THE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE OF JOHN THORNTON, CLERK, AND THE BIRTH OF
SOME ONE WHO TAKES RATHER A CONSPICUOUS PART IN OUR STORY.
Sometime between the years 1780 and 1790, young John Thornton, then a
Servitor at Christ Church, fell in love with pretty Jane Hickman, whose
father was a well-to-do farmer, living not far down the river from
Oxford; and shortly before he took his degree, he called formally upon
old Hickman, and asked his daughter's hand. Hickman was secretly well
pleased that his daughter should marry a scholar and a gentleman like
John Thornton, and a man too who could knock over his bird, or kill his
trout in the lasher with any one. So after some decent hesitation he
told him, that as soon as he got a living, good enough to support Jane
as she had been accustomed to live, he might take her home with a
father's blessing, and a hundred pounds to buy furniture. And you may
take my word for it, that there was not much difficulty with the young
lady, for in fact the thing had long ago been arranged between them,
and she was anxiously waiting in the passage to hear her father's
decision, all the time that John was closeted with him.
John came forth from the room well pleased and happy. And that evening
when they two were walking together in the twilight by the quiet river,
gathering cowslips and fritillaries, he told her of his good prospects,
and how a young lord, who made much of him, and treated him as a friend
and an equal, though he was but a Servitor--and was used to sit in his
room talking with him long after the quadrangle was quiet, and the fast
men had reeled off to their drunken slumbers--had only three days
before promised him a living of 300L. a-year, as soon as he should take
his priest's orders. And when they parted that night, at the old stile
in the meadow, and he saw her go gliding home like a white phantom
under the dark elms, he thought joyfully, that in two short years they
would be happily settled, never more to part in this world, in his
peaceful vicarage in Dorsetshire.
Two short years, he thought. Alas! and alas! Before two years were
gone, poor Lord Sandston was lying one foggy November morning on
Hampstead Heath, with a bullet through his heart. Shot down at the
commencement of a noble and useful career by a brainless gambler--a man
who did all things ill, save billiards and pistol-shooting; his beauty
and his strength hurried to corruption, and his wealth to the senseless
DEBAUCHEE who hounded on his murderer to insult him. But I have heard
old Thornton tell, with proud tears, how my lord, though outraged and
insulted, with no course open to him but to give the villain the power
of taking his life, still fired in the air, and went down to the vault
of his forefathers without the guilt of blood upon his soul.
So died Lord Sandston, and with him all John's hopes of advancement. A
curate now on 50L. a-year; what hope had he of marrying? And now the
tearful couple, walking once more by the river in desolate autumn,
among the flying yellow leaves, swore constancy, and agreed to wait
till better times should come.
So they waited. John in his parish among his poor people and his
school-children, busy always during the day, and sometimes perhaps
happy. But in the long winter evenings, when the snow lay piled against
the door, and the wind howled in the chimney; or worse, when the wind
was still, and the rain was pattering from the eaves, he would sit
lonely and miserable by his desolate hearth, and think with a sigh of
what might have been had his patron lived. And five-and-twenty years
rolled on until James Brown, who was born during the first year of his
curateship, came home a broken man, with one arm gone, from the battle
of St. Vincent. And the great world roared on, and empires rose and
fell, and dull echoes of the great throes without were heard in the
peaceful English village, like distant thunder on a summer's afternoon,
but still no change for him.
But poor Jane bides her time in the old farm-house, sitting constant
and patient behind the long low latticed window, among the geraniums
and roses, watching the old willows by the river. Five-and-twenty times
she sees those willows grow green, and the meadow brighten up with
flowers, and as often she sees their yellow leaves driven before the
strong south wind, and the meadow grow dark and hoar before the breath
of autumn. Her father was long since dead, and she was bringing up her
brother's children. Her raven hair was streaked with grey, and her step
was not so light, nor her laugh so loud, yet still she waited and
hoped, long after all hope seemed dead.
But at length a brighter day seemed to dawn for them; for the bishop,
who had watched for years John Thornton's patient industry and
blameless conversation, gave him, to his great joy and astonishment,
the living of Drumston, worth 350L. a-year. And now, at last, he might
marry if he would. True, the morning of his life was gone long since,
and its hot noon spent in thankless labour; but the evening, the sober,
quiet evening, yet remained, and he and Jane might still render
pleasant for one another the downward road toward the churchyard, and
hand-in-hand walk more tranquilly forward to meet that dark tyrant
Death, who seemed so terrible to the solitary watcher.
A month or less after John was installed, one soft grey day in March,
this patient couple walked slowly arm-in-arm up the hill, under the
lychgate, past the dark yew that shadowed the peaceful graves, and so
through the damp church porch, up to the old stone altar, and there
were quietly married, and then walked home again. No feasting or
rejoicing was there at that wedding; the very realization of their long
deferred hopes was a disappointment. In March they were married, and
before the lanes grew bright with the primroses of another spring, poor
Jane was lying in a new-made grave, in the shadow of the old grey tower.
But, though dead, she yet lived to him in the person of a bright-eyed
baby, a little girl, born but three months before her mother's death.
Who can tell how John watched and prayed over that infant, or how he
felt that there was something left for him in this world yet, and
thought that if his child would live, he should not go down to the
grave a lonely desolate man. Poor John!--who can say whether it would
not have been better if the mother's coffin had been made a little
larger, and the baby had been carried up the hill, to sleep quietly
with its mother, safe from all the evil of this world.
But the child lived and grew, and, at seventeen, I remember her well, a
beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless, with black waving
hair and dark blue eyes, and all the village loved her and took pride
in her. For they said--"She is the handsomest and the best in the
parish."