For two years—two precious years—all went well. Then came one of those seasons of unhealthiness which occur at intervals, as if to warn men of their ignorance of the laws on which their life depends, and to rebuke their carelessness about observing such conditions of health as they do understand. No town was less prepared to encounter an onset of autumnal fever than that in which the Ellisons lived. It had no right to expect health at any time: the history of the place told of plague in old times, and every epidemic which visited England became a pestilence amid its ill-drained streets, its tidal expanse of mud, and its crowded alleys. These were the times when the beloved pastor's fidelity shone out. For weeks he was, night and day, in close attendance on the poor of his flock; and any other poor who were needing help. He could not aid them in the way that a more practical man would have done; but Joanna supplied that kind of ability, while the voice of her husband carried peace and support into many a household, prostrated in grief and dread. He ran far greater risks all the while than he needed, if he could have been taught common prudence. He forgot to eat, and went into unwholesome chambers with an empty stomach and an exhausted frame. In spite of his wife's watchfulness, he omitted to give himself the easy advantages of freshened air, change of clothes, and a sufficiency of wholesome food; and, for one week, he hardly came home to sleep. It was no wonder that, at last, both were down in the fever. The best care failed to save Joanna. She died without having bidden farewell to husband and child. Her husband was in bed delirious, and her boy was in the country, whither he had been taken for safety when the fever entered the house.
Mr. Ellison recovered slowly, as might be expected, from the weight upon his mind. There was something strange, it appeared to his physician, in his anxiety to obtain strength to go to London. He was extremely pertinacious about this. The Careys, glad to see that he could occupy himself with any project, humored this, without understanding it. They spoke as if he was going to London when he should be strong enough. They did not dream of his not waiting for this. But, in the dark, damp evening of the day when he dismissed his physician, after Mrs. Carey had gone home, leaving him on the sofa, and promising that her husband should call after tea, he was seen at the coach-office, in the market-place; and he made a night-journey to London.
There were no railways in those days; and this journey of one hundred miles required twelve hours by the "Expedition," the "Highflyer," the "Express," or whatever the fastest coach might be called. As soon as he arrived, Mr. Ellison swallowed a cup of coffee in the bar of the inn, had a coach called, and proceeded to an insurance-office to insure his life. As he presented himself, emaciated and feeble, unwashed, unshaven, with a crimson handkerchief tied over his white lips, which quivered when he uncovered them; as he told his errand, in a weak and husky voice, the clerks of the office stared at him in pitying wonder; and the directors dismissed him from their parlor, under the gentlest pretexts they could devise.
He returned home immediately, and told his adventure to Mr. Carey.
"I could not rest till I had made the effort," he said. "When dear Joanna was gone, and I believed that I should follow her, it occurred to me that our child would be left destitute. I saw that I had neglected my duty; and I resolved that, if I recovered, it should be so no longer. I have made the effort; it has failed; and God's will be done!"
Mr. Carey would not allow that the matter must be given up. In fact, there was no difficulty in effecting the insurance, in the next spring, when Mr. Ellison was restored to his ordinary state of health, and Mr. Carey was his guide and helper in the business. The interest of Joanna's little portion was appropriated for the purpose, with a small addition, rendered necessary by the lapse of three years. It is well known that the most unworldly and unapt persons are the most proud of any act of prudence or skill that they may have been able to achieve. So it was in this case. When the pastor sat gazing at his child, it appeared to him a marvelous thing that he, even he, should have endowed any human being with a fortune. He was heard to say to himself, on such occasions, in a tone of happy astonishment,
"A thousand pounds! Ha! a thousand pounds!"
We can not here follow out the curious process of that boy's rearing. We have not space to tell how tenderly he was watched by grand-mamma, and by Charlotte, till her marriage gave her cares of her own:—nor what a stroke it was when Mr. Ellison moved to a distant city, being invited to a higher post in the ministry of his sect; nor how curiously he and his child lived in a lodging, where, notwithstanding all his efforts to fill the place of both parents, his boy was too often seen in rags; nor how the child played leap-frog and other games with little beggars and ruffians in the streets, so cleverly, that his father might be seen gazing at him from the foot-pavement, in a rapture of admiration; nor how, on the great occasion of the little lad's first going to chapel, he told every body within reach, that it was "Pa" in the pulpit; nor how, when he was tired of the sermon, he was wont to scrape the sand from the floor, and powder with it the wigs of the old men who sat in the long pew before him; nor how, at length, the importunity of friends prevailed to get him sent to school; nor how comfortably his father was boarded in a private family when the lodging plan became too bad to be borne even by him. All this we must leave undescribed; and also his satisfaction when, in a later time—when his son was grown up, and prosperous, and well married—the good pastor found himself at liberty to do, if he should wish it, what he had always thought ministers had better do, leave the pulpit before they were worn out—before any body had begun to look for their wearing out. The "dear child," as he still calls the father of his grand-children, early persuaded his father to take advantage of that modern improvement by which his life insurance can be commuted into an annuity at sixty years of age, if he should attain it, or receivable in full, if that method should be preferred. A small independence being thus secured, if he lives to leave the pulpit at sixty, and a legacy to his son, if he dies before that time, Mr. Ellison feels more free from worldly cares than is often the case with dissenting ministers who begin the world without fortune, and with thoughts far above the lucre of gain.
No one wonders that he never seemed to think of marrying again. Before his removal, the name of his "dear Joanna" was often on his lips. After his removal, it was never again heard, except on the rare occasions of his meeting old friends. He did not speak of her to those who had never known her; but not the less was her image understood to be ever in his thoughts.