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HESTER AND AMY.
Hester did not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as
perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly
because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the
matter of music--ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught.
To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never
denying, defending or justifying what she might point out as a fault,
but setting himself at once to the correction of the same, and in
general with some measure of immediate success, could not fail to be not
merely pleasant but flattering to her. Brothers, I suspect, have a good
deal to answer for in the estimation of men by their sisters; their
behavior at home leads them to prize the civilities of other men more
highly than they deserve; brothers, I imagine, have therefore more to do
than they will like to learn, with the making of those inferior men
acceptable to their sisters, whose very presence is to themselves an
annoyance. Women so seldom see a noble style of behavior at home!--so
few are capable of distinguishing between ceremony and courtesy between
familiarity and rudeness--of dismissing ceremony and retaining courtesy,
of using familiarity and banishing rudeness! The nearer persons come to
each other, the greater is the room and the more are the occasions for
courtesy; but just in proportion to their approach the gentleness of
most men diminishes. Some will make the poor defense that it is unmanly
to show one's feelings: it is unmanly, because conceited and cowardly to
hide them, if, indeed, such persons have anything precious to hide.
Other some will say, "Must I weigh my words with my familiar friend as
if I had been but that moment presented to him?" I answer, It were small
labor well spent to see that your coarse-grained evil self, doomed to
perdition, shall not come between your friend and your true, noble,
humble self, fore-ordained to eternal life. The Father cannot bear
rudeness in his children any more than wrong:--my comparison is unfit,
for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, and that to the noblest part
of the human being, while a mere show of indifference is sometimes
almost as bad as the rudest words. And these are of those faults of
which the more guilty a man is, the less is he conscious of the same.
Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that
deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and
feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass
in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was
living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and
volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the
depths profound whence they rise, while she was already a discoverer in
the abysses of the nature gradually yet swiftly unfolding in her--every
discovery attended with fresh light for the will, and a new sense of
power in the consciousness. When Vavasor was gone she turned with
greater diligence to her musical studies.
Amy Amber continued devoted to her, and when she was practicing would
hover about her as often and as long as she could. Her singing
especially seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had
already begun to show itself in her. The shadow of an unseen cloud was
occasionally visible on her forehead, and unmistakable pools were left
in her eyes by the ebb-tide of tears. In her service, notwithstanding,
she was nowise less willing, scarcely less cheerful. The signs of her
discomfort grew deeper, and showed themselves oftener as the days went
on. She moved about her work with less elasticity, and her smile did not
come so quickly. Both Hester and her mother saw the change, and marked
even an occasional frown. In the morning, when she was always the first
up, she was generally cheerful, but as the day passed the clouds came.
Happily, however, her diligence did not relax. Sound in health, and by
nature as active as cheerful, she took a positive delight in work. Doing
was to her as natural as singing to the birds. In a household with truth
at the heart of it she would have been invaluable, and happy as the day
was long. As it was, she was growing daily less and less happy.
One night she appeared in Hester's room as usual before going to bed.
The small, neat face had lost for the time a great part of its beauty,
and was dark as a little thunder-cloud. Its black, shadowy brows were
drawn together over its luminous black eyes; its red lips were large and
pouting, and their likeness to a rosebud gone.
Its cheeks were swollen, and its whole aspect revealed the spirit of
wrath roused at last, and the fire alight in the furnace of the bosom.
She tried to smile, but what came was the smile of a wound rather than a
mouth.
"My poor Amy! what is the matter?" cried Hester, sorry, but hardly
surprised; for plainly things had been going from bad to worse.
The girl burst into a passionate fit of weeping. She threw herself in
wild abandonment on the floor, and sobbed; then, as if to keep herself
from screaming aloud, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, kicked
with her little feet, and beat her little hands on the floor. She was
like a child in a paroxysm of rage--only that with her its extravagance
came of the effort to overcome it.
"Amy, dear, you mustn't be naughty!" said Hester, kneeling down beside
her and taking hold of her arm.
"I'm not naughty, miss--at least I am doing all I can to get over it,"
she sobbed.
Thereupon she ceased suddenly, and sitting up on the floor, her legs
doubled under her in eastern fashion, looked straight at Hester, and
said thoughtfully, as if the question had just come, with force to make
her forget the suffering she was in--
"I should like to know how you would do in my place--that I
should, miss!"
