Now, if the reader has attentively read ancient and modern history, he will observe that there is a class of women to be found in this lower world, who, wherever they are, are sure to be in some way the first or the last cause of everything that is going on. Everybody knows, for instance, that Helen was the great instigator of the Trojan war, and if it had not been for her we should have had no Homer. In France, Madam Récamier was, for the time being, reason enough for almost anything that any man in France did; and yet one cannot find out that Madame Récamier had any uncommon genius of her own, except the sovereign one of charming every human being that came in her way, so that all became her humble and subservient subjects. The instance is a marked one, because it operated in a wide sphere, on very celebrated men, in an interesting historic period. But it individualizes a kind of faculty which, generally speaking, is peculiar to women, though it is in some instances exercised by men, – a faculty of charming and controlling every person with whom one has to do.
Tina was now verging toward maturity; she was in just that delicious period in which the girl has all the privileges and graces of childhood, its freedom of movement and action, brightened with a sort of mysterious aurora by the coming dawn of womanhood; and everything indicated that she was to be one of this powerful class of womankind. Can one analyze the charm which such women possess? I have a theory that, in all cases, there is a certain amount of genius with it, – genius which does not declare itself in literature, but in social life, and which devotes itself to pleasing, as other artists devote themselves to painting or to poetry.
Tina had no inconsiderable share of self-will; she was very pronounced in her tastes, and fond of her own way; but she had received from nature this passion for entertaining, and been endowed with varied talents in this line which made her always from early childhood, the coveted and desired person in every circle. Not a visage in Oldtown was so set in grimness of care, that it did not relax its lines when it saw Tina coming down the street; for Tina could mimic and sing and dance, and fling back joke for joke in a perfect meteoric shower. So long as she entertained, she was perfectly indifferent who the party was. She would display her accomplishments to a set of strolling Indians, or for Sam Lawson and Jake Marshall, as readily as for any one else. She would run up and catch the minister by the elbow as he solemnly and decorously moved down street, and his face always broke into a laugh at the sight of her.
The minister’s lady, and Aunt Lois, and Miss Deborah Kittery, while they used to mourn in secret places over her want of decorum in thus displaying her talents before the lower classes, would afterward laugh till the tears rolled down their cheeks and their ancient whalebone stays creaked, when she would do the same thing over in a select circle for them.
We have seen how completely she had conquered Polly, and what difficulty Miss Mehitable found in applying the precepts of Mrs. Chapone and Miss Hannah More to her case. The pattern young lady of the period, in the eyes of all respectable females, was expressed by Lucilla Stanley, in “Coelebs in Search of a Wife.” But when Miss Mehitable, after delighting herself with the Johnsonian balance of the rhythmical sentences which described this paragon as “not so much perfectly beautiful as perfectly elegant,” – this model of consistency, who always blushed at the right moment, spoke at the right moment, and stopped at the right moment, and was, in short, a woman made to order, precisely to suit a bachelor who had traversed the whole earth, “not expecting perfection, but looking for consistency,” – when, after all these charming visions, she looked at Tina, she was perfectly dismayed at contemplating her scholar. She felt the power by which Tina continually charmed and beguiled her, and the empire which she exercised over her; and with wonderful good sense, she formally laid down the weapons of authority when she found she had no heart to use them.
“My child,” she said to her one day, when that young lady was about eleven years of age, “you are a great deal stronger than I. I am weak because I love you, and because I have been broken by sorrow, and because, being a poor old woman, I don’t trust myself. And you are young and strong and fearless; but remember, dear, the life you have to live is yours and not mine. I have not the heart to force you to take my way instead of your own, but I shall warn you that it will be better you should do so, and then leave you free. If you don’t take my way, I shall do the very best for you that I can in your way, and you must take the responsibility in the end.”
This was the only kind of system which Miss Mehitable was capable of carrying out. She was wise, shrewd, and loving, and she gradually controlled her little charge more and more by simple influence, but she had to meet in her education the opposition force of that universal petting and spoiling which everybody in society gives to an entertaining child.
