On the child’s misery it would not become us to dwell. There are feelings over which a veil is drawn too sacred to be disturbed by mortal hand. Well might Margaret Douglas exclaim, in the old ballad—
“True lovers I may have many a one,
But a father once slain, I shall never see mair.”
And when a young, affectionate girl is wailing for a parent, the voice of sorrow cannot be hushed, nor the tears dried, till grief has had its course, and time has cured the wounds now so excruciating, which ere long shall be healed over and forgotten. “Cousin Charlie,” boy-like, was more easily consoled; and although at intervals his kind aunt’s voice would seem to sound in his ears, and the sight of her work, her writing, or any other familiar object associated with herself would bring on a fresh accession of grief, yet in the society of Frank Hardingstone, and the anticipation of Uncle Baldwin’s arrival, he found objects to divert his thoughts, and direct them to that brilliant inheritance of the young, the golden future, which never shall arrive. He was, besides, a lad of a sanguine, imaginative disposition, and these are the spirits over which sorrow has least power. The more elastic the spring, the more easily it regains its position; and a sensitive organisation, after the first recoil, will rise uninjured from a shock that prostrates more material souls to the very dust.
Over the rest of the household came the reaction that invariably follows the first sensations of awe inspired by sudden death. There was an excitement not altogether unpleasing in the total derangement of plans, the uncertainty as to the future created amongst the domestics by the departure of their mistress. The butler knew he should have to account for his plate, and was busied with his spoons and his inventory; the footman speculated on the next place he should get, with “a family that spent nine months of the year in London”; the very “boy in buttons” thought more of his promotion than of the kind mistress who had housed, clothed, and fed him when a parish orphan. Gingham herself, that tender damsel, was occupied and excited about Miss Blanche’s mourning, and her own “breadths” of black and “depths” of crape usurped the place of unavailing regrets in a mind not calculated to contain many ideas at a time. Besides, the pleasure of “shopping,” inexplicable as it may appear to man’s perverted taste, is one which ravishes the female mind with an intense delight; and what with tradesmen’s condolences, the interminable fund of gossip created thereby, the comparing of patterns, the injunctions on all sides “not to give way,” and the visits to linen-drapers’ shops, we cannot but confess that Gingham’s spirits were surprisingly buoyant, considering the circumstance under which she swept those costly wares from their tempting counters. Tom Blacke, too, lost no time in assuring her of his sympathy.
“O, Miss Gingham,” said wily Tom, as he insisted on carrying a huge brown-paper parcel home for her, and led the way by a circuitous route along the beach, “O, Miss Gingham, what a shock for your affectionate natur’ and kindly ’eart! Yet sorrow becomes some people,” added Tom, reflectively, and glancing his dark eyes into Gingham’s muddy-looking face, as he offered her an arm.
“Go along with you, Mr. Blacke,” replied the sorrowing damsel, forgetful of her despondency for the moment, which emboldened him to proceed.
“You ought to have a home, Miss Gingham—you ought to have some one to attach yourself to—you that attaches everybody” (he ventured a squeeze, and the maiden did not withdraw the brown thread glove which rested on his arm; so Tom mixed it a little stronger)—“a ’onest man to depend on, and a family and such like.”
Tom flourished his arm along a line of imaginary olive branches, and Gingham represented that “she couldn’t think of such a thing.”
“Service isn’t for the likes of you, miss,” proceeded the tempter; “hindependence is fittest for beauty” (Tom peeped under the bonnet, and “found it,” as he expressed himself, “all serene”); “a cottage and content, and a ’eart that is ’umble may ’ope for it ’ere;” with which concluding words Mr. Blacke, who was an admirer of poetry, and believed with Moore that would be given to song “which gold could never buy,” imprinted a vigorous kiss on those not very tempting lips, and felt that the day was his own.