Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852

And long after the lovers – from frequent communion and from other causes well wotted of by old and young – had outgrown the restraints of bashfulness, and were become sister and brother in manner and wedded in heart, the old sea-captain still felt qualmish on the approach of John’s visits. So it was that on Sunday mornings he usually delayed his greeting to the last moment, when, his grisly hair brushed no way in particular, and tucked under the brim of a very rakish and curley-looking hat, he was prepared to accompany them to church. Along the dusty, pebbly footpath, with here a church-going worshiper from the cottage, and there a church-going worshiper from the hall, the school-children defiling irregularly and dustily in the road. Across the common – down the long lane shadowed, almost darkened, by trees that overhung from high and weedy banks on either side, where birds chattered and sung, and the church-bells rang with softened resonance; at the end the sunshine gloriously outspread, with the tumble-down old church and the tumble-down old gravestones drowsing in the midst: and all like a picture framed in the foliage of the lane. Pleasant enough in reality and destitute of association, that walk was beautiful indeed as remembered by the apothecary. Cool summer airs floated past his face, the freshness of morning moistened on his lips, in his eyes was light, in his heart all happiness, as the recollection rose in fullness before the dreaming bridegroom, and passed gently away. Again as they entered the porch together, in the shadow of a real and earnest thoughtfulness; again as together they knelt down; again as organ and children intoned an old meandering psalm, that ever found an easy path from earth to heaven – the memory came with a shock like electricity and left him confusedly trembling. And the loose afternoon rambles while papa dozed, the botanical excursions into all the shady, shrubby nooks of the garden, where Jessy gathered her hair under that wonderful muslin scarf – pleasant converse or pleasanter silence by open windows, when rain-drops drummed among the leaves – cozy evenings when, determined to be happy (for at heart he was almost as proud of Godwin’s frank openheartedness and sound intelligence as his daughter,) the old captain brought forth a tobacco-pouch that might also have served for a carpet-bag, mixed a pint of grog in a half-gallon bowl, and sat down to talk morals and politics over the table with his guest, while at the same time, beneath the shadow of the table, the joined hands of Jessy and the happy guest talked love – and ceremonial suppers, for parting had to follow – parting itself, when Jessy and her father accompanied him into the porch, and her father wandered uneasily somewhere out of it, and Jessy shook hands with her dear boy where the shadow was deepest, returned his salute with modest fervor, and accompanied her final “God bless you” by a glance lingering and tremulous – and that was the end.

That was the end. The hollow fire broke down sullenly in ruins, and the bridegroom rose slowly to his feet much troubled. But meeting the reflection of his face full in the chimney-glass, he sat down again still more troubled; for the emotion he saw there spoke accusingly. Many months these recollections had lain nearly dormant in his mind: he had thrown them off uneasily from time to time; and to-night, when, more than all days and nights in the past year, he ought least to indulge them, least to be troubled by them or yearn to them, what right had they to swarm all the avenues of thought in this way? Jessy Burton was a dead name, the old house a mere haunted house, so far as he was now concerned. Had they not quarreled and parted long ago? And whose fault was that but Jessy’s? True, his part in the quarrel had been the most active, and she might, perhaps, accuse him of caprice, or something of that sort; but then she had been very passive, and seemed to care very little – he had never seen her cry, or look reproachful, even when matters had come to a crisis; she had very quietly received back all her notes (quite a little heap they were, square and three-cornered, scented and unscented, neatly-written notes and some with words sprawling all about the paper, still “in haste – Yours,” and one with some dead leaves in it) – and did not return his letters in reply. From which, of course, any one could only assume that they had mutually – got —

Well, suppose we think no more about it. Jessy could not work such a pair of slippers as that; and Godwin planted his feet, slippers and all, on each side of the fire-place. Nor could she embroider such chair-covers, or work such curtains, or cut such lamp-screens, or finger the piano so rapidly as Sybilla – nothing like it: he became acquainted with Sybilla two whole months before he parted with Jessy, and therefore he had opportunities of immediate comparison, and ought to know. Sybilla was a handsome, brilliant girl, with a fine high spirit, and excessively fond of him – no doubt of it. He was a pretty fellow to sit dreaming away in that sentimental style, when to-morrow he was to marry such a woman as that, and become the proudest husband to-morrow would shine on! Jessy was well enough in her way, a nice, amiable, pretty girl; but, dear me! – and John made up his mouth to whistle an air, and did not whistle it.

Well! John thought he had better go to bed. The fire was out – no wonder he felt so miserable! – and there was the boy peeping hard through the curtain again; for he was getting hungry and wanted to shut up. The fat fingers of the little maid below had ceased from their labors – the cap was finished, and looked beautiful; and she sat at the fire with her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees, brooding matrimony in an earnest and lively spirit. In half an hour the buttons ate himself to sleep, Polly found sleep in the realms of speculation, and John, become more comfortable over a renewed fire and a glass of weak toddy, went really whistling up to bed shortly after. “Good night, John,” said he, as he rolled himself up like a chrysalis; “good night, young man! Good night, Sybilla!” And a moment after, with tenderness and an ominous sort of resignation, “Good night, Jessy!”

An hour after dawn, the little bird whose cage hung in the chamber window, trilling, quavering, rattling out his earliest fantasia, roused the bridegroom from sleep. About an hour after dawn, rattling, quavering, trilling his morning song, the little bird (brother to the above) whose cage hung in Jessy’s chamber window, roused her also from sleep. In morning toilette, and bright as any Diana from the bath, Jessy soon put her bloomy face in comparison with her flowers, as, admiring here, plucking a dead leaf there, she busied herself with her bow-pots. Presently she went with a serious air to a battered old trunk in a corner, and carefully took thence a small ivory box. It contained various minute packages of flower-seeds; and the serious expression of her face deepened into a sadness that seemed at home there, as she came to one carefully sealed paper at the bottom of the box. Jessy opened it, and half-a-dozen balsam-seeds fell into a slightly trembling hand: small, dusty, withered-looking seeds – smaller, more dusty and withered-looking than balsam-seeds usually are, and more precious.

Three summers agone, the plant from which they were derived was the best and most promising in Jessy’s little conservatory. Every body admired it – Godwin with an enthusiasm which might have been mistaken for playful sarcasm in any but a doubting lover. This, too, was when the plant was still in its youth, and its beauties mainly prospective; but John Godwin one day brought its mistress a small phial, containing a bright, volatile fluid, prepared at the expense of a night’s rest and as much money as would have bought almost an entire stand at a flower-show, which he said would cause her flower to grow like a banyan, and blow like a whole forest of acacias. The bottle was labeled in regular order – “Miss Burton’s patient: two drops to be taken night and morning in a gill of rain-water.”