Life is such a monotonous, dull affair, that anybody who has the gift of making it pass off gaily is in great demand. Tina was sent for to the parsonage, and the minister took her on his knee and encouraged her to chatter all sorts of egregious nonsense to him. And Miss Deborah Kittery insisted on having her sent for to visit them in Boston, and old Madam Kittery overwhelmed her with indulgence and caresses. Now Tina loved praises and caresses; incense was the very breath of her nostrils; and she enjoyed being fêted and petted as much as a cat enjoys being stroked.
It will not be surprising to one who considers the career of this kind of girl to hear that she was not much of a student. What she learned was by impulses and fits and starts, and all of it immediately used for some specific purpose of entertainment, so that among simple people she had the reputation of being a prodigy of information, on a very small capital of actual knowledge. Miss Mehitable sighed after thorough knowledge and discipline of mind for her charge, but she invariably found all Tina’s teachers becoming accomplices in her superficial practices by praising and caressing her when she had been least faithful, always apologizing for her deficiencies, and speaking in the most flattering terms of her talents. During the last year the schoolmaster had been observed always to walk home with her and bring her books, with a humble, trembling subserviency and prostrate humility which she rewarded with great apparent contempt; and finally she announced to Miss Mehitable that she “did n’t intend to go to school any more, because the master acted so silly.”
Now Miss Mehitable, during all her experience of life, had always associated with the men of her acquaintance without ever being reminded in any particular manner of the difference of sex, and it was a subject which, therefore, was about the last to enter into her calculations with regard to her little charge. So she said, “My dear, you should n’t speak in that way about your teacher; he knows a great deal more than you do.”
“He may know more than I do about arithmetic, but he does n’t know how to behave. What right has he to put his old hand under my chin? and I won’t have him putting his arm round me when he sets my copies! And I told him to-day he should n’t carry my books home any more, – so there!”
Miss Mehitable was struck dumb. She went that afternoon and visited the ministers’ lady.
“Depend upon it, my dear,” said Lady Lothrop, “it ‘s time to try a course of home reading.”
A bright idea now struck Miss Mehitable. Her cousin, Mr. Mordecai Rossiter, had recently been appointed a colleague with the venerable Dr. Lothrop. He was a young man, finely read, and of great solidity and piety, and Miss Mehitable resolved to invite him to take up his abode with them for the purpose of assisting her educational efforts. Mr. Mordecai Rossiter accordingly took up his abode in the family, used to conduct family worship, and was expected now and then to drop words of good advice and wholesome counsel to form the mind to Miss Tina. A daily hour was appointed during which he was to superintend her progress in arithmetic.
Mr. Mordecai Rossiter was one of the most simple-minded, honest, sincere human beings that ever wore a black coat. He accepted his charge in sacred simplicity, and took a prayerful view of his young catechumen, whom he was in hopes to make realize, by degrees, the native dep
ravity of her own heart, and to lead through a gradual process to the best of all results.
Miss Tina also took a view of her instructor, and without any evil intentions, simply following her strongest instinct, which was to entertain and please, she very soon made herself an exceedingly delightful pupil. Since religion was evidently the engrossing subject in his mind, Tina also turned her attention to it, and instructed and edified him with flights of devout eloquence which were to him perfectly astonishing. Tina would discourse on the goodness of God, and ornament her remarks with so many flowers, and stars, and poetical fireworks, and be so rapt and carried away with her subject, that he would sit and listen to her as if she was an inspired being, and wholly forget the analysis which he meant to propose to her, as to whether her emotions of love to God proceeded from self-love or from disinterested benevolence.
As I have said, Tina had a genius for poetry, and had employed the dull hours which children of her age usually spend in church in reading the psalm-book and committing to memory all the most vividly emotional psalms and hymns. And these she was fond of repeating with great fervor and enthusiasm to her admiring listener.
