his colleague had won
the hearts of so many of his parishioners. His presence had a wonderful
effect in restoring the despondent Miss Silence to her equanimity; for
not all the hard divinity he had preached for half a century had spoiled
his kindly nature; and not the gentle Melanchthon himself, ready to
welcome death as a refuge from the rage and bitterness of theologians,
was more in contrast with the disputants with whom he mingled, than the
old minister, in the hour of trial, with the stern dogmatist in his
study, forging thunderbolts to smite down sinners.

It was well that there were no tithing-men about on that next day,
Sunday; for it shone no Sabbath day for the young men within half a dozen
miles of the village. They were out on Bear Hill the whole day, beating
up the bushes as if for game, scaring old crows out of their ragged
nests, and in one dark glen startling a fierce-eyed, growling, bobtailed
catamount, who sat spitting and looking all ready to spring at them, on
the tall tree where he clung with his claws unsheathed, until a young
fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and
through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a
wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and
alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near
enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End
there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making
baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had seen
a young lady answering the description, about a week ago. She had bought
a basket. Asked them if they had a canoe they wanted to sell.--Eyes like
hers (pointing to a squaw with a man's hat on).

At Pocasset the young men explored all the thick woods,--some who ought
to have known better taking their guns, which made a talk, as one might
well suppose it would. Hunting on a Sabbath day! They did n't mean to
shoot Myrtle Hazard, did they? it was keenly asked. A good many said it
was all nonsense, and a mere excuse to get away from meeting and have a
sort of frolic on pretence that it was a work of necessity and mercy, one
or both.

While they were scattering themselves about in this way, some in earnest,
some rejoicing in the unwonted license, lifting off for a little while
that enormous Sabbath-day pressure which weighs like forty atmospheres on
every true-born Puritan, two young men had been since Friday in search of
the lost girl, each following a clue of his own, and determined to find
her if she was among the living.

Cyprian Eveleth made for the village of Mapleton, where his sister Olive
was staying, trusting that, with her aid, he might get a clue to the
mystery of Myrtle's disappearance.

William Murray Bradshaw struck for a railroad train going to the great
seaport, at a station where it stops for wood and water.

In the mean time, a third young man, Gifted Hopkins by name, son of the
good woman already mentioned, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and wrote
those touching stanzas, "The Lost Myrtle," which were printed in the next
"Banner and Oracle," and much admired by many who read them.




CHAPTER III.

ANTECEDENTS.

The Withers Homestead was the oldest mansion in town. It was built on
the east bank of the river, a little above the curve which gave the name
to Oxbow Village. It stood on an elevation, its west gable close to the
river's edge, an old orchard and a small pond at the foot of the slope
behind it, woods at the east, open to the south, with a great row of
Lombardy poplars standing guard in front of the house. The Hon. Selah
Withers, Esq., a descendant of one of the first colonists, built it for
his own residence, in the early part of the last century. Deeply
impressed with his importance in the order of things, he had chosen to
place it a little removed from the cluster of smaller dwellings about the
Oxbow; and with some vague fancy in his mind of the castles that overlook
the Rhine and the Danube, he had selected this eminence on which to place
his substantial gambrel roofed dwelling-house. Long afterwards a
bay-window, almost a little room of itself, had been thrown out of the
second story on the west side, so that it looked directly down on the
river running beneath it. The chamber, thus half suspended in the air,
had been for years the special apartment of Myrtle Hazard; and as the
boys paddling about on the river would often catch glimpses, through the
window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she fancied in
those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became
current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins
the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's
Nest."

If we would know anything about the persons now living at the Withers
Homestead, or The Poplars, as it was more commonly called of late years,
we must take a brief inventory of some of their vital antecedents. It is
by no means certain that our individual personality is the single
inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. Nay, there is recorded an
experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,--to
be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as it is received in
evidence, tends to show that some, at least, who have long been dead, may
enjoy a kind of secondary and imperfect, yet self-conscious life, in
these bodily tenements which we are in the habit of considering
exclusively our own. There are many circumstances, familiar to common
observers, which favor this belief to a certain extent. Thus, at one
moment we detect the look, at another the tone of voice, at another some
characteristic movement of this or that ancestor, in our relations or
others. There are times when our friends do not act like themselves, but
apparently in obedience to some other law than that of their own proper
nature. We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us.
Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. No less than eight
distinct personalities are said to have coexisted in a single female
mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable authority. In this
light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which
will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: "This body in
which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a
private carriage, but an omnibus."