The effect of its application to the roots of the flower proved almost marvelous. Large and high the balsam grew, with heavy branches round about it; and never were blossoms so huge, or so many, or so novel in color on balsam before. True, they fell off as soon as they were fully blown, but then they were reproduced elsewhere as constantly; and Jessy’s grief was great when, one morning, she found her pet altogether broken down and faded – suddenly as with blight, beyond hope of resuscitation. Seeds, however, had been preserved, and the following spring were committed to the earth, hopefully; but they woke to a by no means joyful resurrection. Wiry and puny, these poor step-children of Nature languished through the summer in sunniest corners, putting forth numerous pale little blossoms, and looking as miserably gay as a faded beauty in a faded ball-dress. The next generation was still more deplorable; but ere the latest lingerer had abandoned all effort to appear cheerful in cheerful companionship, Hope and Love had closed their outer doors against Jessy Burton, and she turned at once to that miserable lingerer, which seemed to have lingered on purpose to offer her the consolation of fellowship in affliction.

In the best hearts, the simplest and the strongest, a vein of romantic superstition will always be found – a hidden spring, surrounded by wholesome verdure: where it is not, there is sickness. And though it was very sentimental and very absurd, it really did Jessy good to compare her fortunes and the fortunes of her nurselings, with feelings that went beyond mere wonder at a coincidence. The hope and joy that erst-time put forth blossom all day long, she woke one morning to find altogether broken down and faded – suddenly, as with blight, beyond hope of resuscitation. She remembered what unwise abandonment to excess of a new happiness had rendered this blight so sudden and complete, and was self-reproved; but looking on her invalided balsam, she saw that it still grew in a humble, hopeful kind of way – still persevered in blooming with as little dreariness as possible, and always, to appearance, with a cheerful prospect of doing better next time; and she took the lesson to heart along with the reproof. Pondering much both lesson and reproof, Jessy gradually came to hold faith in more than was simply coincidental in so direct a coincidence. It preached to her, by application, most excellent doctrine; and she at last believed it to be one of those small things which (now that revelation, and miracle, and prophecy are no more) are disposed by a very extraordinary Chance, to work good in those who, having eyes, shut them not, and having ears, hear. Furthermore, the simple girl grown wise through grief, vaguely assumed a connection in the future between her floral oracles and herself. Again she sows them on this bridal morning. Perhaps they will recover lost strength and beauty, and bloom as in past time; and then – who knows? Or perhaps they will die right out, be sickly and sorrowful no more, and give place to healthier if less cherished ones. Well, either way – whether the foolish pride of that dear bad boy allow him to seek forgiveness of the caprice she knows he bitterly repents, or whether the anxious unquiet that still besets her go finally to rest – will be happiness.

How unconscious was Jessy, at the moment she closed the mould over her treasures, that that dear bad boy of hers was closing over his breast a waistcoat which, innocent as it looked, would as effectually keep her curls from ever tumbling themselves there as bars of triple steel! How unconscious of more than the existence of the handsome and really graceful woman who, an hour or two later, was arraying herself in garlands and much muslin, a more unemotional sacrifice than the most Roman beeve that ever went lowing to the altar.

Bride Sybilla’s countenance was beautiful and commanding beyond that of most women; her figure graceful and dignified as that of most queens. Tall, pale, yet with a paleness as bright and healthy as the paleness of May-blossom – her head set slightly but boldly forward from her throat – with brilliant teeth, dark brows of gracefulest curve, and dark eyes that could express every thing, but languishing and passion better than all – she would have been an indisputable belle of the season, some time or other, had she made her original and vulgar debut within the circle of courtly existence. In very fact, she was so obviously fitted by nature for vegetation in the conservatory of Fashion: she had so elegant a mind; her shawls draped her so elegantly; she looked so much at home in a carriage – especially an open one, as every body remarked on occasions of pic-nic excursions; she would have adorned an opera-box so thoroughly, and blazed with such magnificence in family jewels – that, at length, it became plain even to herself that she had been born into a false position. Not that she ever expressed such a consciousness, or allowed herself to brood over it; her personal superiority was justifiably regarded as a natural fact, and the fact was worn like an old robe.

But though, by some mistake, Sybilla wasted her radiance in the wrong firmament, it is only fair to say that she was, at any rate, highly respectable. Her father, Mr. Charles Frederick Lee, or as old letters, thrown carelessly on mantelpieces, or stuck indifferently in card-racks and the frame of the chimney-glass – suggested, Charles Frederick Lee, Esq., was, indeed, an eminent example of respectability. A Government employée– clerk at the Custom-house, that is to say – his position was very respectable to start with; and this quality permeated all his relations in life, hovered benignantly about his hearth-rug, and saturated even his umbrella. This he carried with an air sufficient of itself to stamp his respectability; and it is highly probable that the appearance alone of Mr. Lee, as – quitting his residence at Grandison-place punctually to a minute – he walked into the City on fine mornings, with his umbrella at a peculiar angle under his arm, had a greater effect on the public than all the “Hints on Etiquette” that were ever published – price six-pence.

At his residence, Grandison-place, the principle so well exemplified in the person of Mr. Lee was adequately supported in the knocker, (brass,) in the carpetings and hangings, by a classic lamp in the passage, and two very respectable-looking canaries of a subdued color, that hung in burnished cages (done about, of course, with yellow gauze) in the parlor windows, by life-size portraits of the family, an amplitude of light-colored upholstery, and marmalade for breakfast. Much wholesome goodness, however, was diffused throughout the household – cool, serene content, subduing all things equably beneath its shadow – gentleness, affection, peace, and decorous plenty. But thus surrounded, and with such a father, Sybilla was certainly its leading member and brightest ornament. The school-teaching obtained for her by paternity, with two hundred and fifty pounds a-year of income, and a position to support, did not, of course, comprise all the elements of a polite education; but what was taught at the Clarendon-House Academy for Young Ladies, Sybilla made the most of. She danced well, played the piano-forte with considerable brilliancy, wrote with orthodox angularity, and spelt comparatively few words with two t’s that should be spelled with one; she painted fruit and flowers charmingly, as a rather bulky portfolio of such subjects as “Grapes, Roses and Peach,” “A Peach, Roses and bunch of Grapes,” “Roses, Peach, etc.,” evidenced; and as for French, not one of her compeers could pronounce her u’s with so unpuckered a lip, or mould her ll’s with such Italian sweetness; and she really could do more than inquire how you did, Monsieur, and whether you had the bread or the butter.

