“So Miss Ormesby is dead. Well, no one will miss her; these queer people are never of any use in the world.” Such was the cold and sneering comment made by a certain commonplace, precise, pattern woman, upon the sudden death of one whose exaggerated sensibility had been her only fault, and who had expiated her folly by a life of sorrow and seclusion. Such is the judgment of the world: a crime may be forgiven, while a weakness receives no pardon.
Hester Ormesby had been one of those supernumeraries usually found in all large families. She was neither the eldest child, the pride of the household—nor the youngest, usually the pet: she was distinguished neither for great beauty nor precocious talent, and as she had been not only preceded in the world by four promising sisters, but also succeeded by several sturdy brothers, she certainly occupied a very insignificant position. The mother, who had early determined that the beauty of her girls should purchase for them a more elevated station in society, already saw in imagination her blooming roses transplanted to the hotbed of fashionable life, but for this new claimant on her maternal care, this humble little “cinque-foil,” a lowlier destiny must be anticipated. She could devise no better plan, in aid of the child’s future fortunes, than to bestow upon her the name of an eccentric old relative, whose moderate estate was entirely at her own disposal. This was accordingly done, and, notwithstanding the indisputable authority of Shakspeare on the subject of names, it was Hester Ormesby’s name which decided the fate of her future life, since it was the means of placing her under such influences as could not fail to direct the flexile mind of childhood.
Miss Hester Templeton was a maiden lady who had long passed her grand climacteric, and who lived in that close retirement which is so peculiarly favorable to the growth of whims and oddities. At the age of twenty she had been betrothed, but her lover died on the very day fixed for their marriage; and the widowed bride, yielding to the violence of her overwhelming sorrow, determined to abjure the world forever. For years she never quitted the limits of her own apartment, and was generally looked upon as the victim of melancholy madness; until the death of her parents made it necessary for her to take some interest in the affairs of every-day life, when it was discovered that whatever might be her eccentricity, her intellect was perfectly unclouded. Acute and sensible in all worldly matters, quite competent to manage her pecuniary affairs, and gifted with a degree of shrewdness which enabled her to see through the fine-spun webs of cunning and deceit, there was yet one weak point in her character which showed how immedicable had been the early wound of her heart. Her memory of the dead was still religiously cherished, her vow of seclusion still bound her, and thirty years had passed since her foot had crossed the threshold of her own door. Living in a remote country village, which offered no temptation to either the speculator or the manufacturer, time had wrought few changes around her. The old homestead, in which she was born, was the spot in which she meant to die, and she would have thought it sacrilege to change the position of the cumbrous furniture, or even to displace a superannuated article by a more modern invention. Her own apartment was filled with memorials of her lost lover. His picture looked down upon her from the wall, his books lay on her table, and in an antique cabinet were preserved letters, love gifts, withered nosegays and all the melancholy remnants of by-gone affection, which, to the bereaved heart, are but as the dust and ashes of the dead.
To this lonely and isolated being, in whose character romance and morbid sensibility were so singularly combined with worldly prudence and sagacity, the acquisition of a new object of interest, in the person of her little namesake, formed an epoch in life. She was flattered by the compliment, and pleased with the importance which it gave her in her own opinion. She determined to adopt the child, and, as she found no difficulty in obtaining the consent of the parents, she scarcely waited for the lapse of actual infancy ere she look the little girl to her heart and home.
Few children would have been happy in such seclusion as that in which Miss Templeton lived; but Hester Ormesby possessed that quiet, gentle, loving nature which finds sources of content and fountains of affection everywhere. With the quick perception of a sensitive nature, the little girl had early discovered that she was not a favorite at home. She could not complain of unkindness, for Mrs. Ormesby considered herself a most exemplary mother, and prided herself upon the strict performance of every duty. She would not, for the world, have given a cake to one child without furnishing all the others with a similar dainty, but she was quite unaware of the fact that in voice, and look, and manner may be displayed as much of the injustice of favoritism as in the unequal distribution of bounties. There are no beings on earth to whom sympathy is so essential as to children. Those “little people,” as Dr. Johnson calls them, well know the difference between simple indulgence and actual interest in their concerns. The most expensive gifts, the most unlimited indulgence, is of less value to them than an earnest and affectionate attention to their petty interests, and the mother whose influence will linger longest in the minds of her world tried sons is she who has most frequently flung aside her work or her book, to share their infantine sports, or listen to their boyish schemes of happiness. This sympathy was denied to Hester. Her mother was proud of the four beautiful girls, who attracted the notice even of strangers, but the little sickly looking child, whose nervous timidity rendered her almost repulsive, was merely one to be well fed, and clad, and kept from bodily harm. The transition between this indifference and the affection with which Miss Templeton treated her, was delightful to the shy and sensitive child. In her father’s house she was perfectly insignificant, in her new home she was an object of the greatest importance; and though Miss Templeton’s quiet, old-fashioned mode of life offered few attractions to a healthy and spirited child, it was exactly the kind of existence best suited to the taste of a delicate one, like Hester, who possessed a precocity of feeling more dangerous, in all cases, than precocity of mind.
