Vesta

“ What matter that the thought of Vesta stabbed him nigh to madness when he looked on hearth-fires that could never blaze for him? With courage almost more than human he put that fond ambition out of mind as if it were another sword he'd learned to sheathe. At first it would not stay in hiding, but flew the scabbard of his will to thrust him sore as often as he put it from him. ”

“ Ah, my child, happiness is like the bow across the wide Campagna. You see its many-coloured arch and hasten to reach it, and, lo! it is gone; the nearer you think you get to it, the further it seems. But the gods are kind to us poor mortals, and our goddess Vesta does not forget us. You are but a child, a young child,” Lucia said, surveying Hyacintha as she stood up before her in a loose underrobe, with all her marvellously lovely hair gone, and the little slender figure, beautifully formed, giving the appearance of extreme youth. ”

“ I was something before I was a Custis. I am a woman, too."
Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother's side and kissed her.
"Don't, don't, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that again. You, who have been so brave and patient longer than I have lived!"
"Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to bear poverty as we." ”

“ Vesta said, though she immediately regretted it.
"Yes," Milburn uttered stubbornly, after a pause. "I have met the house of Custis half-way. I am coming out of the woods as they are going in, unless the sacrifice be mutual."
"Let us not be personal," Vesta pleaded, with her grace of sorrow; "I feel that you are a kind man, at least to me, but a poor girl must make a struggle for herself." ”

“ It was a diverting fancy as he lay there in the darkening room, Vesta coming down the years a strong, handsome, proud figure in the foreground, that man just far enough behind her to give the impression as he passed that he belonged to her entourage, but never quite overtaking her. ”

“ Vesta (Ves′ta) , daughter of Saturn and Cybele, was the goddess of the hearth and its fire. She had under her special care and protection a famous statue of Minerva, before which the Vestal Virgins kept a fire or lamp constantly burning.
Vestal Virgins (Ves′tal Vir′gins) were the priestesses of Vesta, whose chief duty was to see that the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta was not extinguished. They were always selected from the best families, and were under a solemn vow of chastity, and compelled to live perfectly pure lives. ”

“ Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty! Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she! She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"
Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling at the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a common bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his wings, and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she could not see.
His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous activity. ”

“ Look upon it, then, as a duty, such as you expect in others—in your slave maid, for instance."
"Alas!" Vesta said, "she may marry freely. I am the slave."
"No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among strangers with your father's effects, will feel so perishing for sympathy and protection that love, in whatever ugly form it comes, will be God's blessing to her poor heart. What you repel in the revulsion of fortune—the yoke of a husband—millions of women have bent to as if it was the very rainbow of promise set in heaven."
"How do you know so much of women's trials, Mr. Milburn? ”

“ Vesta searched her mind, thinking she must alight upon some such example there, but none suited the case. Meshach took advantage of her silence:
"The gifts of a lover are everywhere steps to love, as I have understood. He makes his impression with them; they are expected. Nothing creates happiness like a gift, and it is an old saying that blessings await him who gives, and also her who takes, and that to seek and ask and knock are praiseworthy."
"Oh," said Vesta, "but to be bought, Mr. Milburn? To be weighed against a father's debts—is it not degrading?" ”

“ Some thirty years ago Miss Vesta and her sister Miss Phœbe had decided that fashion was a snare; and since then they had always had their clothes made on the same model, to the despair of Prudence Pardon, the dressmaker.
But when one looked at Vesta Blyth's face, one was not apt to think about her clothes; one rather thought, what a pity one must look away from her presently! At least, that was what Geoffrey Strong used to say, a young man who loved Miss Vesta, and who was now gone away with his young wife, leaving sore hearts behind. ”

“ What will you have? I have growing fame, prosperity, an accomplished society woman for my wife. Was not that what you wished for me?" His words stung.
Vesty had her dim look; she had turned cold; her speech groped pitifully. "But I think I saw—I think I understood a little, after all—because I loved you—what are you doing it for, Notely?"
"Ah, there, indeed!—what for? I have lost my object, you know, Saint Vesta. For fame and frolic and the devil, I suppose—since we are talking face to face with an immortal Basin—and to fill up the time generally." ”

“ Vesta said, "think of Judge Custis! Have you not made home cold to him by this formalism? We must study men, and please them according to their tastes, and therein lies our joy; else we are false to the companionship God gave us to man for. Yield to your husband's boyish-heartedness; fly with him, like the mate by the bird! ”

“ A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, in her brief knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veins and nerves, and she silently remarked,
"How little a young girl knows of men around her—what satyrs are taking her image to their arms! ”

“ Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in her long, slender, worked slippers, whose insteps would spare a mouse darting under.
"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything! But, dear me! he is staring right up at this window. Let us duck!" [Pg 33]
Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her beautiful shoulders only by a spray of lace, pulled her mother down.
"Don't be afraid, dear! he can see nothing but the blinds. Perhaps he is looking for the Judge." ”

“ I speak as Chief Pontifex and as Emperor of Rome. I command you to forget your qualms and to banish your fears. Officially as Chief Pontifex I judge you a ministrant most acceptable to your Goddess, as a most fit and suitable Vestal. I judge that no girl naturally austere, frigid and self-contained could be half so pleasing to Vesta as a tempestuous child like you who curbs her temper and schools her outward behavior all she can in the effort to be all she ought to be; whose feelings even tame themselves without any effort of hers in the holy atmosphere of the Atrium. ”

“ But to wake helpless as well as empty-handed, the strength for ever gone from arms that were invincible; to crawl, a poor crushed worm, the mark for all men's pity, where one had thought to win the meed of all men's praise, ah, then to live is agony! Each breath becomes a venomed adder's sting.
[25]
Most of all Aldebaran thought of Vesta. The stroke that marred his comeliness and took his strength had robbed him of all power to win his happiness. It was written "by the hearth of him who is the bravest she shall keep eternal vigil." ”

