It was true he had taken a step most people would call very imprudent, thus to encumber himself with a young wife at the very outset of his career; certainly, he had never intended any such thing. He had always resolved to be patient, and have a little store of money by him, before he persuaded any one to begin the world with him. He could not bear the idea of all being dependent upon his own life, and risking the chance of leaving a widow and a young family destitute. But this was an exceptional case, for he could not, without trembling, contemplate the dangers which surrounded this young and innocent girl. His medical knowledge taught him but too well the perils to the health of one so fresh and blooming, from labors in close rooms to which she was so little accustomed—death stared her in the face, unless she escaped it by means at which he shuddered to think.
The only way in which he, young as he was, could possibly help her, was to withdraw her from the dangerous scene and make her his wife; and on that step he had been for some days resolving. The emotion she had shown, the timorous joy, the sweet confidence in his love and honor, had given a rapturous feeling of happiness to him quite new. He had intended benevolently and kindly; he had met with all the blessings of sincere attachment.
Instead of walking to Mrs. Stedman's to take some rest, which he very much needed, he went to his mother's house, or rather the house where he had taken a snug little apartment for his mother.
It lay somewhere out Brompton way; in which district neat rows of small houses are to be found looking backward upon pleasant greens and gardens. There he had found a modest little suite of apartments; one sitting-room and two bedrooms—a room for his mother and another sometimes occupied by himself.
The little hut, a tiny place it was, was clean to the greatest nicety, and though fitted up in the very simplest and cheapest manner, had an air of perfect comfort. The walls were stained green, the drugget upon the floor was pink and fawn; the chairs were covered with what used to be called Manchester stripe—very clean and pleasant-looking, and excellent for wash and wear. There was a pretty little table for tea and dinner, and a nice, round three-clawed one close by the mother's side—who was established in the only article of luxury in the room, a very comfortable arm-chair. There the old lady passed her life.
She had lost the use of her lower limbs for some years; but her health of body and mind in other respects was sound. The only thing for which the son had as yet coveted a little more money, had been that he might possess the means to give his mother the enjoyment of exercise and air; and when he passed young men, the very pictures of health and strength, lounging idly in their carriages, as one sometimes does in the Park, though not given to such nonsense, he could not help uttering a secret exclamation against the inequalities of fortune, and thinking the blindness of the goddess of the wheel no fable.
They were but passing thoughts these, such as the best have when they languish for the means of bestowing good.
Such indulgences, however, were rarely to be thought of, though now and then he managed to obtain them; but as the best compensation he could make, he paid a few guineas a year more for this pretty apartment, of which the back room, elongated into a little bow-window, formed the sitting-room—what would have been the front sitting-room being divided into the two bedrooms. This pleasant bow-window looked over a row of gardens belonging to the neighboring houses, and these to a considerable tract of nursery-ground filled with rows of fruit trees, and all the cheerful pleasant objects to be seen in such places. In summer the arm-chair was wheeled to the window, and the whole of the view was disclosed to the old lady; in winter it returned to the fire; but even there she did not lose her pretty view altogether, the room was so little that from her place she might easily command it. Miss Martineau, in a book of hers, has given us a most valuable and interesting account of the way in which, during a tedious and most trying illness, her active spirit confined to one place, she used to amuse herself, and while away the time by looking out of her window through her telescope and watching all that was going on. This old lady did much the same, minus the good telescope, which she had not. Her son, however, had presented her with an old-fashioned opera-glass, which he had picked up at some second-hand retailer or other, and as it was a good one, and, moreover, very light to the hand, it did as well for her and better.
In some things the old lady had a little resemblance to Miss Martineau. She had the same cheerful activity of mind, the same readiness of adapting herself to circumstances—things in a great measure constitutional. She was, moreover, a very shrewd, sensible woman, and deeply pious—pious in the most excellent way: really, vitally, seriously. She came of a good old puritan stock, where piety had been cherished from generation to generation. Some physiologists say, that even the acquired moral qualities and habits descend to the succeeding generation. It is possible an aptness for good or evil may be, and often is, inherited from those who have gone before. It would seem to have been so in this case. The pious father and mother, children of as pious parents, had left this pious daughter—and her excellencies had descended in accumulated measure to her son. This old lay had been sorely tried—death and poverty had done their worst—except in as far as the cruel ravager had spared her this one boy, one of many children, all followed the delicate, consumptive man who had been their father. She had borne it all. Strong in faith, she had surrendered her treasures to the Lord of Life, in trust that they should be found again when he maketh up his jewels. Cheerful as was her temper, life's course had been too rough with her, for her to value it very much, when those lovely, promising buds, but half disclosed, were one after the other gathered. But she had escaped that racking agony of the loving, but too faithless mother—when all the sweets of nature in its abundance flow around her, and they are not there to enjoy.
"When suns shine bright o'er heaven's blue vault serene,
Birds sing in trees, and sweet flowers deck the plain,
Weep I for thee, who in the cold, cold grave
Sleep, and all nature's harmony is vain.
But when dark clouds and threat'ning storms arise,
And doubt and fear my trembling soul invade;
My heart one comfort owns, thou art not here,
Safe slumbering, in the earth's kind bosom laid."