Such, so far as circumstances could model her, such, and no more, to the common eye, was Godwin’s second love. But Sybilla was one of those who are to a great degree independent of circumstances; and divested of her worldly advantages – with any old lion of a knocker, a passage in primeval night, and a vulgar linnet capable only of drawing water in a thimble from airy depths, she would always have exhibited a certain air of superiority.

Bride Sybilla was naturally impassioned and impressible to an eminent degree. In all the fine oval of her face, not one feature but was skilled in the interpretation of these qualities; and bore their badge unmasked, always accompanied, however, by pride. But, generally, the more powerful such attributes are, the more also are they vacillating and uncertain, being frequently aroused by trifles, and dormant on occasions of comparative excitement. It was so with Sybilla: and thus is explained the fact that, through all the etceteras of the courtship which terminated to-day, she had abruptly migrated between indifference on the one hand and ardent affection on the other; and thus the Dead Sea of commonplace which now encompassed even the toilette-table of the bride might have been accounted for. Elsewhere, all was cheerfulness, bustle, sentiment and perspiration. Somebody was always knocking and ringing – in obedience to the request inscribed on the door – and somebody was always responding to the appeal; doors banged here and there saucily, or mysteriously and inexorably as the doors of Downing-Street: pleasant voices called from room to room the prettiest names, whose owners – all bridesmaids, of course, the whole half-dozen of them – distracted the breakfast-table by the incoherently earnest manner in which they came fluctuating about it, sipping and flitting at the same moment, like busy bees inclined to jollity or butterflies on business; so that never was breakfast broken into such little bits. Delicate silk gowns, the superabundance tucked through the pocket-holes, rustled gaily through the house like all the leaves of Vallombrosa; brilliant eyes and glowing faces, and perfect bouquets of bonnets ascended the stairs like rising suns, and made high noon wherever they appeared. The whisper of consultation on matters culinary and millinery, the noise of females in conclave buzzed from half-open doors, little rivulets of laughter trilled over the banisters and down the passages, while everywhere and in the midst of all mamma bustled, red and important. In short, animation and subdued delight filled every corner of the house, not excepting even that darkest and dirtiest one, where Godwin’s boy – who, with a few other select articles, had been borrowed, buttons and all, for the occasion – was arduously engaged in taking off the edges of some two or three dozen knives, under pretence of cleaning them. The uncertain temperament of Sybilla, however, excepted her not alone from the general fuss. Mr. Lee and Mrs. Finch each evinced coolness, of different degrees and from different causes. Mr. Lee was a person of correct ideas; but, as he would sometimes deprecatingly confess, he was human, and had his moments of weakness like other mortals. Armies of these moments, in battalions of sixty, had assailed him since he woke this morning. Descending upon him with barbarian irregularity, they unfurled all sorts of prophetical banners, descriptive generally of domestic incident – of a house fragrant with candle and warm linen, haunted by bland mediciners and mysterious women with accusing in their eyes, while a nervous husband and a nervous father, keeping grim silence in the parlor, trembled together on the borders of a new relationship, which ever and anon, climaxed by a distant bleating, heard on the opening of a door, put him to total confusion. Recollecting, however, that a well-bred man displays no emotion, he gradually overcame the weakness that had absolutely led him in one fit of aberration to fill his cup from the milk-jug and flavor with a drop or two of coffee, and perused his newspaper with an indifferent lounge, or chatted easily with one or two gentleman arrivals while the important preparations were going on.

This, however, was but indifference: Mrs. Finch’s feeling was one of undisguised sorrow. She was the charwoman, had come to help; and seemed to think it her duty to express in her countenance what her experience of marital existence had been; and as it was pretty generally known that the late Mr. Finch used to get drunk at frequent intervals, and chastise his wife with a light poker, it was only necessary to shake her head and sigh now and then to express all the meaning she intended. Mrs. Finch, however, was a person to whom trouble was so natural and the rule, that her experience went for nothing. If in the course of any week Johnny did not fall down an area, or omitted to be sent to the station-house for breaking a window, Billy was pretty sure to take the measles or something of that sort, Sarah Jane lose herself for a day or two to be restored in tears by the police, or the chimney catch fire. If it rained, Mrs. Finch’s clogs were broken; if it didn’t, Gracious knew how soon it would, and her shoes leaked; but however circumstances smiled upon her generally, she had at least a few weeks’ rent to make up with the “broker’s man” looming in the distance. Poor Mrs. Finch! A thousand such as she grow lean-visaged by multiplicity of such very ludicrous and very real troubles, and their experience also goes for nothing.

If any one, in disregard of the inscription before noticed, forgot that morning to knock while he rang or neglected to ring while he knocked, the omission was amply compensated by the driver of the vehicle which conveyed Godwin and his “best friend” to Grandison-place. Hired drivers usually appear to possess a vivid appreciation of the importance of their “fares” until dismissed by them; and the Jehu in question thundered at the door, pealed at the bell, and otherwise conducted himself on Mrs. Lee’s white door-step with as much impudence as if he had been coachman to a title. Horace (the foot-page) opened to his master with an approving smile, and with the information – which gained by a certain jerking of his chin what emphasis it lost in being deferentially whispered – that there was such a swag of tarts and that down stairs – curran and rarsbry, and – oh! Affluence of feeling and the appearance of Mr. Lee from the parlor to greet his future son prevented further expatiation; and so, throwing up his eyes with consummate meaning, Horace precipitated himself across the banisters and slid into his den below. A second vehicle followed close upon the first, another and another. They remained a short time in rank before the knocker, making very thread-bare endeavors to look as much like private carriages as possible, despite the derogatory appearance of the coachmen’s hats, which Mr. Lee protested were the flabbiest he had ever seen, even upon such heads; and then a preparatory silence which reigned in all the chambers of the house, as if everybody had been taking breath, was broken by a universal rustling on the stairs; and the whole galaxy of beauty and millinery descended into the parlor headed by mamma, who certainly enjoyed most of the millinery, whoever claimed pre-eminence in the other attribute. It must, however, have been evident to the meanest capacity – it was evident enough to that of Horace, who, prompted by desire to see how the governor looked among all them gals, brought up the knives at this moment, zealously offering to place them in Mrs. Lee’s own hands – that if everybody had been taking breath in the silence, nobody was much benefited by the effort; unless, indeed, as appearances seemed more pointedly to indicate, bride and bridegroom, father and mother, man, woman and maid, were endeavoring to get in a reserve-supply for impending emergencies.

