CHAPTER VII.
Bless the Lord, oh my soul! and all that is within me bless his holy name;
Who forgiveth all thy iniquities and healeth all thy diseases,
Who saveth thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies.
MRS. FISHER.
I must now introduce you to Mrs. Fisher. She is so great a favorite of mine, that before I relate what became of Myra, I must make you acquainted with this lady.
Mrs. Fisher was a respectable gentlewoman like personage of about fifty-four, of a grave, authoritative and somewhat severe aspect; but with the remains of very extraordinary personal beauty which she had once possessed in an eminent degree. She was somewhat above the middle size, of an erect, firm, full figure, her hair now gently turning gray, drawn over her finely proportioned forehead; her eyes large, and of a fine color and form—clear and steady; her mouth expressive of sense and temper; and her dress in character with the rest. Mrs. Fisher was always handsomely dressed in silks of the best description, but in slight mourning, which she always wore; and on her head, also, a cap rather plainer than the mode, but of the finest and most expensive materials: nothing could be more dignified and complete than her appearance.
When first Myra was introduced to her she was both daunted and disappointed; the gravity, amounting almost to sternness, with which Mrs. Fisher received her, and explained to her the duties she was expected to perform, awed in the first place, and mortified in the second. The establishment of this fashionable modiste, with which Myra had associated nothing but laces and ribbons, dresses and trimmings, embroidery and feathers, flattery and display, struck cold and dull upon her imagination. She was introduced into a handsomely but very plainly furnished sitting-room, where not one trace of any of those pretty things were to be seen, and heard of nothing but regularity of hours, persevering industry, quaker neatness, attention to health, and the strictest observance of the rules of what she thought quite a prudish propriety.
Mrs. Fisher's life had been one of vicissitude, and in its vicissitudes, she, a strong, earnest-minded woman, had learned much. She had known sorrow, privation, cruelly hard labor, and the loneliness of utter desolation of the heart She had, moreover, been extremely beautiful, and she had experienced those innumerable perils to which such a gift exposes an unprotected girl, struggling for her bread, under the cruelest circumstances of oppressive labor. Every description of hardship, and every description of temptation belonging to perhaps the hardest and almost the most dangerous position of female life, Mrs. Fisher had gone through.
She had outlived its sufferings and escaped its snares.
The suffering, thanks to one of the finest constitutions in the world; the snares, thanks to what she always, with inexhaustible gratitude, acknowledged as the special mercy and providence of God.
An orphan at the dangerous age of seventeen, the lovely blooming young creature was placed by her friends in one of the most fashionable and largest milliners' establishments at that time in London, and had found herself at once miserable and excited, oppressed and flattered.
The mistress of this flourishing house, intent upon making a rapid fortune before the years in which she could enjoy it should come to a close, cared little—I might say nothing—for the welfare of the poor creatures whose labors were to construct that edifice. She, in fact, never thought about them. Want of thought may be pleaded as the excuse, wretched one as it is, for the cruelties of those days. People certainly had not the claim of common humanity sounded into their ears as it is into all ears now. A few admirable philanthropists talked of it, and preached it; but it was not to be heard calling in the streets, as it is the triumph of our day to acknowledge, till the hardest heart for very shame is forced to pay some attention to the call.
It never entered into Miss Lavington's head that she had any other business with her young women, but to get all the work she possibly could out of their hands, and as well done, and as speedily done as possible. If she objected to night-work in addition to day-work, it was not in the slightest degree out of compassion for the aching limbs and wearied eyes of the poor girls; but because wax candles were expensive, and tallow ones were apt to drip; and there was always double the duty required from the superintendent (her special favorite), to keep the young women at those times to their duty, and prevent fine materials from being injured.
Oh! those dreadful days and nights of the season, which the poor Lucy Miles at that place went through.
She—accustomed to the sweet fresh air of the country, to the cheerful variety of daily labor in her father's large farm, and under the care of a brisk, clever, but most kind and sensible mother—to be shut up twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nay twenty hours before a birth-night, in the sickening atmosphere of the close work-room. The windows were rarely opened, if ever; for the poor young things were so unnaturally chilly for want of exercise and due circulation of the blood, that they said they should, and perhaps they might, have taken cold if fresh air were admitted. There was nothing they all dreaded so much as taking cold; those fatal coughs, which every season thinned the ranks, to be filled with fresh victims, were invariably attributed to some particular occasion when they had "taken cold." They did not know that they were rejecting the very cordial of life and inhaling poison when they kept the room so close.
Oh! for the dreadful weariness which proceeds from in-action of the limbs! so different from the wholesome fatigue of action, In-action where the blood is stagnating in every vein: in-action, after which rest is not rest, but a painful effort of the repressed currents to recover their circulating power—so different from the delightful sensation of wholesome rest after physical exertion.
At first she felt it almost insupportable. I have heard her say that it seemed at times as if she would have given years of her existence to be allowed to get up and walk up and down the room for a few minutes. The sensation was so insupportable. That craving desire of the body for what it is in want of—be it water, be it bread, be it rest, be it change of posture—is so dreadful in its urgency. The most abominable tortures men have in their wickedness invented are founded upon this fact—tortures that render the black history of inquisitors yet blacker: and here it was, in one at least of its numerous forms, daily inflicted upon a set of helpless young women, by a person who thought herself perfectly justifiable, and whose conscience never pricked her in the least.