The words spoken, her eyes fell, and she sat still as a statue, seeming
steadfastly to regard her own lap.
"I am afraid, if I were in your place, I should do nothing so well as
you, Amy," said Hester. "But come, tell me what is the matter. What puts
you in such a misery?"
"Oh, it's not one thing nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy,
looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What would
my mother say to see me served so! She used to trust me
everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying
suspicious old maids can be my mother's sisters!"
She spoke slowly and sadly, without raising her eyes.
"Don't they behave well to you, my poor child?" said Hester.
"It's not," returned Amy, "that they watch every bit I put in my
mouth--I don't complain of that, for they're poor--at least they're
always saying so, and of course they want to make the most of me; but
not to be trusted one moment out of their sight except they know exactly
where I am--to be always suspected, and followed and watched, and me
working my hardest--that's what drives me wild, Miss Raymount. I'm
afraid they'll make me hate them out and out--and them my own flesh and
blood, too, which can't but be wicked! I bore it very well for a while,
for at first it only amused me. I said to myself, 'They'll soon know me
better!' But when I found they only got worse, I got tired of it
altogether; and when I got tired of it I got cross, and grew more and
more cross, till now I can't bear it. I'm not used to be cross,
and my own crossness is much harder to bear than theirs. If I could have
kept the good temper people used to praise me for to my mother, I
shouldn't mind; but it is hard to lose it this way! I don't know
how to get on without it! If there don't come a change somehow soon, I
shall run away--I shall indeed, Miss Raymount. There are many would be
glad enough to have me for the work I can get through."
She jumped to her feet, gave a little laugh, merry-sad, and before
Hester could answer her, said--
"You're going away so soon, miss! Let me do your hair to-night. I want
to brush it every night till you go."
"But you are tired, my poor child!" said Hester compassionately.
"Not too tired for that: it will rest me, and bring back my good temper,
It will come to me again through your hair, miss."
"No, no, Amy," said Hester, a little conscience-stricken, "you can't
have any of mine. I have none to spare. You will rather brush some into
me, Amy. But do what you like with my hair."
As Amy lovingly combed and brushed the long, wavy overflow of Hester's
beauty, Hester tried to make her understand that she must not think of
good-temper and crossness merely as things that could be put into her
and taken out of her. She tried to make her see that nothing really our
own can ever be taken from us by any will or behavior of another; that
Amy had had a large supply of good-temper laid ready to her hand, but
that it was not hers until she had made it her own by choosing and
willing to be good-tempered when she was disinclined--holding it fast
with the hand of determination when the hand of wrong would snatch it
from her.
"Because I have a book on my shelves," she said, "it is not therefore
mine; when I have read and understood it, then it is a little mine; when
I love it and do what it tells me, then it is altogether mine: it is
like that with a good temper: if you have it sometimes, and other times
not, then it is not yours; it lies in you like that book on my table--a
thing priceless were it your own, but as it is, a thing you can't keep
even against your poor weak old aunts."
As she said all this, Hester felt like a hypocrite, remembering her own
sins. Amy Amber listened quietly, brushing steadily all the time, but
scarcely a shadow of Hester's meaning crossed her mind. If she was in a
good temper, she was in a good temper; if she was in a bad temper, why
there she was, she and her temper! She had not a notion of the
possibility of having a hand in the making of her own temper--not a
notion that she was in any manner or measure accountable in regard to
the temper she might find herself in. Could she have been persuaded to
attempt to overcome it, the moment she failed, as of course every one
will many times, Amy would have concluded the thing required an
impossibility. Yet the effort she made, and with success, to restrain
the show of her anger, was far from slight. But for this, there would,
long ere now, have been rain and wind, thunder and lightning between her
and her aunts. She was alive without the law, not knowing what mental
conflict was; the moment she recognized that she was bound to conquer
herself, she would die in conscious helplessness, until strength and
hope were given her from the well of the one pure will.
Hester kissed her, and though she had not understood, she went to bed a
little comforted. When the Raymounts departed, two or three days after,
they left her at the top of the cliff-stair, weeping bitterly.
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