Miss Mehitable considered that the schoolmaster had been an ill-taught, presumptuous man, who had ventured to take improper liberties with a mere child; but, when she established this connection between this same child and a solemn young minister, it never occurred to her to imagine that there would be any embarrassing consequences from the relation. She considered Tina as a mere infant, – as not yet having approached the age when the idea of anything like love or marriage could possibly be suggested to her.
In course of time, however, she could not help remarking that her cousin was in some respects quite an altered man. He reformed many little negligences in regard to his toilet which Miss Tina had pointed out to him with the nonchalant freedom of a young empress. And he would run and spring and fetch and carry in her service with a zeal and alertness quite wonderful to behold. He expressed privately to Miss Mehitable the utmost astonishment at her mental powers, and spoke of the wonderful work of divine grace which appeared to have made such progress in her heart. Never had he been so instructed and delighted before by the exercises of any young person. And he went so far as to assure Miss Mehitable that in many things he should be only too happy to sit at her feet and learn of her.
“Good gracious me!” said Miss Mehitable to herself, with a sort of half start of awakening, though not yet fully come to consciousness; “what does ail everybody that gets hold of Tina?”
What got hold of her cousin in this case she had an opportunity of learning, not long after, by overhearing him tell her young charge that she was an angel, and that he asked nothing more of Heaven than to be allowed to follow her lead through life. Now Miss Tina accepted this, as she did all other incense, with great satisfaction. Not that she had the slightest idea of taking this clumsy-footed theological follower round the world with her; but having the highest possible respect for him, knowing that Miss Mehitable and the minister and his wife thought him a person of consideration, she had felt it her duty to please him, – had taxed her powers of pleasing to the utmost, in his own line, and had met with this gratifying evidence of success.
Miss Mehitable was for once really angry. She sent for her cousin to a private interview, and thus addressed him: –
“Cousin Mordecai, I thought you were a man of sense when I put this child under your case! My great trouble in bringing her up is, that everybody flatters her and defers to her; but I thought that in you I had got a man that could be depended on!”
“I do not flatter her, cousin,” replied the young minister, earnestly.
“You pretend you don’t flatter her? Did n’t I hear you calling her an angel?”
“Well, I don’t care if I did; she is an angel,” said Mr. Mordecai Rossiter, with tears in his eyes; “she is the most perfectly heavenly being I ever saw!”
“Ah! bah!” said Miss Mehitable, with intense disgust; “what fools you men are!”
Miss Mehitable now, much as she disliked it, felt bound to have some cautionary conversation with Miss Tina.
‘my dear,” she said; “you must be very careful in your treatment of Cousin Mordecai. I overheard some things he said to you this morning which I do not approve of.”
“O yes, Aunty, he does talk in a silly way sometimes. Men always begin to talk that way to me. Why, you ‘ve no idea the things they will say. Well, of course I don’t believe them; it ‘s only a foolish way they have, but they all talk just alike.”
“But I thought my cousin would have had his mind on better things,” said Miss Mehitable. “The idea of his making love to you!”
“I know it; only think of it, Aunty! How very funny it is! and there, I have n’t done a single thing to make him. I ‘ve been just as religious as I could be, and said hymns to him, and everything, and given him good advice, – ever so much, – because, you see, he did n’t know about a great many things till I told him.”
“But, my dear, all this is going to make him too fond of you; you know you ought not to be thinking of such things now.”
“What things, Aunty?” said the catechumen, innocently.
“Why, love and marriage; that ‘s what such feelings will come to, if you encourage them.”
“Marriage! O dear me, what nonsense!” and Tina laughed till the room rang again. “Why, dear Aunty, what absurd ideas have got into your head! Of course you can’t think that he ‘s thinking of any such thing; he ‘s only getting very fond of me, and I ‘m trying to make him have a good time, – that ‘s all.”
