JOB GOLDING'S CHRISTMAS.
It was very strange, thought old Job Golding, that he couldn't be master of his own mind. He had lived a great many years, and neither remorse nor memory had ever been in the habit of disturbing him; but now it seemed to him as if the very foundations of his life were breaking up. He was through with his day's work,—he had dined comfortably,—he sat in an easy-chair, in a luxurious room whose crimson hangings shut out the still cold of the December afternoon,—for the 24th of December it was. He was all ready to enjoy himself. How singular that this state of things should remind him of a coming time when his life work would be all done,—even as his day's work was all done now,—when he would be ready to sit down in the afternoon and look over the balance sheet of his deeds. How curiously the old days came trooping in slow procession before him.
His dead wife; he had not loved her much when she was with him, but how vivid was his memory of her now! He could see her moving round the house, noiseless as a shadow, never intruding on him, after he had once or twice answered her gruffly, but going on her own meek, still ways, with her face growing whiter every day. He began to understand, as he looked back, why her strength had failed and she had been ready, when her baby came, to float out on the tide and let it drift her into God's haven. She had had enough to eat and to drink, but he saw now that he had left her heart to starve. He seemed to see her white, still face, as he looked at it the last time before they screwed down the coffin lid, with the dumb reproach frozen on it, the eyes, that would never again plead vainly, closed for ever.
He recalled how passionately the three-days-old baby cried in another room, just at that moment, moving all the people gathered at the funeral with a thrill of pity for the poor little motherless morsel. She was a passionate, wilful baby, all through her babyhood, he remembered. She wanted—missed without knowing what the lack was—the love which her mother would have given her, and protested against fate with all the might of her lungs. But, as soon as she grew old enough to understand how useless it was, she had grown quiet, too; just like her mother. He recalled her, all through her girlhood, a shy, still girl, always obedient and submissive, but never drawing very near him. Did she have tastes, he wondered—wants, longings? She never told him.
But suddenly, when she was eighteen, the old, passionate spirit that had made her cry so when she was a baby must have awakened again, he thought; for she fell in love then, and married in defiance of his wishes. He remembered her standing proudly before him, and asking,—
"Father, do you know any thing against Harry Church?"
"Yes," he had answered wrathfully; "I know that he is as poor as Job was when he sat among the ashes; he can't keep a wife."