Such is negligent moral habit.
Oh! the delight at meal-times—to spring up, I was going to say—I meant to get up—for there was no spring left in these poor stiffened frames. Oh! the delight when the eye of that superintendent was no longer watching the busy circle, and her voice calling to order any one who durst just to raise a head, and pause in the unintermitting toil. Oh! the delight to get up and come to breakfast, or dinner, or tea.
They had not much appetite when they came to their meals to be sure. There was only one thing they were always ready to enjoy, and that was their tea. That blessed and long abused tea; which has done more to sweeten private life with its gentle warmth and excitement, than any cordial that has ever been invented. It is but a cordial, however; it is not a nourishment; though a little sugar, and wretched blue milk, such as London milk used to be, may be added to it. Most of the young ladies, however, preferred it without these additions; they found it more stimulating so, I believe, poor things!
Such nourishment as they received, it is plain, would ill supply the rapid exhaustion of their employment. One by one in the course of the season they sickened and dropped off; some died out and out; some, alas! tempted by suffering and insupportable fatigue, or by that vanity and levity which seems to be too common a result with many girls living together, did worse. There would have been a heavy record against her every June, if Miss Lavington had taken the trouble to note down what had become of her missing young ladies.
I said they were relieved from their irksome continuance in one posture by going to their meals, and what a relief it was; but they did not always get that. When there was more than usual to be done, their tea would be brought to them where they sat, and there would be no intermission.
So things went on at Miss Lavington's in those days. I wonder in how many establishments of the same description, things go on so now! How many to which that voice of humanity which "calls in the streets" has not yet penetrated!
We shall by-and-by see what was the case in Mrs. Fisher's, but for the present we will go on with her history.
So beautiful a young creature as she was, could not long escape trials, yet more to be lamented than those of physical suffering.
In the first place, there was the conversation of the young ladies themselves; a whispering manner of conversation when at work; a busy chattering of emancipated tongues during the intervals. And what was it all about?
Why, what was it likely to be about?—love and lovers—beauty and its admirers—dress and its advantages—he and him—and, dear me, weren't you in the Park last Sunday? Where could you be? and did you not see the carriage go by? What had you on? Oh, that pink bonnet. I cribbed a bit of Mrs. M——'s blond for a voilette. If people will send their own materials they deserve as much. I've heard Mrs. Saunders (the superintendent) say so scores of times. Well, well, and I saw it, I'm certain of it. Well, did any thing come of it?
Alas! alas! and so on—and so on—and so on.
And Lucy was very soon taught to go on Sundays into the Park. At first, poor girl, merely to breathe the fresh air and inhale the delicious west wind, and look at trees and grass, and cows and deer once more, and listen to the birds singing. At first she thought the crowds of gayly dressed people quite spoiled the pleasure of the walk, and tried to coax her companions to leave the ring, and come and walk in the wood with her; but she soon learned better, and was rapidly becoming as bewitched with the excitement of gazing, and the still greater excitement of being gazed at, as any of them.
She was so uncommonly beautiful that she got her full—and more than her full share of this latter pleasure; and it was not long before she had those for whom she looked out amid the crowds upon the ring, and felt her heart beat with secret delight as she saw them.
Then, as her health began to decline, as dislike insupportable for her occupation and its confinement; as weariness not to be described, came on; as longings for little luxuries to be seen in every shop which she passed by, for fruit or confectionary, haunted her palled and diseased appetite as the vision of food haunts the wretch who is starving; as the desire of fine clothes, in which her companions managed to array themselves; as the more insidious, and more honorable longings of the heart, the desolate heart, beset her—cravings for affection and sympathy; when all these temptations were embodied together in the shape of one, but too gentle, and insinuating; oh, then it was perilous work indeed!
Her mother had tried to give her a good, honest, homely education; had made such a Christian of her, as going to church, reading a chapter in the Bible on a Sunday, and the catechism makes of a young girl. There was nothing very vital, or earnest about it; but such as it was, it was honest, and Lucy feared her God and reverenced her Saviour. Such sentiments were something of a defense, but it is to be feared that they were not firmly enough rooted in the character to have long resisted the force of overwhelming temptation.
This she was well aware of, and acknowledged to herself; and hence her deep, pervading, ineffable gratitude, for the Providence which she believed had saved her.
She was getting on very fast on the evil road upon which she had entered. Every Sunday the progress she made was fearful. A few more, at the pace at which she was advancing, and there would have been an end of it, when a most unexpected accident arrested her in the fatal career.
One remarkably fine Sunday, when all the members of the establishment had been enjoying their usual recreation in the Park—just as Lucy and some of her giddy friends were coming through Grosvenor Gate, they saw the superintendent before them.
"There's that old Saunders, I declare!" cried one. "Stand back a little, won't ye?—she'll see our bonnets else, and I'll be bound she'll know the rosettes, and where they come from."
There was time for no more. Mrs. Saunders, who was rather late, being in haste to get home, attempted to cross, as a curricle at full speed came driving down Parklane, and before the gentleman within could draw up, the unfortunate woman was under the horses' heels. There was a terrible bustle. The young ladies with the rosettes managed to escape; but Lucy, who had at least preserved her integrity thus far, and had nothing about her dress not strictly her own, rushed forward, and helped to raise the poor woman, declaring she knew who she was, and was placed with her by the assistants in the hackney coach in which she was carried home.
