The Mistletoe Bough | Page 6

wife. He says it is my fault. I, at any rate, have never
told him that I thought it his." From all which it will be seen that the
confidence between the mother and daughter was very close.
Elizabeth Garrow was a very good girl, but it might almost be a
question whether she was not too good. She had learned, or thought
that she had learned, that most girls are vapid, silly, and useless,--given
chiefly to pleasure-seeking and a hankering after lovers; and she had
resolved that she would not be such a one.
Industry, self-denial, and a religious purpose in life, were the tasks
which she set herself; and she went about the performance of them with
much courage. But such tasks, though they are excellently well adapted
to fit a young lady for the work of living, may also be carried too far,
and thus have the effect of unfitting her for that work. When Elizabeth
Garrow made up her mind that the finding of a husband was not the
only purpose of life, she did very well. It is very well that a young lady
should feel herself capable of going through the world happily without
one. But in teaching herself this she also taught herself to think that
there was a certain merit in refusing herself the natural delight of a
lover, even though the possession of the lover were compatible with all

her duties to herself, her father and mother, and the world at large. It
was not that she had determined to have no lover. She made no such
resolve, and when the proper lover came he was admitted to her heart.
But she declared to herself unconsciously that she must put a guard
upon herself, lest she should be betrayed into weakness by her own
happiness. She had resolved that in loving her lord she would not
worship him, and that in giving her heart she would only so give it as it
should be given to a human creature like herself. She had acted on
these high resolves, and hence it had come to pass,--not
unnaturally,--that Mr. Godfrey Holmes had told her that it was "her
fault."
She was a pretty, fair girl, with soft dark-brown hair, and soft long dark
eyelashes. Her grey eyes, though quiet in their tone, were tender and
lustrous. Her face was oval, and the lines of her cheek and chin perfect
in their symmetry. She was generally quiet in her demeanour, but when
moved she could rouse herself to great energy, and speak with feeling
and almost with fire. Her fault was a reverence for martyrdom in
general, and a feeling, of which she was unconscious, that it became a
young woman to be unhappy in secret;--that it became a young woman,
I might rather say, to have a source of unhappiness hidden from the
world in general, and endured without any detriment to her outward
cheerfulness. We know the story of the Spartan boy who held the fox
under his tunic. The fox was biting into him,--into the very entrails; but
the young hero spake never a word. Now Bessy Garrow was inclined to
think that it was a good thing to have a fox always biting, so that the
torment caused no ruffling to her outward smiles. Now at this moment
the fox within her bosom was biting her sore enough, but she bore it
without flinching.
"If you would rather that he should not come I will have it arranged,"
her mother had said to her.
"Not for worlds," she had answered. "I should never think well of
myself again."
Her mother had changed her own mind more than once as to the
conduct in this matter which might be best for her to follow, thinking
solely of her daughter's welfare. "If he comes they will be reconciled,
and she will be happy," had been her first idea. But then there was a
stern fixedness of purpose in Bessy's words when she spoke of Mr.

Holmes, which had expelled this hope, and Mrs. Garrow had for a
while thought it better that the young man should not come. But Bessy
would not permit this. It would vex her father, put out of course the
arrangements of other people, and display weakness on her own part.
He should come, and she would endure without flinching while the fox
gnawed at her.
That battle of the mistletoe had been fought on the morning before
Christmas-day, and the Holmeses came on Christmas-eve. Isabella was
comparatively a stranger, and therefore received at first the greater
share of attention. She and Elizabeth had once seen each other, and for
the last year or two had corresponded, but personally they had never
been intimate. Unfortunately for the latter, that story