Percy Lee was conquered. Percy—who had withstood blue eyes and black, gray eyes and hazel. Percy—for whom many a fair girl had smiled and pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percy—handsome as Apollo, cold as Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was whispered which made him in lover’s parlance, “the happiest of men.”
Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor’s daughter; of course the lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let them think and say what they pleased.
The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled, or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated the heart’s dew; when we trust with childhood’s sweet faith, because we love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance; when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers. What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How stale its after spiritless effervescences!
Percy’s love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied; true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father’s money could neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait—the only common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers, Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was well pleased with Mary’s projected alliance with Percy.
“Well, to be sure, Lucy, beauty is a great thing for a girl,” he one day said to his wife. “I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing with the goose and shears.”
“Nor I,” replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment, with a satisfied smile; “nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one Saturday night for my week’s work, you said, ‘Lucy, you can be mistress of this shop if you like.’ I was so proud and happy: for, indeed, it was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret I often used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone, as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more, and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with that dreadful cough racking her.”
“Tut—tut—wife,” said Jacob; “she was not much of a seamstress; you always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining story.”
“It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her, and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in the poor’s hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes, Jacob—you won’t be angry with me?” asked the good woman, coaxingly, as she laid her hand upon his arm—“sometimes I’ve thought our money would never do us any good.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife’s hand; “pshaw, Lucy, you are like all other women, weak and superstitious. A man must look out for number one. Small profits a body would make to conduct business on your principles. Grab all you can, keep all you get, is every body’s motto; why should I set up to be wiser than my neighbors?”