Lucy was naturally of a very kind and humane disposition; and her care of the poor suffering woman during the transit to Miss Lavington's—united to the kindness and assiduity with which, every one else but the under-maid of all being absent, she tended and waited upon her—so engaged Mrs. Saunders's affection, that afterward, during the whole of the subsequent illness, which broken limbs and ribs occasioned she made it her particular request to Miss Lavington that Lucy might be spared from the work-room to nurse and keep her company; adding for that lady's satisfaction, that though the best nurse, and nicest young girl of the lot, she certainly, being the youngest, was the least of a proficient in the peculiar art she followed.
The poor woman lay groaning piteously upon her bed, waiting the arrival of the surgeon. The surgeon, an elderly man, was out of town, and could not attend; a young man, appeared in his place. He had just joined himself to the old man in the quality of assistant and future partner; and hearing that the case, was one of an accident, and urgent, he hurried to the house, resolving to send for more experienced assistance, if such should be found necessary.
He was shown up-stairs, and hastily entered the room in which the sufferer lay. She was very much bruised about the chest, and she drew her breath with difficulty; and though exceedingly weak and faint, was unable to lie down. She was resting in the arms of one who appeared to the young man like an angel.
The lovely girl, with a face of the tenderest pity, was holding the poor groaning woman upon one arm, bending over her with an air of almost divine kindness, and softly wiping the dew-drops which in the agony came starting upon the patient's brow.
The young man received an impression which death alone effaced, though the bright visionary glance was only momentary. He was instantly by the side of his patient, and soon with much skill and courage doing what was necessary for immediate relief, though at the very first moment when he had discovered the serious nature of the case, he had begged the young lady to tell Miss Lavington that it would be proper to send for some surgeon of more experience and eminence than himself to take the direction of it.
"Don't go away," said Mrs. Saunders feebly, as Lucy was rising to obey. "Don't send her away, mister—I can't do without her—Miss Lavington's not at home—one need not ask her for me. Who should be sent for?"
The young man named a gentleman high in his profession. Was it that able and benevolent man whom the world has so lately lost? That kind, frank, manly, courageous man of genius, whom no one approached but to find help and comfort? I don't know—but be he who he might, when he did at length arrive, he gave the most unqualified praise to the proceedings of our young gentleman, and called the color to the pale cheek of the young and serious-looking student by his approbation. He finished his visit by assuring Mrs. Saunders that she could not be in safer hands than those in which he had found her, and recommended her to put herself entirely under the charge of the young practitioner, adding an assurance that he would be ready at any instant to come if he should be wanted; and that he would, at all events, and in once or twice as a friend during the progress of the case.
Mrs. Saunders liked the looks of the young man much—and who did not? and was quite contented with this arrangement, to which as I told you, was added the comfort of retaining Lucy Miles as her nurse and companion during what threatened to be a very tedious confinement. Miss Lavington well knew the value of a Mrs. Saunders in such an establishment as hers, and was willing to make any sacrifice to forward her recovery.
So Lucy left the wearying work-room and the dangerous recreations of the Sunday, to sit and watch by the bed-side of a peevish, uncomfortable sort of an old woman, who was perpetually making demands upon her patience and good-nature, but who really suffered so greatly from her accident, that Lucy's pity and kindness were proof against every thing. The young surgeon went and came—went and came—and every time he came, this angel of beauty and goodness was ministering by the old woman's bed. And those eyes of his—eyes of such prevailing power in their almost enthusiastic expression of serious earnestness—were bent upon her; and sometimes her eyes, soft and melting as those of the dove, or bright and lustrous as twin stars, met his.
He could not but linger in the sick woman's room a little longer than was necessary, and the sick woman unwittingly favored this, for she took a great liking to him, and nothing seemed to refresh and amuse her amid her pains like a little chat with this nice young man. And then the young surgeon remarked that at such times Lucy was allowed to sit quietly down and amuse herself with a little needlework, and he thought this an excellent reason for making his visits as as long as he decently could.
The young nurse and the young doctor all this while had conversed very little with each other; but she listened and she gazed, and that was quite enough. The case proved a very serious one. Poor Mrs. Saunders, superintendent as she was, and not workwoman-driver, not slave—yet could no more than the rest escape the deleterious effects of the close work room. Her constitution was much impaired. The wines and cordials she had accustomed herself to take to support nature, as she thought, under these fatigues, had increased the mischief the wounds would not heal as they ought; contusions would not disperse; the internal injury in the chest began to assume a very threatening appearance. Mr. L. came to the assistance of the young surgeon repeatedly—all that human skill could do was done, but Mrs. Saunders grew alarmingly worse.
For a long time she resisted the evidence which her own sensations might have afforded her and avoided asking any questions which might enlighten her. She was determined not to die, and, even in a case so awfully serious and real as this, people seem to cling to the persuasion so prevailing in lighter circumstances, that because a thing shan't be, it won't be, and because they are determined it is not, it is not. So, for many days, Mrs. Saunders went on, exceedingly angry if every body did not say she was getting better, and half inclined to dismiss her young surgeon, much as she liked him, because he looked grave after he had visited her injuries.
