CHAPTER I.
It was a mad freak of dame Nature to fashion Mary Ford after so dainty a model, and then open her blue eyes in a tumble-down house in Peck-lane. But Mary cares little for that. Fortune has given her wheel a whirl since then, and Jacob Ford is now on the top. Mary sees the young and the old, the grave and the gay, the wise and the ignorant, smile on her sweet face; as she passes, men murmur “beautiful,” and women pick flaws in her face and figure. She can not sleep for serenades, and her little room is perfumed, from May to January, with the rarest of hot-house flowers. Lovers, too, come wooing by the score. And yet, Mary is no coquette; no more than the sweet flower, which nods, and sways, and sends forth its perfume for very joy that it blossoms in the bright sunshine, all unconscious how it tempts the passer-by to pluck it for his own wearing. A queenly girl was the tailor’s daughter, with her Juno-like figure, her small, well-shaped head, poised so daintily on the fair white throat; with her large blue eyes, by turns brilliant as the lightning’s flash, then soft as a moonbeam; with her pretty mouth, and the dimple which lay perdu in the corner, with the flossy waves of her dark brown hair; with her soft, white hands, and twinkling little feet; with her winsome smile, and floating grace of motion.
Percy Lee was conquered. Percy—who had withstood blue eyes and black, gray eyes and hazel. Percy—for whom many a fair girl had smiled and pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percy—handsome as Apollo, cold as Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was whispered which made him in lover’s parlance, “the happiest of men.”
Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor’s daughter; of course the lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let them think and say what they pleased.
The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled, or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated the heart’s dew; when we trust with childhood’s sweet faith, because we love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance; when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers. What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How stale its after spiritless effervescences!
Percy’s love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied; true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father’s money could neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait—the only common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers, Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was well pleased with Mary’s projected alliance with Percy.
“Well, to be sure, Lucy, beauty is a great thing for a girl,” he one day said to his wife. “I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing with the goose and shears.”
“Nor I,” replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment, with a satisfied smile; “nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one Saturday night for my week’s work, you said, ‘Lucy, you can be mistress of this shop if you like.’ I was so proud and happy: for, indeed, it was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret I often used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone, as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more, and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with that dreadful cough racking her.”
“Tut—tut—wife,” said Jacob; “she was not much of a seamstress; you always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining story.”
“It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her, and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in the poor’s hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes, Jacob—you won’t be angry with me?” asked the good woman, coaxingly, as she laid her hand upon his arm—“sometimes I’ve thought our money would never do us any good.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife’s hand; “pshaw, Lucy, you are like all other women, weak and superstitious. A man must look out for number one. Small profits a body would make to conduct business on your principles. Grab all you can, keep all you get, is every body’s motto; why should I set up to be wiser than my neighbors?”
Lucy Ford sighed. A wife is very apt to be convinced by her husband’s reasoning, if she loves him; and perhaps Lucy might have been, had she not herself known what it was to sit stitching day after day in her garret, till her young brain reeled, and her heart grew faint and sick, or lain in her little bed, too weary even to sleep, listening to the dull rain as it pattered on the skylight, and wishing she were dead.
A pressure of soft lips upon her forehead, and a merry laugh, musical as the ringing of silver bells, roused Lucy from her reverie.
“Good-by—mother dear,” said Mary; “I could not go to ride with Percy without a kiss from you. Come to the window—look! Are not those pretty horses of Percy’s? They skim the ground like birds! And see what a pretty carriage! Now acknowledge that my lover’s taste is perfect.”
“Yes—when he chose you,” said Jacob, gazing admiringly on Mary’s bright face and graceful form. “You would grace a court, Mary, if you are old Jacob Ford’s daughter.”
