“Then you know him well?”
“I’ faith I do,” said the man, whose broad dialect had shown before this that he was an Englishman. “I have known him this many a year. A fine woman is she, his wife, but a dog’s life it is, she has with him.”
“He drinks, I suspect.”
“Yes, he does; but he’s a bad man when sober; and it was a dark day for her when she left her father’s house for such a dolt as Hunter.”
“Then you know something of their history, I presume. Did you know her father?”
“What, John Shaw of Spittlefields! indeed I knew him well, and it’s all good I know of him. Sure, a better man there never lived.”
“My curiosity is quite awake my friend,” said I, “and you will greatly gratify me by giving me a little of their history.”
“Oh! but it is a sorry history for her, poor woman,” said he. “Do you see, then, her father was a wealthy manufacturer, and much thought on. When Margaret was about fourteen years of age, he took this same Hunter into his factory and store to be a kind of porter or runner. For the purpose of aiding in family errands, he boarded in Mr. Shaw’s house. At the end of a year, the father discovered that Margaret treated Hunter’s addresses with favor, and in disgust and chagrin dismissed him from his employ; not because he was poor, but that he was so ould. We, who knew him, thought it was strange that the poor wench could think any thing of such a surly, selfish fellow. But then he was good-looking, and as slender as ye. It was not long before the whole town was in a stir, when it was said that Shaw’s Margaret had gone to the States with Hunter. Sure enough, it was true; for it was found out that under pretended names they had sailed from Liverpool for Philadelphia. The vessel, however, went into Wilmington, in the state of Delaware, where they were married and went into the country, and found employment in a factory. He was ever a low fellow and a fool, was Mr. Shaw, for admitting him under his roof. About three years since, he came to this place poor enough. For Margaret’s sake, poor girl, whom I knew when the whole town was proud of her, I gave him an insight into this business. He scratches a scanty living, having five children, and lives in the hut that you passed down the mountain a piece. He is but a brute to her, who shares a hard life on it, poor thing; and must ever repent leaving a father’s house for one so unworthy of her.”
With this simple narrative I was much interested, and not the less so because it was to me an additional evidence of what I had often thought to be the case, that in the humbler walks of life, and in some of the scenes, of poverty and suffering, there are those often who spend years of pain in weeping over the inadvertence of the hour in which their affections were misplaced.
March, 1841.