He did look grave, very grave. He was exceedingly perplexed in his mind as to what he ought to do: young surgeon as he was, fresh from those schools which, alas! so many who are acquainted with them represent as the very nurseries of infidelity and license both in speech and action, he was a deeply, seriously pious man. Such young men there are, who, like those three, walking unscathed through the furnace of fire in the faith of the Lord their God, walk through a more terribly destructive furnace—the furnace of temptation—in the same faith, and "upon their bodies the fire hath no power, neither is a hair of the head singed."
In what tears, in what prayers, in what anguished hope, what fervent aspiration, this sole treasure of a widowed mother, steeped in poverty to the very lips, had been reared, it would be long to tell; but she had committed him to one never found faithless, and under that blessing she had found in her pure and disinterested love for the being intrusted to her charge, that which had given her an eloquence, and a power, and a strength, which had told upon the boy.
He proved one of those rare creatures who pass through every stage of existence, as child, as schoolboy, as youth; through nursery, school, college, marked as some bright peculiar being—peculiar only in this one thing, sincere unaffected goodness. His religion had been, indeed, with him a thing little professed, and rarely talked about, but it had been a holy panoply about his heart—a bright shield, which had quenched all the darts of evil: it shone around him like something of the radiance from a higher world. There was a sort of a glory round the young saint's head.
Such being the man, you will not be surprised to hear that his practice called forth most serious reflections—most melancholy and sad thoughts—and in no sick room where he had ever attended more than in the present one.
He could not frequent the house as much as his attendance rendered necessary without being pretty well aware of the spirit of the place; and while he grieved over the ruinous waste of health to which these young creatures were exposed, he was struck to the heart with horror at the idea of their moral ruin.
Mrs. Saunders talked openly and unreservedly, and betrayed the state of mind she was in: so completely, so entirely devoted to, wrapt up in, buried fathoms and fathoms deep in the things of this world: so totally lost to—so entirely to seek in every thing connected with another: that the large, mournful, serious eye, as it turned to the sweet young creature sitting beside her, and passing her daily life in an element such as this, gazed with an expression of sad and tender pity such as the minister of heaven might cast upon a perishing soul.
She did not quite understand all this. Those looks of interest, so inexpressibly sweet to her, she thought were excited by the view of her position as affected her health and comfort. She thought it was that consumption which, sooner or later, she believed must be her fate, which he was anticipating with so much compassion. She was blind to the far more dreadful dangers which surrounded her.
Poor Mrs. Saunders! At last it could no longer be concealed from her. She must die.
He broke the intelligence to her in the gentlest terms, as she, at last, in a paroxysm of terror, asked the question; giving her what hope he could, but still not denying that she stood in a fearful strait. It was a terrible scene that followed. Such a frightful agitation and hurry to accomplish in a few counted hours what ought to have been the business of a life. Such calling for psalms and prayers; such piteous beseechings for help; and, last of all, such an awful awakening of a slumbering conscience.
Like Richard's bed, on the eve of Bosworth fight, it seemed as if the spectral shadows of all those she had injured in the body or the soul, by her unerring demands upon one, and her negligence as to the other, rose a host of dismal spectres round. Their pale, exhausted, pleading looks, as she scolded and threatened, when the clock struck one, and the task was yet undone, and the head for a moment dropped, and the throbbing fingers were still. Those hollow coughs in which she would not believe—those hectic flushes that she would not see—and worse, those walks, those letters, at which she had connived, because the girls did so much better when they had some nonsense to amuse them.
What fearful revelations were made as she raved aloud, or sank into a drowsy, dreary delirium The old clergyman, who attended her, consoled, and reasoned, and prayed in vain. The two young people—that lovely girl, and that feeling, interesting, young man—stood by the bed appalled: he, ghastly pale—pale with an agony of despairing pity—she, trembling in every limb.
The death agony, and then that poor woman went to her account. There was no one in the room but themselves; it was late in the night, the morning, indeed, began faintly to dawn. The maids were all gone to bed, glad enough to escape the scene. He stood silently watching the departing breath. It stopped. He gave a deep sigh, and, stooping down, piously closed the eyes. She had turned away in horror and in dread, but shedding some natural tears. He stood looking at her some time, as there she stood, weeping by the bed; at last he spoke.
"This may seem a strange time to choose, but I have something to say to you. Will you listen to me?"
She took her handkerchief from her eyes, and gazed at him with a wondering, grave sort of look, as a child might do. His voice had something so very remarkable in it.
He passed to the side where she was standing, and said, "I am a very, very poor man, and I have a helpless mother entirely dependent upon me for support, and, if it were my last morsel of bread, ay, and wife and children were perishing for want of it, it is she who should have it."
She only looked at him wondering like.
"This is a fearful precipice upon which you stand. That poor creature has sunk into the gulf which yawns beneath your feet. May God, in his mercy, look upon her! But you, beautiful as one of heaven's angels—as yet pure and sinless as a child—must you fall, sink, perish, in this mass of loathsome corruption? Better starve, better die—far, far better."
"Alas, alas!" she cried, with a scared and terrified look, "Alas! alas! ten hundred thousand times better. Oh, what must I do? what must I do?"
"Take up your cross: venture upon the hardships of a poor man's wife. Discard all the prides, and pomps, and vanities—the vain, vain delusions of flattery: trample upon the sin, triumph over the temptation. Put yourself under the protection of an honest man, who loves you from his soul. Starve, if it must be, but die the death of the righteous and pure."
