Still, Lee house was not a hermitage, by any means. More white cravats and black coats passed over “Deacon” Lee’s threshold, than into any hotel in Yankeedom. Little Lucy’s mother, too, was a modern Samaritan, never weary of experimenting on their dyspeptic and bronchial affections; while Lucy herself (bless her kind heart) knew full well that two-thirds of them had large families, empty purses, and more Judases and Paul Prys than “Aarons and Hurs” in their congregations.
Among the habitués of Lee house, none was so acceptable to Lucy’s father as Mr. Ezekiel Clark, a bachelor of fifty, an ex-minister, and now an agent for some “Benevolent Society.” Ezekiel had an immensely solemn face; and behind this convenient mask he was enabled to carry out, undetected, various little plans, ostensibly for the “society’s” benefit, but privately for his own personal aggrandizement. When Ezekiel’s opinion was asked, he crossed his hands and feet, and fastened his eyes upon the wall in an attitude of the deepest abstraction, while his questioner stood on one leg, awaiting, with the most intense anxiety, the decision of such an oracular Solomon. Well, not to weary you, the long and short of it was, that Solomon was a stupid fool, who spent his time trying to humbug the religious public in general, and Deacon Lee in particular, into the belief that had he been consulted before this world was made, he could have suggested great and manifold improvements. As to Deacon Lee, no cat ever tossed a poor mouse more dexterously than he played with the deacon’s free will; all the while very demurely pocketing the spoils in the shape of “donations” to the “society,” with which he appeased his washerwoman and tailor, and transported himself across the country on trips to Newport, Saratoga, &c., &c.
His favourite plan was yet to be carried out: which was no more or less than a modest request for the deacon’s pretty daughter, Lucy, in marriage. Mr. Lee rubbed his chin, and said, “Lucy was nothing but a foolish little girl;” but Ezekiel overruled it, by remarking that that was so much the more reason she should have a husband some years her senior, with some knowledge of the world, qualified to check and advise her; to all of which, after an extra pinch of snuff, and another look into Ezekiel’s oracular face, Deacon Lee assented.
Poor little Lucy! Ezekiel knew very well that her father’s word was law; and when Mr. Lee announced him as her future husband, she knew she was just as much Mrs. Ezekiel Clark as if the bridal ring had been already slipped on her fairy finger. She sighed heavily, to be sure, and patted her little foot nervously, and when she handed him his tea, thought he looked older than ever: while Ezekiel swallowed one cup after another, till his eyes snapped and glowed like a panther’s in ambush. That night poor Lucy pressed her lips to a faded rose, the gift of Harry Graham; then cried herself to sleep.
Unbounded was the indignation of Lucy’s admirers, when the sanctimonious Ezekiel was announced as the expectant bridegroom. Harry Graham took the first steamer for Europe, railing at “woman’s fickleness.” (Consistent Harry! when never a word of love had passed his moustached lip.)
Shall I tell you how Ezekiel was transformed into the most ridiculous of lovers? how his self-conceit translated Lucy’s indifference into maiden coyness? how he looked often in the glass, and thought he was not so very old after all? how he advised Lucy to tuck away all her bright curls, because they “looked so childish?” how he named to her papa an “early marriage day”—not that he felt nervous about losing his prize—oh, no (?)—but because “the society’s business required his undivided attention.”
Well, Lucy, in obedience to her father’s orders, stood up in her snow-white robe, and vowed “to love and cherish” a man just her father’s age, with whom she had not the slightest congeniality of taste or feeling. But papa had said it was an excellent match, and Lucy never gainsaid papa; still her long lashes drooped heavily over her blue eyes, and her hand trembled, and her cheek grew deadly pale, as Ezekiel handed her to the carriage that whirled them rapidly away.
Shall I tell you how long months and years dragged wearily on? how Lucy saw through her husband’s mask of hypocrisy and self-conceit? how to indifference succeeded disgust? how Harry Graham returned from Europe, with a fair young English bride? how Lucy grew nervous and hysterical? how Ezekiel soon wearied of his sick wife, and left her in one of those tombs for the wretched—an insane hospital? and how she wasted, day by day—then died, with only a hired nurse to close those weary blue eyes?
In a quiet corner of the old churchyard, where Lucy sleeps, a silver-haired old man, each night at dew-fall, paces to and fro, with remorseless tread, as if by that weary vigil he would fain atone to the unconscious sleeper for turning her sweet young life to bitterness.