Bride Sybilla’s immobility thawed rapidly away as she descended from the business of dressing. Regal and pale no longer, she frankly advanced toward Godwin directly she entered the room, and showed by the trembling hand she placed in his, and the tremulous eyes she raised to his, how completely her heart was turned from winter to the sun. John, who at the same hour of the morning, at the same moment when Jessy was engaged with her foolish balsam-seeds and still more foolish speculations, had to reprove himself for entertaining such thoughts as made his approaching happiness appear rather the work of destiny than love, and still had to reprove, cast away the last rag of doubt as he took Sybilla’s hand, and then found it expedient to turn caressingly to one of the respectable canaries. A few remarks fell stone dead, here and there, from unwilling lips, and silence, like a pall, covered them; when at length some one referred to a watch, and providentially observed that the carriages were waiting, and that a good many boys were assembled about them, and swinging on the railings; had they not better – ? Immediate acquiescence, profound diplomacy in pairing of on the part of a couple of young ladies, by which each secured the companionship of the dearest fellow in the world – very pretty skipping down the path and into the carriages on the part of all the young ladies except Sybilla, who walked by her father’s side as if each flag-stone were a feather-bed – four men pulling at the brims of four bad hats, at the doors of four “flies” – and then, as one of the dearest fellows in the world found breath to remark to one of the happiest girls in the world, they were off.

The prospect of matrimony, viewed at the distance of a day or two, is sufficiently distressing; but to stand on the utmost verge of the gulf, to oscillate within its jaws in a vestry-room, while an easy, calculating clerk looms before you, the last landmark on the boundaries of the world, is terrible indeed. In Dante’s “Divina Comedia” men stand transfixed by the eyes of serpents – serpents lie along the ground transfixed by the eyes of men: gradually the bodies of the snakes sprout limbs – they grow erect, and harden into men; gradually the features of the men fall away, their limbs shrink into them, and, with a writhe, they are become snakes – still with set eyes, set ready to renew at once the transformation, according to their doom. If this, as it appears to be, is the most terrible thing either in fact or imagination, it is so only because of its eternal repetition; otherwise, it would have to make room beside it for the equal horror of waiting in a vestry-room for the parson of your nuptials. But, practically, time is a fiction to all but clock-makers, and one may taste eternity in ten minutes under favoring circumstances; in such a case, at least, this comparison of horrors holds good to those who have to endure the latter, as Godwin and a young man similarly fated – who, seated at opposite extremes of the room, endeavored to rival each other in nonchalance – could have attested. Eternity in their particular case expired only at the quarter chime, when the priest entered apologetically. Prayers were read – responses meek and mild were given in doubt that they might prove groans, or worse, on obtaining utterance, and in a few minutes they were married. Sic transit gloria mundi!

With faces so flushed with happiness, and shame, and pride, that now and then it really seemed as if little flames of light were flickering over them, Sybilla and her husband walked up the matted aisle. Books and papers to sign – in an easy, off-hand style, resulting in illegibility. A congratulatory parson and a congratulatory clerk in the vestry, a congratulatory pew-opener at the door, and two congratulatory neighbors of hers in the church-porch – all to be rewarded for their congratulation, to say nothing of lawful charges; which rewards and charges were given with real cheerfulness. Home! John paused upon the last step at the church-gate, twirling in his fingers the last remaining sixpence of the coin he had placed at one end of his purse for such bestowal before starting, (impulse not being trustworthy with him in such cases, but quite the contrary,) and looked about for a recipient. A pale-faced little boy, with a good deal of inquisitive, apprehensive wonder in his gray eyes, stood leaning by the railings, in a white pinafore: it would have been difficult, however, to realize his existence without a white pinafore. A bloodless little fellow, with a subdued quiet in his face, he seemed forever under injunction not to wake the baby, and a look of passive experience in his eyes, his whole appearance, from his collar to his boots, which had been inked round the lace-holes because they got brown there, imparted indescribable suggestions of bread-and-butter and nothing else; with, perhaps, a patient going to bed without that, now and then. Godwin looked painfully at the child as the child looked wonderingly at Sybilla, and, diving into his pocket, he took a shilling between his fingers, thought again, and substituted half-a-crown. This he gave the boy into one hand, and placed the sixpence in the other palm for himself. It was perfectly understood between them that the half-crown was for mother, who had inked the boots, and who could not afford to have the baby woke. Still, and though upon being bashfully thanked Godwin patted the bread-and-butter cheek as kindly and softly as any woman’s hand could have done it, the poor child could scarcely trust in the reality of his fortune, and went slowly sidling up by the church-yard rails, his eyes turned to the gay party, half in expectation of being called back; and it was not till he had watched them out of sight that he turned the corner and ran. Congratulatory parson, clerk, pew-opener and pew-opener’s neighbors – in the profoundest deeps of all and every their hearts there existed not a centillionth of the blessing and good-wishes that overflowed in that of the mother as she heard how her little son got the half-crown. It came to her in time of extremest need, and all day long she pondered the matter with unusual thankfulness; for, like a woman, she believed the giver had guessed her necessity by intuitive goodness. As for the sixpence, it was put aside in an old china cup – was to be saved to buy a spelling-book; but it finally went for bread-and-butter.

Now Godwin first grew perfectly happy. This, at any rate, was right – no future could overturn the propriety of it; and the wheels rattling in orthodox haste, he speedily passed from happiness into hilarity. To Sybilla, however, the rattling of the wheels only served to recall a little grievance, big enough, however, to constitute an important drawback to her nuptial satisfaction. She thought there ought to have been a tour. Her respectability demanded a tour – to Tunbridge Wells and back, at least: indeed, it had always been to her the most prominent feature of the prospect while matrimony was yet prospective. Miss Johnson, who was positively nobody, and a shocking dumpy bride beside, she was taken direct to Margate, and stayed there a week. Fortunately, however, Sybilla here recalled to mind, as she looked in John’s face, where new humor and new meaning scintillated every moment, threatening to blaze right out, that Miss Johnson didn’t bring back from Margate such a husband as hers. This consideration, and another which, to do her justice, she had pretty constantly in view, reconciled her to her fate; the other consideration comprehended a bequest of three or four hundred pounds, which a maiden aunt of Godwin’s (who, rejoicing through life in single blessedness, seemed anxious to avert the bliss from some other one) had made him, on condition of marriage: otherwise, it was to be applied in dowry of three of the most deserving young women in her native town. This latter consideration, also, besides that “things frequently took a turn on such events,” had its under-current influence on Godwin’s resolution of matrimony in the unpromising condition of his affairs; though, of course, he acknowledged it not, and scarce thought of it.