She gazed at him, amazed; she did not yet understand him.
"Marry me. Come to my blessed, my excellent mother's roof. It is homely, but it is honest; and let us labor and suffer together, if need be. It is all I can offer you, but it will save you."
The arms, the beautiful arms were expanded, as it were, in a very agony of joy. The face! oh, was it not glorious in its beauty then! Did he ever forget it?
And so the contract was sealed, and so she was rescued from the pit of destruction into which she was rapidly sinking.
And this it was that had excited such impassioned, such lasting, such devoted feelings of gratitude to Him who rules the course of this world, in a heart which had only to be shown what was good to embrace it.
Fisher was all he had said; extremely poor. His salary, as assistant, was handsome, nevertheless. He received one hundred a year and his board from the gentleman with whom he was; but his dress, which was necessarily rather expensive, and his mother, who had only an annuity of twelve pounds a year, consumed it all. Still you see he was by no means actually starving; and he thought the young wife he was going to bring home would be no very great addition to his expenses, and he trusted, if children came, that he should, by his exertions, be able to provide for them. In two years his engagement with the present gentleman as his assistant would be at an end; and he had received from the old man, who was a sort of humorist in his way, several very strong hints about partnership, if he would be satisfied with a reasonable share. Partnership would, in the course of time, he knew, become sole proprietorship, at the death or retirement of his aged patron—one of which events could not be very far distant.
It was, therefore, with great satisfaction, after having summoned the necessary attendance, and sent his young betrothed to rest, that Fisher walked home on a fine fresh morning.
It was true he had taken a step most people would call very imprudent, thus to encumber himself with a young wife at the very outset of his career; certainly, he had never intended any such thing. He had always resolved to be patient, and have a little store of money by him, before he persuaded any one to begin the world with him. He could not bear the idea of all being dependent upon his own life, and risking the chance of leaving a widow and a young family destitute. But this was an exceptional case, for he could not, without trembling, contemplate the dangers which surrounded this young and innocent girl. His medical knowledge taught him but too well the perils to the health of one so fresh and blooming, from labors in close rooms to which she was so little accustomed—death stared her in the face, unless she escaped it by means at which he shuddered to think.
The only way in which he, young as he was, could possibly help her, was to withdraw her from the dangerous scene and make her his wife; and on that step he had been for some days resolving. The emotion she had shown, the timorous joy, the sweet confidence in his love and honor, had given a rapturous feeling of happiness to him quite new. He had intended benevolently and kindly; he had met with all the blessings of sincere attachment.
Instead of walking to Mrs. Stedman's to take some rest, which he very much needed, he went to his mother's house, or rather the house where he had taken a snug little apartment for his mother.
It lay somewhere out Brompton way; in which district neat rows of small houses are to be found looking backward upon pleasant greens and gardens. There he had found a modest little suite of apartments; one sitting-room and two bedrooms—a room for his mother and another sometimes occupied by himself.
The little hut, a tiny place it was, was clean to the greatest nicety, and though fitted up in the very simplest and cheapest manner, had an air of perfect comfort. The walls were stained green, the drugget upon the floor was pink and fawn; the chairs were covered with what used to be called Manchester stripe—very clean and pleasant-looking, and excellent for wash and wear. There was a pretty little table for tea and dinner, and a nice, round three-clawed one close by the mother's side—who was established in the only article of luxury in the room, a very comfortable arm-chair. There the old lady passed her life.
She had lost the use of her lower limbs for some years; but her health of body and mind in other respects was sound. The only thing for which the son had as yet coveted a little more money, had been that he might possess the means to give his mother the enjoyment of exercise and air; and when he passed young men, the very pictures of health and strength, lounging idly in their carriages, as one sometimes does in the Park, though not given to such nonsense, he could not help uttering a secret exclamation against the inequalities of fortune, and thinking the blindness of the goddess of the wheel no fable.
They were but passing thoughts these, such as the best have when they languish for the means of bestowing good.
Such indulgences, however, were rarely to be thought of, though now and then he managed to obtain them; but as the best compensation he could make, he paid a few guineas a year more for this pretty apartment, of which the back room, elongated into a little bow-window, formed the sitting-room—what would have been the front sitting-room being divided into the two bedrooms. This pleasant bow-window looked over a row of gardens belonging to the neighboring houses, and these to a considerable tract of nursery-ground filled with rows of fruit trees, and all the cheerful pleasant objects to be seen in such places. In summer the arm-chair was wheeled to the window, and the whole of the view was disclosed to the old lady; in winter it returned to the fire; but even there she did not lose her pretty view altogether, the room was so little that from her place she might easily command it. Miss Martineau, in a book of hers, has given us a most valuable and interesting account of the way in which, during a tedious and most trying illness, her active spirit confined to one place, she used to amuse herself, and while away the time by looking out of her window through her telescope and watching all that was going on. This old lady did much the same, minus the good telescope, which she had not. Her son, however, had presented her with an old-fashioned opera-glass, which he had picked up at some second-hand retailer or other, and as it was a good one, and, moreover, very light to the hand, it did as well for her and better.
