The old man paused a little here. Mrs. Chetwood kissed him softly upon the cheek.
“My second wife,” he resumed, “was not so young, and certainly had not the outward graces of my first. She was beautiful, too, in the flower as Kate was in the bud; her face had not the vivacity, nor her eyes the dancing light of Katie’s, but there sat such a serenity upon her features, as we sometimes see upon a lovely landscape when the sun is near its setting; a look which no man ever tires of; and Mary bore me children, and then, much as I had loved the sapling, it seemed to me that the full-fruited tree was dearer yet. She was no country girl from the Devon dales, but a town lady, bred. I had a great house by that time, with all things fitting about me, and my sphere was hers. The pearls suited her pleasant brow, and crowned her still raven tresses as becomingly as the single rose in her hair had adorned simple Kate. I think, if I may say so without ingratitude for my present great happiness, and with the leave of my dear Charlotte, that the happiest hours of my life were spent during those days, when our two children’s voices rang cheerily over the house, and some little scheme of pleasure for them was my everyday desire and Mary’s. Even at the terrible time when boy and girl were being taken from us at once, never did their patient mother seem more dear to me; from when the hush of sickness stole upon us at first, to the day when that white procession left our doors, what a healing spirit was she! When we thought that the thickly folded veil of sorrow had fallen over us for ever, how tenderly she put it aside!
“It must needs have happened that my speech has here been melancholy, but indeed I should not speak of Mary so. She was the blythest, cheerfullest, most comfortable middle-aged wife that man ever had; behind our very darkest trouble a smile was always lying ready to struggle through it, and what a light it shed! One of your resigned immoveable females, who accept every blessing as a temptation, and submit, with precisely the same feelings to what they call every chastening, would have killed me in a week. George, my Mary acted at all times according to her nature, and that nature was as beautiful and blessed as ever fell to the lot of womankind. You might well think that Kate and Mary were two prizes great enough for one man to draw out of the marriage lottery, and yet I drew another. When I lost my beloved Mary, my third wife took her place in my inmost heart.
“Kiss me, Charlotte,” said the old man, tenderly, and again she kissed him on the cheek. “And now,” continued he, “let us fill our glasses, for the New Year is coming on apace; and please to drink to the memory of my two wives, and to the health of her who is still left to me. The two first toasts must necessarily be somewhat painful to my dear Charlotte, and we will, therefore, receive them in silence, but the third we must drink with all the honours.”
So after those, he stood up, glass in hand; and said to her,
“Kate, Mary, Charlotte,—bride, matron, and dame in one, to whom I have been wedded this half-century,—for I have had no other wife, George,—God bless you, dear old heart! We have had a merry Christmas, as we have ever had, and I trust it may be permitted to us to have, still together, one more happy New Year. Hip! hip! hip! Hurrah!” and the echoes of our three times three seemed cheerily to roam all night about Tremadyn House.
Now ready, Price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth boards,
THE TWELFTH VOLUME
OF