“It’ll be Alice Horton, happen?”
“Nay, it isn’t. It’s his cousin, Bessie Fontaine. She’s but a girl yet, but she’s t’ varry image o’ her mother, just what Elizabeth Hallam was at sixteen—happen only a bit slighter and more delicate-looking.”
“And no wonder, Whaley. To be brought up i’ a place like that New Orleans. Why-a! they do say that t’ winter weather there is like our haymakin’ time! Poor thing! She’ll get a bit o’ color here, I’se warrant.”
The Yorkshire lawyer had seen even into a love affair, with clear eyes. Bessie and Harry had already confided their affection to Elizabeth, but she was quite determined that there should be no engagement until after Harry returned from a three-years’ travel in Europe and Asia.
“Then, Harry,” she said, “you will have seen the women of many lands. And Bessie will also have seen something of the world, and of the society around her. She must choose you from among all others, and not simply because habit and contiguity and family relations have thrown you together.”
Still it pleased her, that from every part of the world came regularly and constantly letters and tokens of Harry’s love for her daughter. She would not force, she would not even desire, such a consummation; but yet, if a true and tried affection should unite the cousins, it would be a wonderful settlement of that succession which had so troubled and perplexed her father, and which at last he had humbly left to the wisdom and direction of a higher Power.
Therefore, when Harry, in his twenty-fourth year, browned and bearded with much travel, came back to New Orleans, to ask the hand of the only woman he had ever loved, Elizabeth was very happy. Her daughter was going back to her old home, going to be the mistress of its fair sunny rooms, and renew in her young life the hopes and memories of a by-gone generation.
And to the happy bridal came John and Phyllis, and all their handsome sons and daughters, and never was there a more sweetly, solemn marriage-feast. For many wise thoughts had come to Elizabeth as her children grew up at her side, and one of them was a conviction that marriage is too sacred a thing to be entered into amid laughter and dancing and thoughtless feasting. “If Jesus was asked to the marriage, as he was in Cana of Galilee, there would be fewer unhappy marriages,” she said. So the young bride was sent away with smiles and kisses and loving joyful wishes, but not in a whirl of dancing and champagne gayety and noisy selfish merriment.
And the years came and went, and none of them were alike. In one, it was the marriage of her eldest son, Richard, to Lulu Millard; in another, the death of a baby girl very dear to her. She had her daily crosses and her daily blessings, and her daily portion of duties. But in the main, it may be said, for Richard and Elizabeth Fontaine, that they had “borne the yoke in their youth,” and learned the great lessons of life, before the days came in which their strength began to fail them.
The last year of any life may generally be taken as the verdict upon that life. Elizabeth’s was a very happy one. She was one of those women on whom time lays a consecrating hand. Her beauty, in one sense, had gone; in another sense, she was fairer than ever. Her noble face had lost its bloom and its fine contour, but her mouth was sweeter and stronger, and her eyes full of the light of a soul standing in the promise of heaven. She had much of her old energy and activity. In the spring of the year she went to Texas to see a son and daughter who had settled there; and, with one of her grandchildren, rode thoughtfully, but not unhappily, over all the pleasant places she had been with Richard that first happy year of their marriage. Richard had been six years dead, but she had never mourned him as those mourn who part hands in mid-life, when the way is still long before the lonely heart. In a short time they would meet again, for