HAPPY'S the wooing that’s not long a-doing, and Jabez Tinker, his mind resolved, was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. Martha was not the one to insist on all the formularies of a protracted siege; she surrendered the citadel of her heart at the first blast of trumpet. She only insisted that the wedding should be a quiet one. As this jumped entirely with her lover’s notions she had her own way, though Ephraim protested.
“We don’t kill a pig every day, and blow th’ expense. If aw pay th’ piper surely I ought to chuse th’ tune.”
But he was not suffered to choose the tune, though none questioned that he paid the piper, and paid him handsomely. Exactly how many thousands of pounds made over his humble counter went to swell Mr. Tinker’s balance at the Bank no one but he and his son-in-law and the bankers knew, and is no concern of ours.
Jabez took his bride to London for the honeymoon. The wool-sales were on at the time, so that the manufacturer was able to combine business with pleasure, and to avoid that exclusive devotion to his wife which even more ardent husbands are said to have found somewhat irksome. But he took care that Martha should see some of the sights of London—the Houses of Parliament, the Abbey, St. Paul’s, and the Tower. Theatres were, of course, not to be thought of, but on one never-to-be-forgotten Saturday, the two went up the river to Hampton Court. Then for the first time Martha realized that the world is very beautiful and often amid the bleak hills and stone walls and hideous mills of her mountain home, her thoughts would dwell upon the green fields and rich hedges and rustling, swaying, leafy branches and deep flowing waters of the fair valley of the Thames. The portraits at Hampton Court shocked her, and she hurried through the rooms with crimson face.
But her heart was very light and glad as she entered her own home at Wilberlee. The ancient homestead of the Tinkers was hard by the mill. It was a long two-storied building of rude ashlar, now dark with age. There was a sitting room or company room, low and gloomy even on a bright day, for the windows were overhung by the ivy that covered the house front. The furniture was massive, dark mahogany. There were but few pictures or ornaments in the room, the pictures mostly oil-paintings of dead and gone Tinkers in stiff stocks, precise coats, with thick watch-chains and seals hanging from the fob; the women with smooth plaited hair, long stomachers, and severe looks. By the looking-glass over the mantel-piece were deep-edged mourning cards, in ornate frames, recording the deaths of defunct ancestors, with pious texts and verses expressive of a touching confidence in the departed’s eternal welfare.
The bedrooms of the upper story were furnished in the same enduring fashion, were even gloomier than the dismal sitting room, the vast four-posted mahogany bedsteads with their voluminous drapery casting heavy shadows, and as the narrow windows were never opened, the chamber air, in summer time, was heavy laden with the blended smell of feathers, flocks, and lavender. It is marvellous what a dread our forefathers, who lived so much in the open, had of fresh air and thorough ventilation in the sleeping rooms of their homes.
But, after all, the kitchen or living room was the main thing. A roaring fire in winter time, walls yellow-washed, floor ochred and sanded, dark rafters overhead, flitches, hams, ropes of onions, dried bushes of sage and parsley, burnished tins that caught and reflected rays of fire and gleam of sun, a long table, its top white as soap and scrubbing brush can make the close-grained sycamore, long shelves laden with Delf and ancient crockery—ah! It was a paradise for a good housewife.
And a good housewife Martha proved to be. There was not a cleaner house in all that country side. She had kept on Betty for Dorothy’s sake, and there was besides, Peggy, scullery maid and general help. Betty and Peggy would very much have preferred that their mistress had been neither so keen of eye nor sharp of tongue—for the Mistress who, as callers said, could not say boh to a goose, could talk thirteen to the dozen, so Betty averred, anent a grease spot or an iron-mould.
Martha’s lot, it may be said, if not an ideal, was now a serene one. Had she but had child of her own, she thought no happier woman could have been found in the wide West Riding. But in this Fate was unkind, and the withholding of the crowning blessing of a woman’s life, to hold her own babe to her breast, was all the harsher measure, that Martha knew her husband in his secret heart brooded over their long disappointment and nursed it as a grievance. Poor Martha! How many prayers, how many vows, were thine for this boon so freely granted to your husband’s poorest workman!
It was in vain that Martha tried to stay her heart’s longings by filling a mother’s place to the little niece left by that graceless Richard. All that duty dictated Martha did; did ungrudgingly conscientiously. But there is one thing in this world that is absolutely beyond the human will: it is the human heart. Love knows no reason, and is uninfluenced by the sternest logic. It is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. School herself as Martha would she came, in time, to have a smouldering jealousy of little Dorothy, and the child’s quick perception taught it to shun the eye, and soon the company, of her aunt, and turn for comfort to buxom, homely Betty.