Miss Templeton had some excellent notions respecting education. Implicit obedience, deference, perfect truthfulness and active industry were, in her opinion, essential points; and as these requisites have become so obsolete as to have quite gone into disuse in modern systems of instruction, it may be judged how entirely the old lady had fallen behind the march of intellect. Her affection awakened some of the dormant energy of her character, and she applied herself diligently to the task of training and disciplining the mind of her young charge. In this, as in most other cases, usefulness brought its own blessing along with it, and, as the child increased in knowledge, the heart of the recluse seemed to expand to a wider circle of sympathies. It was, indeed, a pleasant thing to see the frost of so many winters melting away before the sunshine of childish happiness, and it may be questioned whether Miss Templeton or Hester derived the most benefit from this close connection between them.
But character in its earliest development is very chameleon-like, and takes its hue from the objects with which it is brought directly in contact. Miss Templeton educated Hester thoroughly and usefully; she imparted to her a stock of knowledge far beyond that acquired at the most of schools, she imbued her with noble principles and an accurate sense of duty, but she also endowed her, unconsciously and involuntarily it may be, with her own high-toned and romantic sentiments. Indeed, it was impossible for a sensitive child to live within the atmosphere of romance and not imbibe its spirit. The circumstances of Miss Templeton’s life, her unselfish devotion to the memory of the dead, her reverential love for him who had lain so many years within the tomb, her scrupulous adherence to a vow made in the first anguish of a wounded spirit, her quiet sufferance of a blighted heart during a long life, all were calculated to make a deep impression on the mind of a girl whose sensibilities were already morbidly acute. The unlimited range of her reading, too, tended to confirm such impressions. With that respect for every thing which bears the semblance of a printed volume, so characteristic of a bookworm, Miss Templeton had carefully preserved an extensive but very miscellaneous library. The poets and essayists of England’s golden age were ranged side by side with the controversial theologists—sermons were elbowed by cookery books—Sir Charles Grandison was a close neighbor to the grave Sherlock—while Clarissa Harlowe and Pamela were in curious juxtaposition with the excellent Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter. Novels and romances formed no small part of this heterogeneous collection, and Hester, who was a most inveterate reader, devoured every work of fiction which came in her way. To the present generation, who have become fastidious from literary indulgence, and who, since the days of Edgeworth and Scott, ask for vraisemblance in the fiction over which they hang enraptured, the romances of a preceding age seem dull, prosy and unnatural. But at the time of which I speak, the great object of the novelist was to portray heroines, such as never could exist, and events such as never could have happened, while feelings refined to absolute mawkishness, and sentiments sublimated beyond the limits of human understanding, were expressed in parlance to which the language of common life was tame and trite. With such models placed before her in her favorite volumes, and the example of Miss Templeton to impress their truthfulness upon her ductile mind, it is not surprising that Hester Ormesby should have been thoroughly imbued with romance at an age when most girls are only thinking of their dolls.
Hester was in the habit of paying an annual visit to her parents, but seldom derived much pleasure from her short sojourn with the family. Her mother derided her rustic manners, while her sisters ridiculed what they termed her “highflown notions,” and it was rather in obedience to the dictates of duty than in the hope of pleasure that she ever turned her face toward the home of her infancy. On one occasion, however, her visit produced a more lasting impression. Among the gentlemen who surrounded her elder and lovelier sisters was one whose personal appearance was little calculated to prepossess a stranger. Small in stature, and with a slight deformity which destroyed all grace, his countenance full of intelligence, but “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” Edward Legard was not one on whom the eye of woman rests with pleasure. Reserved and almost cold in manners, he mingled rarely in the gayeties of society, and, excepting amid a select circle, seldom displayed the treasures of his gifted mind. Yet those who had once seen him in moments of enthusiasm, when the fire of genius lit up his dark eye, and the honey-dew of eloquence hung on his pale lip, could never forget the effect of his words and looks. But he was excessively sensitive, the merest trifle discomposed him, and there were times when, for days together, his manner was moody, sad, and almost severe. Legard was an artist of no mean skill, but he was young and poor, and the poetic images which filled his imagination, and were depicted on the speaking canvass, or portrayed in the graphic language of eloquence, were unable to secure him the gifts of fortune. The hope of his heart was a visit to the birthplace of Art—the glorious land of shadows—the kingdom of noble memories—even Italy; and for this he toiled day after day as if life had no other object worth attainment.
When she first met Legard, Hester Ormesby had just numbered her fourteenth summer, and the genial influence of renovated health had given beauty to her countenance and symmetry to her form. Struck with the bounding freedom of her step, the grace of her unfettered movements, and the rich bloom of her dark but clear complexion, the young artist had already made several sketches of the unconscious girl before she became sensible of his notice. He regarded her as a lovely child, who stood upon the very threshold of womanhood, while the sentiments which were hereafter to become passions, were slowly budding within her heart, their existence only known by their sweet and delicate perfume of maiden modesty. He was charmed with her freshness of feeling, her enthusiasm, her girlish romance, and found in her artless character a new and delightful study. An intimacy, characterized by all the purest and best impulses of human nature, sprung up between them; yet it was only the familiar intercourse which might safely exist between a gifted man and an admiring child. Legard would have denied the possibility of inspiring a passion in so young a heart, but a very little knowledge of woman’s nature might have led him to doubt the prudence of forcing into premature existence those passions whose slow expansion formed so sweet a subject of contemplation.
Hester returned from this visit almost reluctantly, and, for the first time in her life, her home seemed dull and sad. She carried with her a beautifully finished sketch of herself, painted by Legard, for Miss Templeton, while a few stanzas addressed to her, on parting, by the same gifted individual, and a faded rosebud which he laid once twined in her long curls, were her own solitary treasures.