“I stepped in to inquire after poor Mary, this morning,” said a
neighbor of Lucy Ford. “Poor dear! she’s to be pitied!”
They who have suffered from the world’s malice, know that the most
simple words may be made to convey an insult, by the tone in which they
are uttered. Lucy Ford was naturally unsuspicious, but there was
something in Miss Snip’s tone which grated harshly on her ear.
“I regret to say Mary is no better,” Lucy replied, with her usual
gentle manner. “If I could persuade her to take more nourishment, I
should be glad; but she sits rocking to and fro, seemingly unconscious
of every thing.”
“I should like to see the poor dear,” said Miss Snip.
Lucy hesitated; then blushing, as if she felt ashamed of her doubts,
she led the way to Mary’s room. Every thing about it bore marks of the
taste of the occupant. There lay her silent guitar; there a half
finished drawing; here a book with the pearl folder still between the
leaves, where she and Percy had left it. The beautiful tea-rose he had
given her, drooped its buds in the window, for want of care, and the
canary’s cage was muffled, lest its song should quicken painful
memories. And there sat Mary, as her mother had said, rocking herself to
and fro, with her hands crossed listlessly on her lap, her blue-veined
temples growing each day more startlingly transparent.
“Quite heart-rending, I declare,” said Miss Snip, “and as if the poor
dear hadn’t enough to bear, just think of the malice of people. I said
it was a shame and that of course nobody would believe it of Miss Mary,
and I never spoke of it, except to lawyer Beadle’s wife, and one or two
of our set; but a rumor is a rumor, and when it is once set rolling, it
has got to go to the bottom of the hill; but nobody, I’m sure, that ever
knew Miss Mary, would believe she would be seduced by Percy Lee!”
“Lord-a-mercy! you don’t suppose she heard me?” exclaimed Miss Snip,
as Mary fell forward upon the floor.
“Cursed viper!” shouted Jacob Ford, emerging from the ante-room, and
unceremoniously ejecting Miss Snip through the door. “Cursed viper!”
“That’s what I call pretty treatment, now,” muttered Miss Snip, as she
stopped in the hall, to settle her false curls; “very pretty
treatment--for a disinterested act of neighborly kindness. Philanthropy
never is rewarded with any thing but cuffs in this world, but I shan’t
allow it to discourage me. I know that I have my mission here below,
whether I have the praise of men or not. All great reformers are
abused--that’s one consolation. I’ll step over to Mrs. Bunce’s now, and
see if it _is_ true that her husband takes a drop too much. They _do_
say so, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
* * * * *
“Lucy,” said Jacob--and the poor old man’s limbs shook beneath
him--“this must be the last arrow in the quiver. Nothing can come after
this. Let her be, Lucy,”--and he withdrew his wife’s hands, as she
bathed Mary’s temples--“let her be: ’tain’t no use to rouse her up to
her misery--to kill her by inches this way. I am ready to lie down side
of her. Lucy--I couldn’t muster heart to tell you, till a worse blow
came, that we are beggars. ’Tain’t no matter now.”
“God be merciful!” said Lucy, overwhelmed with this swift accumulation
of trouble.
“Yes, you may well say that. Just enough left to keep us from starving.
My heart has been with _her_, you see,” said Jacob, looking at Mary,
“and my head hasn’t been clear about things, as it used to be, and so it
has come to this. I wouldn’t mind it, if she only--” and Jacob dropped
his head hopelessly upon his breast. Then raising it again, and wiping
his eyes, as he looked at Mary, he said: “She never will look more like
an angel than she does now. I thought she’d live to close these old
eyes, and that my grand-children would play about my knee, but you see
how it has gone, Lucy.”
* * * * *
The red flag of the auctioneer, so often the signal of distress,
floated before Jacob Ford’s door. Strange feet roved over the old house;
strange eyes profaned the household gods. Careless fingers tested the
quality of Mary’s harp and guitar; and voices which in sunnier days had
echoed through those halls in blandest tones, now fell upon the ear,
poisonous with cold malice. When once the pursuit is started, and the
game scented, every hound joins in the cry; each fierce paw must have
its clutch at the quivering heart, each greedy tongue lap up the ebbing
life-blood. Never was beauty’s crown worn more winningly, more
unobtrusively, less triumphantly, than by Mary Ford; but to those whom
nature had less favored, it was the sin never to be forgiven; and so
fair lips _hoped_ the stories were not true about her, while they
reiterated them at every street corner; and bosom friends, when inquired
of as to their truth, rolled up their eyes, sighed like a pair of
bellows, and with a deprecating wave of the hand, replied, in melancholy
tones, “don’t ask _me_,” thus throwing the responsibility upon the
listener to construe it into little or much; pantomimic looks and
gestures not yet having been pronounced indictable by the statute book;
others simply nodded their heads, in a mysterious manner, as if they had
it at their charitable option to send the whole family to perdition,
with a monosyllable.