On turning a corner near Grandison-place, the ears of the bridal-party, but more especially those of the bride’s papa, were appalled at hearing several rounds of cheering, or rather a succession of those nondescript roars with which the boy-population is given to express either dissatisfaction or amusement. In this case it was an amused roar; and nervously thrusting his head out of the carriage-window, Mr. Lee perceived with horror that it was emitted by a knot of youths of from twelve to sixteen, and that it seemed to result from observation of what was going on in the kitchen of his own residence. Fact was, that Horace was performing to a company which, originally consisting only of the green-grocer’s boy and the boy of the butcher, had increased in numbers and enthusiasm beyond his expectations. Standing on a chair by the window, innocent of the near approach of his master, he was passing before the eyes of the delighted assembly all the various items of the wedding-feast; while, still more to the popular delight, poor Mrs. Finch danced frantically round him, endeavoring, in fits of indignant or beseeching eloquence, to arouse the foot-page to a clearer sense of decorum. “These, gen’lemen,” persevered he, elevating several in a line with his head, “is the weddin’ taters as that gen’leman in the blue apern was just kind enough to bring us – kidney uns – biles like balls o’ flour. And this here,” dropping the roots and catching up a pasty, “is the weddin’ goosbry pie, and a werry stunnin’ pie it is, too;” smelling it, he expressed his further opinion in his countenance. Mrs. Finch, far gone in the depths of despairing resignation, passively received the tart from the hands of Horace, enabling him to proceed without delay to the exhibition of fish, flesh and fowl, in like manner and with similar comments; until, having exhausted even all the table appurtenances, the cost of which he appeared to be cognizant of, he concluded the exposition with the bellows; which he averred the governor and himself were going to kneel to alternately as long as any thing remained uncooked. It was while an appreciative public were demanding a rehearsal – rather to the alarm of Horace, whose original intention had merely been to display to the two friends above designated the good things he fondly hoped to have a share of “pitching into” – that the noise of wheels came rolling down the road. Dismounting from the chair, Horace retreated rapidly into his den, and solemnly recommenced polishing a tea-urn, leaving the miserable Lee, whose respectability fluttered in rags about him as he did so, to disperse his friends. This, with the help of one of the dearest fellows in the world, who, having a large pair of whiskers, liked to exhibit them in situations of peril and command, was accomplished with greater success than might have been expected; though it was emphatically required of the gentleman in whiskers that he should “get out of that hat,” meaning the glossy chapeau he had purchased only the night before, and notwithstanding that, in reference to the other dearest fellow in the world, who was very young and had no whiskers at all, a young lady was anxiously advised “not to let that little boy eat too much vegetables,” as he didn’t look very well as matters already stood; while the blushing grocer’s boy, holding his forefinger in his mouth, leaned fondly on the arm of the butcher as they passed down the street, in obvious imitation of the bride.

With such exceptions, the hours glided past, accompanied by much the same incident as attends all wedding-days when there is not a “tour.” At the feast, every one sat down inspired with the intention to expound the latest traditions of the usages of fashionable society; and, in the course of the hour, Miss Baker did herself the pleasure of reproving Miss Clark, who had crossed her knife and fork upon her plate, by ostentatiously placing hers at a gentle angle: while a gentleman performed a similar kindness for another, who had got his salt in a vulgar and improper position upon his plate: this reprover also seemed better after the administration of his reproof. Mr. Lightowler, brother of Mrs. Lee, and a toyman, with Mrs. Lightowler, were, however, lamentable exceptions. Exclusively devoted to each other, they sat together, mutually fat and hot, and helped each other from any portion of the table within arm’s length, drinking from one glass, laughing one huge laugh whenever they felt inclined, but particularly at their own jokes, which they didn’t seem to care about any one else appreciating, and all utterly untouched, because utterly unconscious, by the vexation of their host and the undisguised disgust of the most respectable of the company. Partly from this very fact, but principally from the downright simplicity, the good-humor and genial oddity of the man, Godwin resolutely fraternized with the toyman the moment the speeches were all over. An unfathomable Etna of whim, of grotesque humor, was always simmering in the mind of the bridegroom, breaking out at rare intervals in sudden eruption, and with such grim vehemence of delivery that people would pause in their laughter, and scan him for a moment, with serious, half-frightened glances. Elated with the “excellent, light dinner-wine,” and a bottle of “a full fruity port,” he made the hours spin round the clock with quip and crank and story; while Mr. Lightowler sat on the floor at sober intervals and sang comic songs with a whistling refrain, till he whistled even Mr. Lee out of his annoyance at such an exhibition of vulgarity in his brother-in-law, and Mrs. Lightowler into such an admiration of her husband that she at last sat down on the rug beside him and whistled too. And as the moments passed, and evening fell, bright eyes grew brighter with the stars, glowing cheeks more rosy, warm hearts warmer, and everybody and every thing happier and better. Bride and bridegroom happy and proud. Music, and dancing, and sparkling laughter – sentiment, love, flirtation, and a general return to boyhood and girlhood. More love and a little less flirtation – declaration of fond reciprocity between two young men and two young maidens (one declaration in the kitchen by the mangle, and one under the tank in the garden,) an admission of perfect disengagement (and of a trifle more) on the part of another young maiden. More lights, more music, more dancing, more sentiment, more comic songs on the hearth-rug, more full-bodied port for the general company, and more half-and-half for Mr. Lightowler.

No mamma any where in the house! no Sybilla! And papa looking awkward. Almost one o’clock, you see.

One by one the bouquets of bonnets re-appeared immediately upon this discovery, looking very much as if they – their owners, that is to say – knew all about it and enjoyed the ruse. Then followed a general leave-taking, a serious affair in Lightowler’s case, though elsewhere with merriment, and here and there with a kiss. Cabs rolled leisurely from the gate – in the last Godwin and papa: and the house was again as dark and still as those “earthly tabernacles” were doomed soon to be, upon whose front the light of youth, and love, and laughter, shone resplendently but now.

It is a sober business, riding at midnight in a musty-smelling cab; and the reactionary seriousness that oppressed both gentlemen on turning from the deserted house, seemed to increase with the odor of the straw. Very few words, upon very indifferent subjects, passed between them, as John went really home for the first time; and as, on arriving there mamma was just ready to return, Mr. Lee did not alight, but drove back with his wife to their bereaved hearth, after a simple “good-night” had passed among them.

In Jessy’s early girlhood, the mother of the poor little bread-and-butter boy was a servant in her father’s house. Since the death of the woman’s husband, which was but recent, Jessy had proved her best friend – coming with cheerful gossip and “something for the baby” whenever she had an errand into town. Which she had to-day; and had hardly been seated half an hour when she became acquainted with the story of the half-crown, what the gentleman was like and who the lady, and which way they went. The boy had heard the name of the gentleman, as some one called to him, but did not perfectly recollect it: it began with a G, at any rate, and sounded like Godwin.

