Feeling himself established and finding Mrs. Carrington in St. Louis, Raymond pressed his suit, and they were eventually married.
The couple were disappointed in their expectations of a fortune, for within two years after the marriage Mr. Dunlap suddenly died. He had intended to make his will and make Raymond his heir, but like many other men he put it off until it was too late, and his property, which was found to be less than supposed, went back to his brothers and sisters, and from them to their children and grandchildren, so that Raymond got but a small share.
He, however, retained his position as a merchant, and struggled hard to keep his wife in the same circumstances to which she had been accustomed. She appreciated his kindness, and when at the end of three years she was the mother of three children, she concluded it was time to lay aside all desire for fashionable amusements, and she became a tolerably affectionate wife, and a wonderfully indulgent mother.
Chapter XXV
the wanderer
[pg 238]In Uncle Joshua's home there were sad, troubled faces and anxious hearts, as the husband and daughter watched by the wife and mother, whose life on earth was well-nigh ended. From her mother's family Mrs. Middleton had inherited the seeds of consumption, which had fastened upon her.
Day by day, they watched her, and when at last she left them it seemed so much like falling away to sleep that Mr. Middleton, who sat by her, knew not the exact moment which made him a lonely widower. The next afternoon sympathizing friends and neighbors assembled to pay the last tribute of respect to Mrs. Middleton, and many an eye overflowed, and more than one heart ached as the gray-haired old man bent sadly above the coffin, which contained the wife of his early love. But he mourned not as one without hope, for her end had been peace, and when upon her face his tears fell he felt assured that again beyond the dark river of death he should meet her.
The night succeeding the burial Mr. Middleton's family, overcome with fatigue and grief, retired early to their rooms, but Fanny could not sleep, and between ten and eleven she arose and throwing on her dressing gown nervously walked up and down her sleeping room. It was a little over a year after her marriage. Through the closed shutters the rays of a bright September moon were stealing, and attracted by the beauty of the night, Fanny opened the blinds and the room was filled with a flood of soft, pale light. From the window where she stood she could distinguish the little graveyard, with its cypress and willow trees, and its white monument gleaming through the silvery moonlight, and near that monument was a dark spot, the grave of her beloved mother. "If all nights were as lovely as this," thought she, "it would not seem half so dreary to sleep in the cold dark grave," and then Fanny fell into a fit of musing of the night that would surely come when she would first be left alone in the shadowy graveyard.