In some things the old lady had a little resemblance to Miss Martineau. She had the same cheerful activity of mind, the same readiness of adapting herself to circumstances—things in a great measure constitutional. She was, moreover, a very shrewd, sensible woman, and deeply pious—pious in the most excellent way: really, vitally, seriously. She came of a good old puritan stock, where piety had been cherished from generation to generation. Some physiologists say, that even the acquired moral qualities and habits descend to the succeeding generation. It is possible an aptness for good or evil may be, and often is, inherited from those who have gone before. It would seem to have been so in this case. The pious father and mother, children of as pious parents, had left this pious daughter—and her excellencies had descended in accumulated measure to her son. This old lay had been sorely tried—death and poverty had done their worst—except in as far as the cruel ravager had spared her this one boy, one of many children, all followed the delicate, consumptive man who had been their father. She had borne it all. Strong in faith, she had surrendered her treasures to the Lord of Life, in trust that they should be found again when he maketh up his jewels. Cheerful as was her temper, life's course had been too rough with her, for her to value it very much, when those lovely, promising buds, but half disclosed, were one after the other gathered. But she had escaped that racking agony of the loving, but too faithless mother—when all the sweets of nature in its abundance flow around her, and they are not there to enjoy.
"When suns shine bright o'er heaven's blue vault serene,
Birds sing in trees, and sweet flowers deck the plain,
Weep I for thee, who in the cold, cold grave
Sleep, and all nature's harmony is vain.
But when dark clouds and threat'ning storms arise,
And doubt and fear my trembling soul invade;
My heart one comfort owns, thou art not here,
Safe slumbering, in the earth's kind bosom laid."
She was happier far than the author of these lines.
She looked upward; she almost saw those she had lost, the objects of a glorious resurrection—already living in the ineffable presence of the God whom they had so faithfully endeavored to serve.
I need not tell you, after this, that her spirits were subdued to a holy calmness and composure.
Her life had been one of the most active endeavors after usefulness. The good she had managed to do can scarcely be calculated. Grains of sand they might be, these hoarded minutes, but it was golden sand; the heap accumulated was large and precious, at the end of sixty-five years.
What money she had possessed she had expended courageously in giving a professional education to her son. Her little annuity of twelve pounds a year was all she had saved for herself. Upon that she believed with her own exertions, she could manage to exist till her son was able to support both; but she had been struck down earlier than she calculated upon. She had at this time lost the use of her lower limbs altogether, and was visited with such trembling in her hands, that she was obliged to close the task abruptly, and to sit down dependent upon her son before she had expected it.
It had been very trying work till he obtained his present situation, and he still felt very poor, because he was resolved every year to lay twenty pounds or so by, that, in case any thing should happen to him, his mother might have some little addition to her means provided. He was rather strangely provident for the case of his own death; so young man as he was; perhaps he felt the faltering spring of life within, which he had inherited from his father.
Three years the mother and son had thus lived together, and Fisher was master of sixty pounds.
He had never allowed himself to cast a thought upon marriage, though of a temper ardently to desire, and rapturously to enjoy, domestic felicity. He said to himself he must first provide for his mother's independence, and then think about his own happiness. But the accident which had brought him and Lucy together had produced other thoughts—thoughts which he had, but the very day before the nursing so suddenly closed, communicated to his mother, and she had said,
"I think you are quite right, John. Imprudent marriages are, in most cases, very wrong things—a mere tempting of Providence: and, that no blessing follows such tempting, we know from the best authority: but this is a most pious, benevolent, and very rational attempt to save a fellow-creature upon the brink of destruction, and I think it would be a want of faith, as well as a want of common humanity, in either of us to hesitate; I am very glad she seems such a sweet, innocent, pretty creature, for your sake, my darling John; I hope she will bring a blessing into your dwelling and repay you for your goodness to me; I am sorry she must come and live with your old mother, for young wives don't like that—but I promise you I will do my very best to be as amiable as an old woman can; and, moreover, I will neither be cross nor disappointed if she is not always as amiable as a young woman ought to be. Will that do? Yes, yes; fetch her away from that sink of iniquity, and we'll all get along somehow or other, never fear."
And so Lucy Miles, blushing like a rose, and, as her young and delighted husband thought, more beauteous than an angel of light, was in a few weeks married to John Fisher, and she went home to the old lady.
"Amid the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth, and there you learnt
From years of quiet industry to love
The living beings of your own fire-side."
The eloquent tongue of Fisher had over and over again related with deep feeling the history of all he owed to his mother, and Lucy, far from feeling inclined to be jealous of the devoted affection he felt for her, like a good loving girl as she was, extended the ardent attachment she felt toward her husband to every thing that belonged to him.
She had lost her own parents, whom she had loved exceedingly, though they were quite ordinary people. She soon almost worshiped old Mrs. Fisher.
Lucy had been little improved by those who had the rearing of her; she was a girl of excellent dispositions, but her education had been commonplace. In the society of the old lady her good gifts, both of head and heart, expanded rapidly. The passionate desire she felt to render herself worthy of her husband, whom she adored almost as some superior being, made her an apt and docile pupil.
A few years thus spent, and you would scarcely have known her again. Her piety was deep, and had become a habit—a part of her very soul; her understanding naturally excellent, had been developed and strengthened; the most earnest desire to perform her part well—to do good and extend virtue and happiness, and to sweeten the lives of all with whom she had to do, had succeeded to thoughtless good nature, and a sort of instinctive kindness. Anxiety for her husband's health, which constantly oppressed her, a sort of trembling fear that she should be bereaved early of this transcendent, being; this it was, perhaps, which enhanced the earnest, serious tone of one so young.