To the sum of sublunary happiness go many fictions – pretty figments, which, though constantly and forever disproved, are never the less believed in. Even in the contemplation of objects the most beautiful in art and nature fiction is seldom absent; and when the sun sets in clouds of purple and fine gold, it is not enough that they are clouds, however gorgeous; but we must at once set about making woods, and seas, and islands of the blest, of them.

We have sought it in heaven, (an instance is meant,) but with equal propriety and success we might seek it in – matrimony. For what but a sugared fallacy is that Honeymoon so universally accepted as consequent on every marriage – as being a mingling of the sweetness of Hybla with all the soft suffusion of love which lapped Endymion on the hill of Latmos, to be enjoyed in all cases and without limit during the space of one calendar month – for twenty-eight days at least; except in leap-year. At which time, even February days are twenty-nine. A fond conceit! It is wrong to argue everyday life from the privileges of the aristocracy; and only in connection with marriages strictly of convenience does the honeymoon roll through its successive phases with propriety, going out as the monthly bills come in. Careful computation of the laws of accident prove the full average honeymoon to subsist about four days and a half, except in cases where youth, fortune, and fine weather combine with affection, when the average may possibly be doubled. So that wife Sybilla ought to have been much more content than in fact she was, that her matrimonial orb waned not before the expiration of a week; considering that though they were rich enough in youth, they possessed neither fortune nor particularly fine weather. It was, however, this very consideration of lack of fortune, in the sense of money, that caused Sybilla first to descend from out the luxuriant solitudes of love in which, hand in hand, they had sauntered all the week, bringing her husband quickly after her. The initiatory cause of the declension was a nightcap; for after a protracted evening sitting at an open window, Sybilla woke the next morning to find, not the locks of Hyperion straying over the pillow beside her, as before, but a tall, tasseled, miserable white cap, which, encroaching over Godwin’s eyes, elongated his cheeks and exaggerated his nose to a most unhandsome degree. The unconscious sleeper, experiencing symptoms of cold in the head the night before, had ventured, in the dark, to assume that wretchedest of all habiliments, the male nightcap.

When the blossom is ripest, the softest breath may waft it from the bough; in the nodding of that green tassel moved a cruel blast sufficient to scatter the full-blown poetry of any week-grown honeymoon. Accordingly, before breakfast was fairly over, Sybilla remembered that very little business had occurred to interrupt their happiness – before dinner, that Mr. Godwin had paid several bills with undisguisable uneasiness; and, as the result of such souvenirs, not only she but Godwin also sat down at supper that night to a diluted cup, broken-winged and very near the earth. Every day nearer and nearer the earth, for things did not take a turn, but grew worse; and though they had the certainty of aunt’s legacy before them, Godwin soon began to fear almost as much as his wife that if, according to the doggrel of Keats, it was not much more agreeable in an apothecary’s shop. Not that it had quite come to that yet; he still contrived to maintain the marmalade for breakfast; but not many weeks elapsed ere Sybilla became plainly suspicious that though he might be rich enough in drugs, the money-capital of her husband was well-nigh exhausted. Indeed, she assured herself of the fact by just looking into his desk one morning, privately and with a guilty face.

“Love in a cot, with water and a crust,
Is – Love forgive us! – cinders, ashes, dust,”

Now the legacy lay vested in his uncle, the Kentish miller; and as a few months before, in a letter which came hoping that John was in good health, as it left him (the miller) at present, he had received much earnest advice against early marriage, John wished to postpone the demand as late as possible. But the darkening horizon, and a few comfortless hints thrown out by the partner of his cares, precipitated intentions; and so he started one bright morning to receive his little fortune, planning its expenditure very solemnly by the way.

Drearily, Sybilla threw herself open a sofa as her husband passed out at the door, and, half extended, employed an hour in usefully painting a piece of velvet, and uselessly pondering past, present and future. Drearily, she put aside the daubed stuff, and taking up a newspaper some weeks old, concluded each listlessly-perused paragraph with a yawn, till she came to “Important from India,” and read of a bloody engagement there. How in the cold gray dawn a company of the gallant 292d, and a strong detachment of the gallant 293d, marched to reduce the contumacious Bungumshah. How, when the cold dawn kindled into blazing, blasting noon, and long-enduring men fell here and there, suddenly shot dead from the sun, it was deemed expedient to march over them against the contumacious Bungumshah. How, having mistaken the position of that Indian, they came not up with him by nightfall, for all their marching, and very gladly encamped – the greater portion on the plain, but a small detachment of some hundred men or so in a hollow at a little distance, under Ensign Hope. How, in the night sentinels were struck secretly, the camp penetrated by Indian shadows rather than Indian men, the commander killed in sleep – encampment torn from end to end, encampment channeled from end to end with tumult and blood. Ensign Hope listens in the distant hollow, rises up with his hundred men or so, bears down to the verge of the scene swift and silent, goes blazing into it like an Indian storm, and settles the matter. To the right is a ravine; and as the enemy fly, panic-struck, Ensign Hope, with consummate skill, (so the newspaper calls it,) contrives to push the main body to the edge of it – pushes a few over into it, in order to furnish argument of prompt surrender to the rest. Which is profited by; and by the time the camp is thoroughly roused from its hideous nightmare, every soldier with his head still on may place two or three prisoners at the end of his bayonet. As for the Bungumshah, he is disarmed by Ensign Hope himself, with as much grace of manner as a conqueror with one boot on (had no time to advantage by both) might be supposed capable of. Official thanks, loud newspaper laudations, honors present and prospective to Ensign Hope.

Trembling, Sybilla glanced thus rapidly through the narrative, and then, after a moment’s breathless reflection, perused it minutely from first to last, her eyes lingering long about the lines in which the hero’s name happened to be printed, and on the praises and the recital of rewards bestowed upon him. And again she sat entranced, with parted lips and dilated eyes. Ensign Hope! muttered her wonder-bound tongue; Parson Hope, as he used to be called, from his solemn length and inclination to white neckcloths; the blundering boy cadet whose addresses she merrily rejected for those same peculiarities a few years ago! Who could have supposed so much heroism in him?