“ Last in the order of invocation, even to the latest days of Rome, came Vesta, "the only female deity among the highest gods of the most ancient State,"286 for Juno can hardly be reckoned among them, and Tellus had no special cult or priesthood of her own. We have already noticed Vesta as the religious centre of the house, making it into a home in a sense almost more vivid than that in which we use the sacred word. ”

“ Regarding her a moment with increasing interest, Judge Custis came forward and kissed her forehead.
"Amen, then!" he said. "May you love your husband! I will do all I can to love him, too."
"That is spoken like a true man," Vesta said. "And now, father, good-night! Be ready here for Mr. Milburn's arrival. Ring for a decanter and some cake. It will not hurt you, after your fast, to drink a glass of sherry with the bridegroom." ”

“ To the women is committed the worship of the “blazing hearth,” Vesta, the natural centre of the family life, and it is noticeable that even to Ovid (Fast. vi. 291-92) the conception of Vesta was still material and not anthropomorphic. The Penates (q.v.) were the numina of the store-cupboard, at first vague and animistic, but later on, as the definite deus-notion was developed, identified with certain of the other divinities of household or state religion. ”

“ The gravest function of the Messenger was to conduct the souls of the dead, "that gibber like bats as they fare, down the dank ways, past the streams of Oceanus, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, to the mead of asphodel in the dark realm of Hades, where dwell the souls, the phantoms of men outworn." [37]
37. Vesta (Hestia) , goddess of the hearth, public and private, was the first-born child of Cronus and Rhea and, accordingly, the elder sister of Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, and Ceres. Vesta was an old maid by choice. ”

“ Fabia the Vestal was now about thirty-seven years of age. One and thirty years before had the Pontifex Maximus chosen her out—a little girl—to become the priestess of Vesta, the hearth-goddess, the home-goddess of Pagan Rome. Fabia had dwelt almost all her life in the house of the Vestals. Her very existence had become identified with the little sisterhood, which she and her five associates composed. It was a rather isolated yet singularly pure and peaceful life which she had led. Revolutions might rock the city and Empire; Marians and Sullians contend; Catilina plot ruin and destruction ”

“ Are you one that they make?"
"All people do not regard me with such disfavor." She looked at the girl almost wistfully. "Life is hard, Vesta, and exacting, spite of all that we can do; and the world is hard and exacting, supercilious, ready to pick at a flaw—you do not know."
"Well, I think Notely will be happier here with me." ”

“ Also Vesta herself they have thought to be the highest of the goddesses, because she is the earth; although they have thought that the milder fire of the world, which is used for the ordinary purposes of human life, not the more violent fire, such as belongs to Vulcan, is to be assigned to her. ”

“ Brinnaria called imperiously to her lictor to interfere. He was too far ahead to hear her. Her coachman had all he could do to control her mettlesome span of Spanish mares. She spoke to the boys and they laughed at her. Before she knew it she had flung open her carriage door, had leapt out, had cuffed soundly the ears of the three dumbfounded gamins, and was back among her cushions, the dog in her arms.
This escapade brought upon her a visit from the Pontifex of Vesta, the semi-globular Faltonius Bambilio, diffusing pomposity. ”

“ If I go down and see her it will provoke endless comment and wonder among those people. I never visit them. There is no other way. Notely takes the Langhams for the day in his boat to-morrow. I will be driven to the Basin. I will ask Vesta indifferently, by the way, to go with me in those woods where I played in childhood, too timid now to walk there alone. They will say, as well as they can express it, that sentiment must be getting fashionable! Never mind. I shall see and talk with the girl. We will see."
Mrs. Garrison alighted from her carriage before she reached Vesty's door. ”

“ I don't think it strange, for my part, that Miss Vesta should wish to do as was desired, though very likely her own feelin's may have ben different. She would be a perfect pictur' in a bunnet and veil, though I dono as she could look any prettier than what she did to-day."
"If I could have the dressin' of Vesta Blyth as she should be dressed," said Miss Prudence, solemnly, "there's no one in this village—I'll go further, and say county—that could touch her. She hasn't the style of Phœbe, but—there! there's like a light round her when she moves ”

“ She discerned that his combative spirit would start to the defence of his hat if it should become the subject of family rancor, because no man forgives an insult to his personal appearance; and this article of wear had ringed his brain with gangrene, and war made upon it would be met by war, while Vesta had expected to induce forgetfulness of the rusty old tile, to charm away the remembrance of it, and to have it laid forever aside.
"I am not the daughter of Uncle McLane," Vesta protested. "I am, besides, a woman, free of my minority. Mr. Milburn is hardly the man to submit to any trespass. ”

“ Æneas himself is said to have founded the order of vestal virgins, and to have instituted the rites and services which were committed to their charge. These rites and services were in honor of Vesta, who was the goddess of Home. The fireside has been, in all ages and countries, the center and the symbol of home, and the worship of Vesta consisted, accordingly, of ceremonies designed to dignify and exalt the fireside in the estimation of the [Pg 156] people. ”

“ With regard to statues of the goddess, though the Greek Hestia was frequently represented in plastic art, yet among the Romans Vesta appears to have been rarely so treated. The Athenian prytaneum contained a statue of Hestia. But there was no effigy in the Roman temple of Vesta, although one is commonly shown on reverses of coins which have a representation of the temple, and it appears to have been commonly thought in Rome that a statue of Vesta did exist inside her shrine—a mistake which Ovid corrects (Fasti, vi. 297–300) . ”