She was extremely industrious, in the hope of adding to her husband's means of rest and recreation, and the accidental acquaintance with a French modiste, who had fallen ill in London, was in great distress, and whom Fisher attended through charity, had put her into the way of improving herself in this art more than she could have done even in that eminent school, the work-room of Miss Lavington. The French-woman was a very amiable, and pious person, too. She was a French Protestant; the connection ripened into friendship, and it ended by placing Mrs. Fisher in the state of life in which we find her. Fisher fell desperately ill in consequence of a fever brought on at a dissection, from which he narrowly escaped with life; the fever left him helpless and incapable of exertion. The poor mother was by this time dead; he succeeded to the vacant arm-chair. Then his wife resolved upon doing that openly which she had till now done covertly, merely working for the bazaars. She persuaded her husband, when a return to his profession appeared hopeless, to let her employ his savings in setting up business with Madame Noel, and from small beginnings had reached that high place in her profession which she now occupied.
No sooner had Mrs. Fisher established a working-room of her own, and engaged several young women to labor under her superintendence, than the attention of her husband was seriously turned to the subject of those evils from which he had rescued his wife.
She had suffered much, and experienced several of the evils consequent upon the manner such places were managed; but she would probably not have reflected upon the causes of these evils, nor interested herself so deeply as she afterward did in applying the remedies, if it had not been for the promptings of this excellent man.
His medical skill made him thoroughly aware of the injurious effect produced upon the health by the ill-regulated system of such establishments; and his thoughts, as he sat resigned to helplessness in his arm-chair, were seriously directed to that subject.
In consequence of his suggestions it was that Mrs. Fisher began her life of business upon a plan of her own, to which she steadily adhered. At first she found considerable difficulty in carrying it out—there are always numerous obstructions to be met with in establishing any improvements; but where the object is rational and benevolent, perseverance and a determined will triumph over every difficulty.
The first thing Fisher insisted upon was ventilation; the second, warmth; the third, plenty of good, wholesome, and palatable food; the fourth, exercise. He determined upon a house being selected which was not closely built up behind, and that the room in which the young ladies worked should be large and commodious in proportion to the inmates. A portion of the little money he had saved was sacrificed to the additional expense thus incurred. He looked upon it, he told his wife, as given to charity, for which she must expect no return, and for which he should look for no interest. A good wide grate, which should be well supplied with a cheerful fire in winter, was to assist the ventilation proceeding from a scientific plan of his own, which kept the room constantly supplied with a change of air; and under the table at which the girls sat at work, there was in winter a sort of long, square, wooden pipe filled with hot water and covered with carpeting, upon which they could put their feet: the extreme coldness of the feet arising from want of circulation, being one of the causes to which Fisher attributed many of the maladies incident to this mode of life.
The next object of attention was the table. Fisher had been at school, at one or two different schools, resembling each other in one thing only—the scandalous—I must use the strong and offensive word—the scandalous neglect or worse than neglect—the infamous and base calculations upon the subject of food which pervaded the system of those schools, and which pervaded, I am sorry to say, so many of the schools with which he had chanced to be acquainted. In the course of his practice as a medical man, his opportunities for observation had been above the common.
In fine ladies' schools, I can not assert that the shameful economy of buying inferior provisions, and the shameful indifference as to how they were cooked, which prevail in so many boys' schools, were to be found—but a fault almost equally great prevailed too generally. There was not enough. These growing girls, stimulated to most unnatural exertions both of body and mind, peculiarly unnatural to growing girls who require so much care, fresh air, exercise, and rest, for their due development—these young things had very rarely nearly so much to eat as they could have eaten.
Sometimes enough was literally not set before them; at others, a sort of fashion in the school to consider a good appetite as a proof of coarseness, greediness, and vulgarity, worked but too effectually upon these sensitive creatures. A girl at that age would rather be starved than ridiculed or sneered at for eating.
But in boys' schools—expensive boys' schools too—where six times as much was paid for a boy's board as would have boarded him—either through scandalous parsimony, or the most inexcusable negligence, he had seen meat brought into the house not fit to eat; cheap and bad in itself, but rendered doubly unwholesome in summer by the most utter carelessness as to whether it was fresh. Boys are hardy things, and it is right they should not be accustomed to be too nice; but wholesome, plain roast and boiled is what they pay for and ought to have; and the defrauding them of what is so necessary to health, vigor, and even intellect, in this unprincipled manner, is almost the very worst form of robbery any man can be guilty of.
Fisher was resolved it should not be so in his wife's house. He and his wife had agreed that the young ladies she employed should be lodged and boarded under her roof, unless they had respectable parents who could and would be fully answerable for them; and they should have a plentiful and a pleasant table—that he was resolved upon. As he was competent to little else, he took this matter upon himself. He calculated what ought fairly to be laid out, and he laid it all out. He would not economize a penny. If he was able to make a good bargain with his butcher, the young ladies, not he, should have the benefit of it all. They should have a bit of fish, or a little poultry, or a little good fruit, poor girls, to vary a meal, to which they could not bring the sturdy appetite of much out-of-door exercise.