Only a daughter of Eve, we may pardon Sybilla that she took glory to herself in answering the question. Plainly, love for her was at the foundation of all this heroism; it was to add force and grace to his overtures – to render himself more worthy of her, that he had coveted the reward and reputation consequent on such achievements; and, indeed, none but the brave deserve the fair. Only the wife of an apothecary, as well as merely a daughter of Eve, we might also pardon the dreams she thereupon indulged, in which, as the lady of Captain, of Colonel, very possibly of Lieut. General Sir Victor Hope – for Clive became a peer – she shone enjeweled in her natural sphere, the admired of men, the envy of women. But the bitterness with which she dwelt upon it after a while, as a now impossible career, was altogether unpardonable. Not that she cared, Sybilla said within herself; she was happy enough – never happier; but it was strange that her anticipations of one day becoming a “lady” should be so nearly verified; strange that this news should arrive just when it was too late and of no avail, even if she had cared; very strange that she whom it most concerned, to whom she was sure it was mainly addressed, should be kept in total ignorance for weeks after all the rest of the world had become aware of it! So Sybilla said within herself; but being conscious of some heart-burning, she interpreted her reflections into the mildest language capable: thus the word “strange” really had in it some of the meaning of the word “vexatious.” And, assured of her primal conclusions, Wife Sybilla went on to consider how grievous a thing it was that disappointment in the secret end of his endeavors should embitter to the ears of Victor Hope the very plaudits of his countrymen. Assuredly he was to be pitied, at any rate. And Sybilla went on dreaming and thinking.

Meanwhile Godwin had arrived at the mill of his uncle, who received him in blank silence, took him into a little room, where books and papers were ominously displayed, and talked with him privately. On which Godwin learned that when at the utmost verge of ruin, as the books and papers proved, his uncle had appropriated the moneys which had been confided to him irresponsibly, in justifiable hope (as the papers also proved) of immediate restitution; that to refund, as affairs then stood, would be as certain ruin, without benefit to any one; but the prospect was opening, and if John would only accept twenty pounds or so, and kindly wait a single year, said the old man, fairly crying, why every thing would be made right. So what could John do but quietly button his pocket over the twenty pounds or so – quietly button his coat over a fallen heart, and go home again?

It was a brilliant afternoon when the disappointed man came to the end of his dreary journey, resolved, after much painful deliberation, to confide the whole truth of the case to his wife. Young, and with a knowledge of many things, he was not without hope after all. He had hitherto made no exertion of the talents he was conscious of possessing; and who could say that good might not come out of this evil, at last, in necessitating their vigorous exercise? So, already ashamed of past inaction, and with some show of cheerful resignation to misfortune, he laid the twenty-pound instalment on the table before Sybilla on arriving home, and began the story; which, however, he had occasion to conclude with less and less cheerfulness. Naturally, perhaps, from fore-described circumstances, the contrast between a flushed and victorious soldier in uniform, and a weary druggist in nothing describable, struck Sybilla acutely as her husband entered the door; as, also, distance lends enchantment to the view, the contrast was so much the more prejudicial to the latter. And, unluckily for her, before she had time fairly to extinguish a comparison, which some kind instinct told her was injurious and wrong, Godwin had declared himself not only a weary, unornamental druggist, but a beggared one. His quick eye, rapid in the interpretation of every symptom of thought, was not slow to perceive, however, the change that passed over Sybilla’s handsome countenance – returning over it again and again, spite of all her really laudable endeavors at banishment – ere half the recital was ended; and grief poured into his heart like water into a stricken ship. To dissolve without discontent the day-dreams she had been indulging all day long – dreams long cherished, but never approaching reality till she had abandoned for ever the power of fixing them – would of itself, Sybilla felt, have been a task; but this bitter fact, failing in the very midst of her prideful fancies, thoroughly overcame her. She burst into a flood of tears too plainly rebellious and indignant, and, saying not a word, went up into her chamber. Spirit of the Sublime Respectable! thou dapper doorkeeper to all littleness, thou aider and fosterer of vanity, and selfishness, and hardness of heart – it is to be feared that since when you first put the (then infantine) soul of this woman into a corslet, with apparatus of tight-lacing, its growth has not been good.

At first opening of the flood-gates, Sybilla’s tears were merely the outporings of disappointment; but the more she wept upstairs alone, the more she brooded and brooded, her sobs grew fewer, her tears hotter, and at length deliberately angry. She felt herself deceived – ill used; and her spirit chafed within her so willfully that even the loud, quick song of Godwin’s canary-bird wrought her to extreme irritation. Poor fellow! Had he been brought up like the light-colored canaries at home, surrounded by respectability and yellow gauze, he might have known himself (and Sybilla’s sorrows) better. As it was, however, he abandoned himself to his own emotions, and, thinking perhaps of the leafy old house in the northern suburbs, poured out his melodies like summer rain – faster and louder as Sybilla grew more irritated. He positively disobeyed her command to be still; the epithet “beast” he passed contemptuously over; she stamped her feet in vain. Hopping from perch to perch all the more readily and saucily as it had no tail worth mentioning, still the bird went on with liveliest rattle. At length, in a ferment of passion, Sybilla approached the cage, trembling steadily, as a spear thrown from the hand of a strong man trembles in the earth, seized the head of the guileless little songster, and it sang about the leafy old house no more.

Godwin uttered no remark upon the discovery of this wickedness; but when he retired that evening, anger and grief contending within him – fire with flood – he placed his dead bird on a chair by the bedside, and lay all night with his face toward it. It was the last remaining of all the little meaningful gifts which, after the manner of lovers, Jessy had rendered him in exchange for others. One by one they had departed from him – got lost somehow – as if he were no more worthy of them; and there it lay – the last and most precious, for it had a real, vocal, interpretable language of some sort – dead enough, certainly: with nothing interpretable about it but its dumbness now.

