“That’s what I call pretty treatment, now,” muttered Miss Snip, as she stopped in the hall, to settle her false curls; “very pretty treatment—for a disinterested act of neighborly kindness. Philanthropy never is rewarded with any thing but cuffs in this world, but I shan’t allow it to discourage me. I know that I have my mission here below, whether I have the praise of men or not. All great reformers are abused—that’s one consolation. I’ll step over to Mrs. Bunce’s now, and see if it is true that her husband takes a drop too much. They do say so, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Lucy,” said Jacob—and the poor old man’s limbs shook beneath him—“this must be the last arrow in the quiver. Nothing can come after this. Let her be, Lucy,”—and he withdrew his wife’s hands, as she bathed Mary’s temples—“let her be: ’tain’t no use to rouse her up to her misery—to kill her by inches this way. I am ready to lie down side of her. Lucy—I couldn’t muster heart to tell you, till a worse blow came, that we are beggars. ’Tain’t no matter now.”
“God be merciful!” said Lucy, overwhelmed with this swift accumulation of trouble.
“Yes, you may well say that. Just enough left to keep us from starving. My heart has been with her, you see,” said Jacob, looking at Mary, “and my head hasn’t been clear about things, as it used to be, and so it has come to this. I wouldn’t mind it, if she only—” and Jacob dropped his head hopelessly upon his breast. Then raising it again, and wiping his eyes, as he looked at Mary, he said: “She never will look more like an angel than she does now. I thought she’d live to close these old eyes, and that my grand-children would play about my knee, but you see how it has gone, Lucy.”
The red flag of the auctioneer, so often the signal of distress, floated before Jacob Ford’s door. Strange feet roved over the old house; strange eyes profaned the household gods. Careless fingers tested the quality of Mary’s harp and guitar; and voices which in sunnier days had echoed through those halls in blandest tones, now fell upon the ear, poisonous with cold malice. When once the pursuit is started, and the game scented, every hound joins in the cry; each fierce paw must have its clutch at the quivering heart, each greedy tongue lap up the ebbing life-blood. Never was beauty’s crown worn more winningly, more unobtrusively, less triumphantly, than by Mary Ford; but to those whom nature had less favored, it was the sin never to be forgiven; and so fair lips hoped the stories were not true about her, while they reiterated them at every street corner; and bosom friends, when inquired of as to their truth, rolled up their eyes, sighed like a pair of bellows, and with a deprecating wave of the hand, replied, in melancholy tones, “don’t ask me,” thus throwing the responsibility upon the listener to construe it into little or much; pantomimic looks and gestures not yet having been pronounced indictable by the statute book; others simply nodded their heads, in a mysterious manner, as if they had it at their charitable option to send the whole family to perdition, with a monosyllable.
CHAPTER VII.
Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow, while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid, except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet, which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower.
Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered “who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily—so white, so bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?”