But Miss Tina found that was not all, and was provoked beyond endurance at the question proposed to her in plain terms, whether she would not look upon her teacher as one destined in a year or two to become her husband. Thereupon at once the whole gay fabric dissolved like a dream. Tina was as vexed at the proposition as a young unbroken colt is at the sight of a halter. She cried, and said she did n’t like him, she could n’t bear him, and she never wanted to see him again, – that he was silly and ridiculous to talk so to a little girl. And Miss Mehitable sat down to write a long letter to her brother, to inquire what she should do next.
CHAPTER XXXI.
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH TINA?
“MY DEAR BROTHER: – I am in a complete embarras what to do with Tina. She is the very light of my eyes, – the sweetest, gayest, brightest, and best-meaning little mortal that ever was made; but somehow or other I fear I am not the one that ought to have undertaken to bring her up.
“She has a good deal of self-will; so much that I have long felt it would be quite impossible for me to control her merely by authority. In fact I laid down my sceptre long ago, such as it was. I never did have much of a gift in that way. But Tina’s self-will runs in the channel of a most charming persuasiveness. She has all sorts of pretty phrases, and would talk a bird off from a bush, or a trout out of a brook, by dint of sheer persistent eloquence; and she is always so delightfully certain that her way is the right one and the best for me and all concerned. Then she has no end of those peculiar gifts of entertainment which are rather dangerous things for a young woman. She is a born mimic, she is a natural actress, and she has always a repartee or a smart saying quite apropos at the tip of her tongue. All this makes her an immense favorite with people who have no responsibility about her, – who merely want to be amused with her drolleries, and then shake their heads wisely when she is gone, and say that Miss Mehitable Rossiter ought to keep a close hand on that girl.
“It seems to be the common understanding that everybody but me is to spoil her for there is n’t anybody, not even Dr. Lothrop and his wife, that won’t connive at her mimicking and fripperies, and then talk gravely with me afterward about the danger of these things, as if I were the only person to say anything disagreeable to her. But then, I can see very plainly that the little chit is in danger on all sides of becoming trivial and superficial, – of mistaking wit for wisdom, and thinking she h
as answered an argument when she has said a smart thing and raised a laugh.
“Of late, trouble of another kind has been added. Tina is a little turned of fifteen; she is going to be very beautiful; she is very pretty now; and, in addition to all my other perplexities the men are beginning to talk that atrocious kind of nonsense to her which they seem to think they must talk to young girls. I have had to take her away from the school on account of the schoolmaster, and when I put her under the care of Cousin Mordecai Rossiter, whom I thought old enough, and discreet enough, to make a useful teacher to her, he has acted like a natural fool. I have no kind of patience with him. I would not have believed a man could be so devoid of common sense. I shall have to send Tina somewhere, – though I can’t bear to part with her, and it seems like taking the very sunshine out of the house; so I remember what you told me about sending her up to you.
“Lady Lothrop and Lois Badger and I have been talking together, and we think the boys might as well go up too to your academy, as our present schoolmaster is not very competent, and you will give them a thorough fitting for college.”
To this came the following reply: –
“SISTER MEHITABLE: – The thing has happened that I have foreseen. Send her up here; she shall board in the minister’s family; and his daughter Esther, who is wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best, shall help keep her in order.
“Send the boys along, too; they are bright fellows, as I remember, and I would like to have a hand at them. One of them might live with us and do the out-door chores and help hoe in the garden, and the other might do the same for the minister. So send them along.
“Your affectionate brother,
“JONATHAN ROSSITER.”
This was an era in our lives. Harry and I from this time felt ourselves to be men, and thereafter adopted the habit of speaking of ourselves familiarly as “a man of my character,” “a man of my age,” and “a man in my circumstances.” The comfort and dignity which this imparted to us were wonderful. We also discussed Tina in a very paternal way, and gravely considered what was best for her. We were, of course, properly shocked at the behavior of the schoolmaster, and greatly applauded her spirit in defending herself against his presumption.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 280