Mary threw her arms around the old man’s neck, and kissed his bronze cheek. To her the name of father was another name for love; nurtured in this kindly atmosphere, she could as little comprehend how a child could cease to worship a parent, as she could comprehend how a parent, when his child asked for bread, should mock his misery with a stone. Unspoiled by the world’s flatteries, she had not learned to undervalue her doting father’s love, that it was expressed in ungrammatical phrase; she had not yet learned to blush at any old-fashioned breach of etiquette (on his part), in the presence of her fastidious young friends; and by her marked deference to her parents in their presence, she in a measure exacted the same from them. It was one of the loveliest traits in Mary’s character, and one for which Percy, who appreciated her refinement, loved and respected her the more.
“Have your fortune told, lady?” asked a withered old woman, of Mary, as she tripped down the steps to join Percy.
“Of course,” said the laughing girl: “suppose you tell me whom I am to marry,” with a gay glance at Percy; and she ungloved her small white hand, while the dame’s withered fingers traced its delicate lines.
“Retribution is written here,” said the old woman, solemnly; “your sun will set early, fair girl.”
“Come away, Mary,” said Percy, with a frown, shaking his whip at the woman, “the old thing is becrazed.”
“Time will show,” muttered the beldame, pocketing the coin with which Mary had crossed her hand; “time will show; brighter eyes than yours, fair lady, have wept themselves dim.”
“What can she mean?” said Mary, drawing involuntarily close to the side of her lover. “I almost wish we had not seen her.”
The spirits of youth are elastic. The April cloud soon passed from Mary’s brow, and before the fleet horses had skimmed a mile, her laugh rang out as merrily as ever.
The lovers had both a trained eye for natural beauty, and the lovely road through which they passed, with its brown houses half hidden in foliage—the lazy grazing cattle—the scent of new-mown hay and breath of flowers—the rude song of the plowman and the delicate twitter of the bird—the far-off hills, with their tall trees distinctly defined against the clear blue sky—the silver stream and velvet meadows—the wind’s wild anthem, now swelling as if in full chorus, then soft and sweet as the murmur of a sleeping babe, all filled their hearts with a quiet joy.
“Life is very sweet,” said Mary, turning her lustrous eyes upon her lover. “People say that happiness and prosperity harden the heart; when I am most blest I feel most devotional. In vain might the infidel tell me ‘there is no God,’ with such a scene as this before me, or fetter my grateful heart-pulses as they adored the Giver.”
“You dear little saint,” said Percy, with a light laugh, “how well you preach. Well—my mother was neck-deep in religion; the prayers and hymns she taught me, stay by me now, whether I will or no. I often catch myself saying ‘Now I lay me,’ when I go to bed, from the mere force of habit; but your rosy lips were never made to mumble pater nosters, Mary: leave that to crafty priests, and disappointed nuns. Religion, my pet, is another name for humbug, all the world over; your would-be-saint always cheats in proportion to the length of his face and his prayers. Bah! don’t let us talk of it.”
“Don’t—dear Percy,” said Mary. “I like you less well when you talk so; religion is the only sure basis of character. Every superstructure not built on this foundation—”
“Must topple over, I suppose,” said Percy. “Don’t you believe it, my angel. I am a living example to the contrary; but Cupid knows I would subscribe to any article of faith emanating from your rosy lips;” and Percy drew rein at the door of his father-in-law’s mansion, and leaping out, assisted Mary to alight.
“Such a lovely drive as we have had, dear mother,” said Mary, throwing her hat upon the table. “Percy has just gone off with a client on business; he will be back presently. Dear Percy! he’s just the best fellow in the world—a little lax on religious points, but he loves me well enough to be influenced there. Now I will sit down at this window while I sew, and then I shall see Percy when he comes up the street.”
Nimbly her fingers moved; her merry song keeping time the while. Now a blush flitting over her cheek, then a smile dimpling it. She was thinking of their beautiful home that was to be, and how like a fairy dream her life would pass, with that deep, rich voice lingering ever in her ear; cares, if they came, lightened by each other’s presence, or turned to joys by mutual sympathy. And then, she was so proud of him; A woman’s love is so deepened by that thought.
God pity her, who, with a great soul, indissolubly bound, must walk ever backward with a mantle (alas! all too transparent), to cover her husband’s mental nakedness!