Mrs. Dolland colored, and twisted the end of her shawl round her finger.
“Lucky, sir—lucky for you—and for—but I beg your pardon; perhaps you never were in love.”
Mr. Whitelock fidgeted, and grumbled something, and the widow’s instinct made her comprehend that he did not relish her conjectures. She continued—
“I believed every word he said: I could not understand his sacrifice, because I had never moved in his sphere; I thought it a fine thing to marry for love, and out-stare poverty. I did not know that the gaze of its stony eyes, and the clutch of its bony hands might drive him to his grave. They said he was consumptive from his birth: I don’t believe it; I know that labor and want take its form. I went to his father; I knelt to him; I told him I would leave my husband—go where they should never hear my name—if he would only receive him and his son; I did, indeed, sir; but he turned from me with cruel words. And, though he knew he was teaching a few poor scholars, just for bread, so he left him—and so he died. I only wish that young, poor girls, who think it a fine thing to many a gentleman, could know the misery it brings: the hardest lot can be borne alone; but to bring another to it, and that other the one you would die to make happy—Oh! that is the hardest of all things to bear! I beg your pardon, sir; but if I did not begin from the first, you could not understand my feelings.”
She wiped away her tears, and Mr. Whitelock told her to proceed. He was so much interested in her tale, told in her simple manner, in her soft voice—a voice so full of that low intonation, which is distinct even in its murmurs—that he could not help wishing some one of his favorite novelists, people who, long ago, wrote the most innocent tales in five or seven volumes, were there to hear it. By his own dreamy abstraction, she was transformed into a young shepherdess, tying a blue ribbon round a lamb’s neck; and the vision, with its adjuncts of green fields and purling brooks—which he never saw more than twice a-year—with an enraptured youth leaning over a stile, and the village church steeple peering above the distant trees, was only dispelled by her resuming her unaffected narrative.
“And speaking as I was, sir, of understanding the feelings, I know that to the last I never quite understood those of my husband. I can’t tell if it was because of the difference of our birth, or of our bringing up, or of both; though, as to the birth, his father had been a poor man once, and got rich, some said, not over rightly—though I can’t quite believe that of my dear husband’s father. I never, as I said, quite understood my husband; for, to the last, I know I gave him pain, by little ways which he never complained of, and I knew not how to change; but what I could understand was his PIETY. He lived the last year of his life, a life of such faith and hope, that the world seemed to fold itself away from him like a vapor, and he looked upon all that stood between Christ and him as evil. He delighted to teach our child texts of Scripture; and even the wise-like copies which he used to set him from Poor Richard’s Almanac faded from his memory toward the last, though Bible words remained with him, and scraps of Watts’s hymns, and long passages of holy poetry; but what he dwelt upon was the future of his child. At that time I got constant work as an embroideress. But the last year he might be said to be more in heaven than on earth: the world was not with him; only hour by hour he used to call me to him and say—‘Remember our great salvation,’ and the next minute he would pray me, clasping my hands within his, not to care about the little lad’s learning, so that he could win Christ. He would go on, adding scripture to scripture, to prove that all this world is nothing worth without that which insures eternal life. He desired neither riches, nor honors, nor wealth, nor learning for that boy—nothing but his becoming wise unto salvation. Sir, I understood that—that came home to me. Now, sir, the lad is a good lad—tender and loving to me his mother, and, I believe, dutiful to you, sir, though the person below did hint, rather than say, things which I own gave me concern just now—things which make me fear he may not be altogether what I hope; but he is young, and—”
“It is only Matty’s unfortunate manner,” interrupted the bookseller. “She does not mean it: she has an ugly trick of insinuating evil where she means good.”
“How very strange,” said the meek woman. “I am so glad I mentioned it: I should have made my son so unhappy. What a pity she does not hope, sir: poor thing! not to have hope is worse than blindness. Well, sir, have I explained how anxious my husband was that this dear lad should become a righteous man—not a formalist, but a vital Christian—abiding continually in the faith, faithful above all things; believing, like his father, in Christ, and evincing that belief by acts of charity—in word, in deed, in thought—toward his fellow creatures. That, sir, was the religion in which he lived and died; and I should feel unfaithful to his trust if I did not, by prayer, supplication and entreaty, try to keep the lad in the path which his father trod. But he is getting too strong for me: his mind swells like a river after rain. He reads his Bible, to be sure; but he reads other books more frequently. I don’t know if that is quite right. Oh! sir, I weary heaven with prayers to teach me how to keep him in the right; so, that even if he halt, or turn aside, he may return.”
“The boy is a good boy—an excellent lad: I have been turning over in my mind what I could do for him, to put him in the way of bettering his position. He is a right excellent lad,” repeated the bookseller; “and I would have you beware of drawing the rein too tight: I think you are anxious overmuch.”
She shook her head mournfully.