Most people have some redeeming qualities, or quality at least, but no one had yet discovered hers, and no one had been found bold enough to propose to the interesting widow, though she let it be clearly understood that she wished to remain a widow no longer.
Jackey’s father had so often made up his mind to make her an offer that at last his mind became familiarized to the horror, and if not in love with the widow, he was decidedly so with her beer and spirits; so one evening, having screwed up his courage to the highest pitch, he, in a few words, offered himself as a husband.
The widow took but a few minutes to consider, that, though he was a drunken, worthless fellow, he was better than no husband at all; so she did not give him time to draw back, but accepted him with all his faults.
The wedding followed with the least possible loss of time, and the guests drank deeply to the health and happiness of the bride and bridegroom, but the happy husband drank more than any of them. This was a happy beginning; but how short-lived is happiness, for to his this was not only the beginning but also the end.
How changed was everything the very next day! Beer and spirits were carefully locked up, and the poor fiddler was put under the water-cure treatment, and this was the first of a series of strictly sober days. He did not resign himself to petticoat government without a struggle, but in every way she was more than his match.
Adversity is the bitterest of all medicines, but frequently acts most beneficially on the soul, if not on the body. So it proved with the fiddler, for though, during the first few days of his new life, his temper was sourer than ever, by degrees his spirit was broken, and the outbursts of passion became less frequent. Passion was of no avail, for it never gained him his object, and his amiable spouse still remained his better half.
Example had its effect also, for as he daily suffered from his wife’s intolerable temper, her unamiability, which at first roused his anger, now caused disgust and horror, and occasionally he could not help reflecting that in many respects he had been like her. As yet the improvement in his character was involuntary, forced upon him, as it were, and failed to soothe his mind and feelings; but Jackey, being treated with less harshness, began to feel for the first time that he had a father.
The good boy, looking on his father now without fear, saw the dejection he was constantly labouring under, and, as much as he had dreaded and almost abhorred the harsh brutal man, he now pitied his suffering father, so that he took every opportunity to get near to him, sometimes venturing a remark; and one day, when he saw him in a particularly desponding mood, he fetched the violin and played the voices of the forest to him.
Jackey’s father was at first bewildered by the tender emotions to which his heart had so long been a stranger, but as the sweet sounds continued, it seemed as if his nature were changed and a new life dawned upon him. He clasped his son to his breast and burst into tears. When he became a little calm, he said—