The ancestry of the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith
before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some
points; but the portrait, marked "Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy
Papists, ano 15.." (figures illegible), was still hanging against the
panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The
following words were yet legible on the canvas: "Thou hast made a
covenant O Lord with mee and my Children forever."

The story had come down, that Ann Holyoake spoke these words in a prayer
she offered up at the stake, after the fagots were kindled. There had
always been a secret feeling in the family, that none of her descendants
could finally fall from grace, in virtue of this solemn "covenant."

There had been also a legend in the family, that the martyred woman's
spirit exercised a kind of supervision over her descendants; that she
either manifested herself to them, or in some way impressed them, from
time to time; as in the case of the first pilgrim before he cast his lot
with the emigrants,--of one Mrs. Winslow, a descendant in the third
generation, when the Indians were about to attack the settlement where
she lived,--and of another, just before he was killed at Quebec.

There was a remarkable resemblance between the features of Ann Holyoake,
as shown in the portrait, and the miniature likeness of Myrtle's mother.
Myrtle adopted the nearly obsolete superstition more readily on this
account, and loved to cherish the fancy that the guardian spirit which
had watched over her ancestors was often near her, and would be with her
in her time of need.

The wife of Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of that
delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that "ye Parson
was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em," had got
abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt that
some odd "manifestations," as they would be called nowadays, had taken
place in the household when she was a girl, and that she presented many
of the conditions belonging to what are at the present day called
mediums.

Major Gideon Withers, her son, was of the very common type of hearty,
loud, portly men, who like to show themselves at militia trainings, and
to hear themselves shout orders at musters, or declaim patriotic
sentiments at town-meetings and in the General Court. He loved to wear a
crimson sash and a military cap with a large red feather, in which the
village folk used to say he looked as "hahnsome as a piny,"--meaning a
favorite flower of his, which is better spelt peony, and to which it was
not unnatural that his admirers should compare him.

If he had married a wife like himself, there might probably enough have
sprung from the alliance a family of moon-faced children, who would have
dropped into their places like posts into their holes, asking no
questions of life, contented, like so many other honest folks, with the
part of supernumeraries in the drama of being, their wardrobe of flesh
and bones being furnished them gratis, and nothing to do but to walk
across the stage wearing it. But Major Gideon Withers, for some reason
or other, married a slender, sensitive, nervous, romantic woman, which
accounted for the fact that his son David, "King David," as he was called
in his time, had a very different set of tastes from his father, showing
a turn for literature and sentiment in his youth, reading Young's "Night
Thoughts," and Thomson's "Seasons," and sometimes in those early days
writing verses himself to Celia or to Chloe, which sounded just as fine
to him as Effie and Minnie sound to young people now, as Musidora, as
Saccharissa, as Lesbia, as Helena, as Adah and Zillah, have all sounded
to young people in their time,--ashes of roses as they are to us now, and
as our endearing Scotch diminutives will be to others by and by.

King David Withers, who got his royal prefix partly because he was rich,
and partly because he wrote hymns occasionally, when he grew too old to
write love-poems, married the famous beauty before mentioned, Miss Judith
Pride, and the race came up again in vigor. Their son, Jeremy, took for
his first wife a delicate, melancholic girl, who matured into a sad-eyed
woman, and bore him two children, Malachi and Silence.

When she died, he mourned for her bitterly almost a year, and then put on
a ruffled shirt and went across the river to tell his grief to Miss
Virginia Wild, there residing. This lady was said to have a few drops of
genuine aboriginal blood in her veins; and it is certain that her cheek
had a little of the russet tinge which a Seckel pear shows on its warmest
cheek when it blushes.--Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a
knife-blade in its handle, and opens as easily. All the rest followed in
due order according to Nature's kindly programme.