Grand Tableaux.
Typical characteristics, however decided, vary with the effects of time and change; and so the dowager had altered very much for the better, as regards her temper and disposition applied to the amenities of daily life, after that attack of paralysis she had had: the arrival of Tom at home again also did much to effect a cure, and she was now by far a more agreeable old woman than when she was first introduced to our notice.
The certainty that Susan was alive and well, and the knowledge that she was comfortably situated, and no questions of money remaining between them, also tended to preserve the old lady’s equanimity; and her direct wish was now to see Tom married and done for—then she said, she would be satisfied, and could go to her grave in peace beneath the green turf of Hartwood churchyard, where many a generation of the Hartshorne’s of The Poplars slept their last sleep. Her one desire was to see “her boy” united to her pet Lizzie—that very Lizzie whom she had formerly railed at acrimoniously for “an artful minx!”
Miss Lizzie had certainly played her cards well. She could not have succeeded better in gaining her object if she had schemed ever so shrewdly, like our old friend the campaigner, instead of acting according to the dictates of her own truthful, tender little heart.
The mistress of The Poplars now idolised her, and could not bear the quondam minx to be ever out of her sight. Although Lizzie used to come up every day to see her from the parsonage—now by no means her happy home—and spend long hours reading to her, or casting up her farm accounts, or else working silently by her side, the old lady would grudge her going away; and long before the hour when she generally came up of a day to make her visit, the old lady would be eagerly looking out for her.
The dowager had never relied so on anyone else but herself within the memory of anyone acquainted with her. It was a wonderful transformation in her, and “Garge” and the other servant would canvas each other on the state of the “ould leddy,” and since she had given up her scolding and general cantankerousness, they voted unanimously that “she warn’t all right—that she warn’t,” although they, too, took to Lizzie as much as their mistress.
Under these circumstances Lizzie perceived that her presence was so much required at The Poplars that she must make a virtue of necessity, and consent to take the graceless Master Tom for a partner for better or worse. You see Master Tom was so pleading, and he had gone through such a deal for her sake, that she must reward him somehow or other for his constancy; and then old Mrs Hartshorne told her she already looked upon her as a daughter, and entreated her so tenderly to be so in reality, that Lizzie, who as I have said before had a very tender little heart, could not resist all these pleadings combined. Tom did say such nonsense, and went on so, that she must put a stop to it, and they did not want her at the parsonage now! So hadn’t she better?
She debated the point, and as a woman who hesitates—Byron tells us, and he ought to have known—generally capitulates, Lizzie “wouldn’t,” and wound up by consenting. The magnet was very strong, and her heart was such a very susceptible little bit of steel, that she was attracted to the ultimate goal of love, and “the happy day” was fixed.
Summer was gay now again. A year had passed since Tom and Lizzie became first acquainted; and what a wonderful year of events that had been! But it was not so very extraordinary. What a change one year—nay one month, brings to some of us stragglers in the sea of ever-moving life around us!
But the year had passed with all its hopes and fears—with all its troubles and trials, and summer was come again to gladden their heart once more: a summer not only of the season, but one also of joy and happiness, and new-sprung gladness in their hearts. A summer in their lives—May it be the precursor of many such.