"Pshaw!" said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. "You owe me nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody else. What shall I tell her?"
"I'll go, certainly. I can leave Lucy now as well as not."
"Good-by, neighbors."
"Good-by, Doctor."
As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes, and he said nothing for some minutes.
"Public opinion," said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations aloud,—"public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant. We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality, deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here, now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of impertinent gossip."
"You speak of the young farmer Barnet and his wife, I suppose?" said I.
"Yes. I will give their case as an illustration. Julia Atkins was the daughter of Ensign Atkins, who lived on the mill-road, just above Deacon Warner's. When she was ten years old her mother died; and in a few months afterwards her father married Polly Wiggin, the tailoress, a shrewd, selfish, managing woman. Julia, poor girl! had a sorry time of it; for the Ensign, although a kind and affectionate man naturally, was too weak and yielding to interpose between her and his strong-minded, sharp-tongued wife. She had one friend, however, who was always ready to sympathize with her. Robert Barnet was the son of her next-door neighbor, about two years older than herself; they had grown up together as school companions and playmates; and often in my drives I used to meet them coming home hand in hand from school, or from the woods with berries and nuts, talking and laughing as if there were no scolding step-mothers in the world.
"It so fell out that when Julia was in her sixteenth year there came a famous writing-master to Peewawkin. He was a showy, dashing fellow, with a fashionable dress, a wicked eye, and a tongue like the old serpent's when he tempted our great-grandmother. Julia was one of his scholars, and perhaps the prettiest of them all. The rascal singled her out from the first; and, the better to accomplish his purpose, he left the tavern and took lodgings at the Ensign's. He soon saw how matters stood in the family, and governed himself accordingly, taking special pains to conciliate the ruling authority. The Ensign's wife hated young Barnet, and wished to get rid of her step-daughter. The writing-master, therefore, had a fair field. He flattered the poor young girl by his attentions and praised her beauty. Her moral training had not fitted her to withstand this seductive influence; no mother's love, with its quick, instinctive sense of danger threatening its object, interposed between her and the tempter. Her old friend and playmate—he who could alone have saved her—had been rudely repulsed from the house by her step-mother; and, indignant and disgusted, he had retired from all competition with his formidable rival. Thus abandoned to her own undisciplined imagination, with the inexperience of a child and the passions of a woman, she was deceived by false promises, bewildered, fascinated, and beguiled into sin.
"It is the same old story of woman's confidence and man's duplicity. The rascally writing-master, under pretence of visiting a neighboring town, left his lodgings and never returned. The last I heard of him, he was the tenant of a western penitentiary. Poor Julia, driven in disgrace from her father's house, found a refuge in the humble dwelling of an old woman of no very creditable character. There I was called to visit her; and, although not unused to scenes of suffering and sorrow, I had never before witnessed such an utter abandonment to grief, shame, and remorse. Alas! what sorrow was like unto her sorrow? The birth hour of her infant was also that of its death.