Then came the great chapter of that exercise. There was the difficulty—how much time could Mrs. Fisher possibly afford to lose?—to abandon to this object?—for the work must pay—or it could not continue to be done. But the difficulty diminished upon examination. Time may be counted by strength as well as by minutes. The same thing may, by two different hands, be accomplished in most unequal portions of time.
The dreadful feeling of weariness, which, as Lucy, she so well remembered—one consequence of sitting so long in an unchanged position, and at the same employment—that dreadful feeling could not be forgotten by her. Her horror at the recollection was so strong, that of this matter she thought more than even her benevolent husband.
He recollected to have heard that the Jesuits, those masters of human development, physical as well as intellectual, never suffered a pupil to be employed more than two hours upon the same thing without a change—to get up and turn round the chair—to pace five minutes up and down the room would in many cases suffice. Mr. Fisher laid down his plan.
Two hours the young ladies worked, and then for ten minutes they were allowed to lay down their needles; they might walk about the room, into the passage, up and down stairs, or sit still and lounge. That precious, useful lounge, so fatally denied to the wearied spine of many a growing girl, was here permitted. They might look about them, or close their eyes and be stupefied; in short, do just what they liked.
It was soon found by experience that the work done after this refreshing pause more than made up for the time thus expended.
Such were some of the plans of this kind-hearted and highly-principled man—and the blooming looks, the gay spirits, the bright eyes, of the happy little community did credit to the scheme.
Fisher lived but a few years to carry out the rule he had instituted; but to his wife it was as a sacred legacy from his hand, and during the whole course of her subsequent life she faithfully adhered to it.
Her house was like a convent in some things, but it was a very happy convent. Every thing proceeded with a clock-work order, and yet there was a liberty such as few girls thus employed, in spite of their intervals of license, could enjoy.
It was a happy party, over which this remarkably handsome, and now distinguishedly fashionable milliner, and dignified-looking lady presided. Nothing indiscreet or unseemly was ever permitted. The rule, perhaps, might be a little too grave, and the manner of the young ladies too sedate; but they were innocent and good; and they had their recreations, for Mrs. Fisher look them out, turn and turn about, upon a Sunday, in her carriage, and the others walked with the two superintendents—persons carefully selected for their good principles and good conduct.
Mrs. Fisher, too, was a little bit of a match-maker; and if she had a weakness, it was her fondness for settling her young ladies. Nothing pleased her better than when they were sought—and they were such nice, well-behaved girls, this often happened—by worthy young men in their own rank of life. Mrs. Fisher always gave the wedding-gown and bonnet, and the wedding dinner, and a white satin reticule or bag, drawn with rose-colored ribbons, with a pretty pink and white purse in it, with silver tassels and rings, and containing a nice little sum for the bride's pocket-money. You will easily understand how Mrs. Danvers had struck up quite a friendship with Mrs. Fisher. Once, indeed, in her days of youth and gayety, she had been one of her most valuable customers. She had long done with fine things, but the interest she took in the affairs of Mrs. Fisher's establishment had endeared her very much to that good lady, and hence she had, at her earnest request, consented to take Myra, though her own instinct, the moment she cast her eyes upon this beautiful, dawdling-looking being, had assured her that she was, to use her own phrase, not one of her sort.
Myra was grievously disappointed, upon her side. She was quite one to be blind to the solid advantages of her position, and to look with querulous regret upon all the flashy and brilliant part of such a business, in which she was not allowed to take the least share.
Precisely because she was so beautiful did Mrs. Fisher exclude her from the show-room—that theatre which was to have been the scene of her triumphs.
The beautiful things she was employed in manufacturing left her hands to be seen no more—and, alas! never by her to be tried on. It was tantalizing work to part with them, and forever, as soon as they left her hand.
Then she was obliged to be punctual to a moment in her hours; a grievous yoke to her who had never been educated to submit to any. To dress with the most careful attention to neatness, though there was "nothing but a pack of women to look at her"—to listen to "a prosy book"—a book, I forgot to say, was read aloud in the work-room—instead of gossiping and having a little fun; and to walk out on Sundays under the wing of that old, hideous harridan, Mrs. Sterling, instead of going with her companions where she pleased. In short, it was worse "than negro slavery," but there was no help for it—there she was, and there she was obliged to stay.
Well, and did she improve under this good discipline? Was she any the better for it? I am sorry to say very little.
There are subjects that are almost unimprovable. She was, by nature, a poor, shallow, weedy thing; her education had been the worst possible for her. Evil habits, false views, low aims, had been imbibed, and not one fault corrected while young; and self-experience, which rectifies in most so much that is wrong, seemed to do nothing for her. There was no substance to work upon. Mrs. Fisher was soon heartily tired of her, and could have regretted her complaisance to Mrs. Danvers' wishes in receiving her against her judgment; but she was too good to send her away. She laughed, and accepted her as a penance for her sins, she said—as a thorn in the flesh—and she let the thorn rankle there. She remembered her honored Fisher, and the scene by the bed-side of poor Saunders. She looked upon the endurance of this plague as a fresh offering to the adored memory.
She bore this infliction like a martyr for a long time; at last a smart young tailor fell in love with Myra at church—a place where he had been better employed thinking of other things. And so I believe he thought after he had married her, in spite of the white dress and silk bonnet, and the reticule with pink ribbons, and the bride's pocket-money, which Mrs. Fisher bestowed with more pleasure and alacrity than even she had been known to do upon many a worthier subject.