Boston Neighbours In Town and Out

by Agnes Blake Poor

There was very little opening for Dr. Henry Wilson in his native town; but his mother would have been wretched had he gone anywhere else. He set up an office in her house, and his friends said it was a good thing he had money enough to live on, for really none of them could be expected to call him in. He practised among the poor, who seemed to like him; but of course they could not afford to be particular.

He would be a very good match for Lucy Morton, if not for any girl of his own circle. They lived close by each other and had always been intimate; and she was such a sweet, amiable girl, just the one to put up with Mrs. Wilson's tiresome ways! If her relations were scarcely up to the Wilson claims, at least they were quiet and harmless, and would probably leave her a little money.

With such reasoning did all the neighbouring matrons allay their anxieties as to their favourite's future. Their daughters dissented. The latter had gradually come to perceive that Lucy had no intentions of the kind. Not one of them but thought her justified in looking higher, and not one envious or grudging comment was spoken or even thought when they began to regard her as destined for Eugene Talbot—not even by those, and they were many, who themselves cherished a budding preference for Eugene, a flirt in a harmless, careless way. Everyone allowed that his attentions this time were serious. How naturally, how irresistibly, the pleasing conviction stole upon Lucy's own heart!

Mrs. Wilson, a wife of many years, here sprang to her feet, with her heart beating hard, and her cheeks flushing scarlet with shame. So would they flush on her death-bed, if the remembrance of that time came to disturb her then—the only time when her prudence had for once failed, the only time when she had trusted any one but herself, when she had really, truly, been so sure that Eugene Talbot loved her, that she had let others see she thought so. She had disclaimed, indeed, all knowledge of his devotion, but she had disclaimed it with a blushing cheek and conscious smile, like a little—little—oh, what a little fool!

There was no open wound to her pride to resent. He had never spoken out plainly, and no mere attentions from an emperor would have won a premature response from Miss Morton; nor was it possible for her to betray her preference to anyone else. How she found out, as early and as surely as she did, that his hour for speaking was never to come, was marvellous even to herself; but she was clairvoyant, so to speak, so fully did she extract from those who surrounded her all they knew, and much they did not know. Before Eugene's engagement to Mabel Andrews was a fixed fact, before Mabel herself knew it was to come, she did, and took her measures accordingly.

One terrible, long afternoon she spent in her own room behind closed shutters, seeing even then, in the darkness, Eugene, proud and handsome, breathing words of love in the Andrews's beautiful blossoming garden among all the flowers of May, while a glow of rapturous surprise lighted up Mabel's sweet, impassive face. It might have been some consolation to another girl to know her own superiority, and to feel sure that Eugene was marrying the amiable, refined, utterly commonplace Miss Andrews with the view to the push her highly placed relatives could, and doubtless would, give him in his business; but the knowledge only added a sting to Lucy's sufferings. She bore them silently, tasting their full bitterness, and then left the room, the very little bit of girlishness in her composition gone forever, but still ready to draw from life the gratifications proper to maturer years. She could imagine that revenge might not lose its taste with time, and she had already some faint conception of the form hers might take.

She walked down the lane and far enough along the street to turn about and be overtaken by Dr. Wilson on his way home. Of course he stopped to speak to her, and then walked a little way up the lane with her; and when Miss Morton once had Dr. Wilson all to herself in a cul-de-sac, it was impossible for him to help proposing to her if she were inclined to have him. Indeed, he was much readier at the business than she had expected. In an hour both families knew all about it; and the next day the engagement was "out," to the excitement of their whole world. It was such a romantic affair—childish attachment—Henry Wilson so deeply in love, and so hopeless of success, his feelings accidentally betrayed at last! On these details dilated all Lucy's young friends. They did not think they could ever have loved him themselves, but they admired her for doing so. When, some time after, the grander but less interesting match between the Talbot and Andrews clans was announced, it chiefly roused excitement as having doubtless been the result of pique on Eugene's part—an idea to which his subdued appearance gave some colour; and he was pitied accordingly.

His wedding was a quiet one, overshadowed by the glories of Lucy's. No one would have dreamed of her grandparents doing the thing with such magnificence; but they were so surprised and pleased, for to them the Wilson connection was a lofty one; and Mrs. Wilson was so flatteringly eager and delighted, that Lucy found them pliant to her will. Her grandfather unhesitatingly put at her disposal a larger sum than his yearly expenditure had ever amounted to; and her exquisite taste in using it made her wedding a spectacle to be remembered, and conferring distinction on everyone who assisted in the humblest capacity, while still each one of these had the flattering conviction that without his or her presence the whole thing would have been a failure. The bride of ten years back could not but recall with approval her own demeanour on the occasion, when, "as one in a dream, pale and stately she went," the very personification of feeling too deep to be stirred by the unregarded trifles of her wedding pomp.

The tale of the ensuing years she ran briefly over, for it was one of uncheckered prosperity. Dr. Wilson's reputation had steadily grown. Hardly a year after his marriage he had successfully performed the operation of tracheotomy upon a patient almost in articulo mortis; and although it was only on the ninth child of an Irish labourer, it got into all the newspapers, and ran the rounds of all circles. It was wonderful how such cases came in his way after that, till no one in town dreamed of calling in anyone else for a sore throat; the other physicians being, as Mrs. Henry Wilson was wont to say, "very good general practitioners, but—" At thirty-five he had an established fame as a specialist, with an immense consulting practice extending all over and about Boston, his personal disadvantages forgotten in the prestige of his marvellous skill, indeed, rather enhancing it.

He took his successes very indifferently; but his wife showed a loving pride in them, too simple and too well controlled to excite envy, gently checking his mother's more outspoken exultation, and backing him up in his refusal of all solicitations to move into Boston, well knowing his constitution could never stand a town life. Money was now less of an object to him than ever. Lucy's grandfather had died in peace and honour, leaving a much larger estate than any one had dreamed possible. The lane had been extended into a road, and the cow pasture had been cut up into building lots. All the Morton property had risen in value, and all was one day to be Lucy's; and on the very prettiest spot in it she now lived, in a charming house designed (with her assistance) by her brother-in-law, that rising young architect, Cockburn Wilson, so strikingly original, and so delightfully convenient, that photographs and plans of it were circulated in every direction, bringing the architect more orders than he wanted or needed; for though with not much more to boast of in the way of looks than his brother, he had made another amazing stroke of Wilson luck in marrying that great heiress, Miss Jenny Diman. She was a heavy, shy young person, who had been educated in foreign convents, and had missed her proper duty of marrying a foreign nobleman by being called suddenly home to settle her estate. She had taken a fancy to the clever, amusing Mrs. Wilson, had visited her, and found the little partie carrée at her pretty house delightful, she hardly knew why; but it was evident that her hostess's married life was most successful, and Lucy told her that dear Cockburn had in him the making of as devoted a husband as dear Henry.