In Jessy’s early girlhood, the mother of the poor little bread-and-butter boy was a servant in her father’s house. Since the death of the woman’s husband, which was but recent, Jessy had proved her best friend—coming with cheerful gossip and “something for the baby” whenever she had an errand into town. Which she had to-day; and had hardly been seated half an hour when she became acquainted with the story of the half-crown, what the gentleman was like and who the lady, and which way they went. The boy had heard the name of the gentleman, as some one called to him, but did not perfectly recollect it: it began with a G, at any rate, and sounded like Godwin.
To the sum of sublunary happiness go many fictions—pretty figments, which, though constantly and forever disproved, are never the less believed in. Even in the contemplation of objects the most beautiful in art and nature fiction is seldom absent; and when the sun sets in clouds of purple and fine gold, it is not enough that they are clouds, however gorgeous; but we must at once set about making woods, and seas, and islands of the blest, of them.
We have sought it in heaven, (an instance is meant,) but with equal propriety and success we might seek it in—matrimony. For what but a sugared fallacy is that Honeymoon so universally accepted as consequent on every marriage—as being a mingling of the sweetness of Hybla with all the soft suffusion of love which lapped Endymion on the hill of Latmos, to be enjoyed in all cases and without limit during the space of one calendar month—for twenty-eight days at least; except in leap-year. At which time, even February days are twenty-nine. A fond conceit! It is wrong to argue everyday life from the privileges of the aristocracy; and only in connection with marriages strictly of convenience does the honeymoon roll through its successive phases with propriety, going out as the monthly bills come in. Careful computation of the laws of accident prove the full average honeymoon to subsist about four days and a half, except in cases where youth, fortune, and fine weather combine with affection, when the average may possibly be doubled. So that wife Sybilla ought to have been much more content than in fact she was, that her matrimonial orb waned not before the expiration of a week; considering that though they were rich enough in youth, they possessed neither fortune nor particularly fine weather. It was, however, this very consideration of lack of fortune, in the sense of money, that caused Sybilla first to descend from out the luxuriant solitudes of love in which, hand in hand, they had sauntered all the week, bringing her husband quickly after her. The initiatory cause of the declension was a nightcap; for after a protracted evening sitting at an open window, Sybilla woke the next morning to find, not the locks of Hyperion straying over the pillow beside her, as before, but a tall, tasseled, miserable white cap, which, encroaching over Godwin’s eyes, elongated his cheeks and exaggerated his nose to a most unhandsome degree. The unconscious sleeper, experiencing symptoms of cold in the head the night before, had ventured, in the dark, to assume that wretchedest of all habiliments, the male nightcap.
When the blossom is ripest, the softest breath may waft it from the bough; in the nodding of that green tassel moved a cruel blast sufficient to scatter the full-blown poetry of any week-grown honeymoon. Accordingly, before breakfast was fairly over, Sybilla remembered that very little business had occurred to interrupt their happiness—before dinner, that Mr. Godwin had paid several bills with undisguisable uneasiness; and, as the result of such souvenirs, not only she but Godwin also sat down at supper that night to a diluted cup, broken-winged and very near the earth. Every day nearer and nearer the earth, for things did not take a turn, but grew worse; and though they had the certainty of aunt’s legacy before them, Godwin soon began to fear almost as much as his wife that if, according to the doggrel of Keats,
“Love in a cot, with water and a crust,
Is—Love forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust,”
it was not much more agreeable in an apothecary’s shop. Not that it had quite come to that yet; he still contrived to maintain the marmalade for breakfast; but not many weeks elapsed ere Sybilla became plainly suspicious that though he might be rich enough in drugs, the money-capital of her husband was well-nigh exhausted. Indeed, she assured herself of the fact by just looking into his desk one morning, privately and with a guilty face.
Now the legacy lay vested in his uncle, the Kentish miller; and as a few months before, in a letter which came hoping that John was in good health, as it left him (the miller) at present, he had received much earnest advice against early marriage, John wished to postpone the demand as late as possible. But the darkening horizon, and a few comfortless hints thrown out by the partner of his cares, precipitated intentions; and so he started one bright morning to receive his little fortune, planning its expenditure very solemnly by the way.
Drearily, Sybilla threw herself open a sofa as her husband passed out at the door, and, half extended, employed an hour in usefully painting a piece of velvet, and uselessly pondering past, present and future. Drearily, she put aside the daubed stuff, and taking up a newspaper some weeks old, concluded each listlessly-perused paragraph with a yawn, till she came to “Important from India,” and read of a bloody engagement there. How in the cold gray dawn a company of the gallant 292d, and a strong detachment of the gallant 293d, marched to reduce the contumacious Bungumshah. How, when the cold dawn kindled into blazing, blasting noon, and long-enduring men fell here and there, suddenly shot dead from the sun, it was deemed expedient to march over them against the contumacious Bungumshah. How, having mistaken the position of that Indian, they came not up with him by nightfall, for all their marching, and very gladly encamped—the greater portion on the plain, but a small detachment of some hundred men or so in a hollow at a little distance, under Ensign Hope. How, in the night sentinels were struck secretly, the camp penetrated by Indian shadows rather than Indian men, the commander killed in sleep—encampment torn from end to end, encampment channeled from end to end with tumult and blood. Ensign Hope listens in the distant hollow, rises up with his hundred men or so, bears down to the verge of the scene swift and silent, goes blazing into it like an Indian storm, and settles the matter. To the right is a ravine; and as the enemy fly, panic-struck, Ensign Hope, with consummate skill, (so the newspaper calls it,) contrives to push the main body to the edge of it—pushes a few over into it, in order to furnish argument of prompt surrender to the rest. Which is profited by; and by the time the camp is thoroughly roused from its hideous nightmare, every soldier with his head still on may place two or three prisoners at the end of his bayonet. As for the Bungumshah, he is disarmed by Ensign Hope himself, with as much grace of manner as a conqueror with one boot on (had no time to advantage by both) might be supposed capable of. Official thanks, loud newspaper laudations, honors present and prospective to Ensign Hope.