That day set its seal upon the whole eternal future. So completely fateful, so fatefully complete were the events of that day, that though no officer of evil could desire a single addition, still one omission would have raveled toils which not an entire afterlife could break through. And yet how weak were those circumstances in themselves! What mere gossamer-threads were they until strengthened by vanity and temper – even those small vices – into bonds stronger than the seven green withes that bound the limbs of Samson! What petty impediments they were either to happiness or fortune, easy to be overleapt or smiled away by a firm foot or a cheerful heart, such as ought to have belonged, and in one case did belong, to this young woman and man! But in the morning when they woke, a strong wall was found built up of these petty impediments, breast high, between them: breast high, so that their hearts could no longer beat together, nor their feet be mutually upheld, in all the dreary vista of years through which they must yet keep consort – a hard unreflecting face only on each side the wall forever. For Godwin had far-away ideas of perfection in woman – thanks to Jessy Burton; and so keenly did he feel the bitterness displayed by Sybilla, so gross did the selfishness, the violence, the cruelty of her behaviour appear to him, viewed apart from any unkindness displayed through it toward himself, that whole months of repentance and affection would hardly have restored to him his olden happiness and love. The shock was sudden and complete; and the fact of Jessy’s bird being victimized in the shock, pointed his reflections in a direction not easily diverted, even if there had been any prospect of diversion. But, unhappily, the same principle which leads women to excuse and even champion the faults of those they love most, led Sybilla to justify her feelings and their results – to strengthen the belief that she was wronged, deceived, unfortunate: for she loved herself the most. Willful and impassioned, the new-made wife now boldly brought before her eyes the comparison which yesterday she glanced at with nervous obliquity, and taking a comprehensive view of her own merits, her lady-like habits, manners, deportment, and education, her queenly face and form, she fled from the consciousness of wrong-doing in the reflection that she was a “sacrifice” – that these her virtues were pearls cast before some lost apothecary, while a hero, a future Lieutenant-General Sir Victor, was hurrying from fields of glory in the vain hope of crowning his laurels with such precious gems. It is easy to see how thus a pardonable weakness might deepen even into guilt.

But a dreary lesson it would be to follow these two through all the shadows which henceforth, deepening and deepening one by one, fell upon them, till it was day no more, nor ever could be day. Sad to mark the daily-hardening indifference of John Godwin, who, having fallen at once from all his hopes, looked not up again, nor strove to regain the pinnacle, but went plodding along alone, dull and sullen, like the last man in a plague-stricken city, plunging anon over head and ears into some occupation or enterprise, from sheer necessity of doing something, and abandoning it at the very moment of success, from naught but idle despairing – “What was the use?” Sad to mark the daily-growing discontent of Sybilla Godwin, whose willful, passionate nature could resign itself to nothing which interfered with her happiness – a nature which if it could not break through imprisoning bars would beat itself to death against them. Unlike Godwin, however, in whose horizon of unvaried gray no sun was ever visible at all, bright, warm snatches of sunshine would now and then intervene through tempest; but they were so uncertain, so evanescent, so much more allied to the principles that made Sybilla beautiful than to those that ought to have made her good, that they soon became wholly disregarded, and went finally out. So in a thousand ways was fuel added to flame, in a thousand miserable grievances and aggravations, and things that were neither one nor the other but tortured into both; in trifles brooded over and made hideous by exaggeration, till – in a few months – it became questionable whether more misery could be found anywhere in London.

Preserved from a knowledge of all his heart may contain or may be capable of, let no man credit himself with just so much virtue, by no means debit himself with just so much vice as circumstances may hitherto have elicited thence. With fair winds the leaky ship is as safe as the sound; and to thousands who lift their polluted eyebrows in horror over the crimes recorded in the news-sheet the writer of this sketch would say – It is all very much according to the weather. Besides, we arrive abruptly at a climax in the case of other men’s vices; we do not go through all the circumstances and gradations which push on to them, nor know how many of them inevitably sprang from small and almost blameless beginnings as we do in the case of our own vices. Furthermore, it is melancholy to observe how unconsciously men are beguiled through these gradations while to return is possible, and only arouse to a sense of error by a sudden clapping to of the gates which open on the homeward path no more.

Beating fretfully against imprisoning bars, Sybilla now yearned as much for love and gaiety as for marble halls. Her loss in respectability had not proved so signal as she had feared; and, in default, neglect, indifference, wasted youth, a cheerless, heartless existence now supplied the necessities of life to her misery. She forgot, wretched woman as she was, who had rendered her husband the silent, unemotional man he had become; a man without love and without anger – a barren rock, where rich and wholesome verdure used to grow. But, unfortunately, her ignorance detracted nothing from her wretchedness. Again and again, totally incapable either of reconciling herself to her lot or of mending it, she wept bitterly at the thought that it could only change with death; and naturally followed the question, by and by, which of them was likely to outlive the other? It was terrible to think that she should spend all her days in such wretchedness – should die in the midst of it; but, independent of that consideration, Godwin had grown very pale and lean lately; he ate little; and – though he complained not – frequently took medicine. He was not naturally of a strong constitution, and, taken altogether, Sybilla thought she should outlive him. This is the hard fact; the bone and substance of her frequent cogitations; but what pauses lay between, what twinges of self-repugnance now and then broke mercifully in upon them, cannot be written down – enough to say, that they grew daily fainter and fainter. What harm was there in “supposing?” And then, after a decent interval, during which Godwin got neither paler nor thinner, came the consideration – But how long first? And when Sybilla was forced to admit, that a young man like Godwin, however ailing, might well vegetate through a long series of years, she found by the feeling of dissatisfaction which crept involuntarily into her breast how much she had secretly cherished the “supposition.” Nor even after self-detection could she avoid the gracious thought that, if he lived for twenty years, he might as well live forever; but if, now, any thing should happen in – say two years (and a great many things did happen in two years) why, let us see – She would then be not quite six-and-twenty! Well, not more than two years; a year-and-a-half, say; for there would be a year for mourning, which would otherwise bring her over seven-and-twenty, which would be too old. And so Sybilla rehearsed her husband’s death and burial, and her own widowhood and restoration to happiness, and – a little, trembling, guilty thought peeped in to say – to, by that time, Lieutenant-General Sir Victor. True, she often checked these speculations – she felt they were wrong; but, time by time, with less success, until at last what is often expressed after one’s decease became with Sybilla a fixed idea before the event, that “it would be a happy release.”

Meanwhile, John kept on the weary tenor of his way, prematurely old in feature and heart – got leaner and paler; finally got into a slow fever, brought on through his own carelessness, about the time that his wife came to the above conclusion. And now it would afford strange melancholy to lift the veil from that woman’s mind as she tended by his sick-bed – terrible to watch the sudden terror which now inspired her lest her husband should die; for she felt as if her injured conscience had fled up to heaven, had impeached her thoughts, and that this was the result; that devils had power to fulfill her desire, that her soul might be damned to her desire. Strange, and more melancholy still, that when the first few days of Godwin’s illness wore away, this terror was, not supplanted, but accompanied by other feelings of a totally opposite nature! After all, was not this a providential arrangement for the happiness of both parties – a release to each from a yoke which had proved too heavy to bear – an answer to all her tears and sufferings? Of course, her thoughts were not arrayed in words so matter-of-fact as these, but it came to quite the same thing. And now these feelings reigned alternately. As Godwin grew worse, the terror increased; yet as soon as a symptom of amendment appeared, the contrary sentiment immediately assumed sway. But as time wore on, and Sybilla became accustomed to the danger, no doubt remained as to which was most powerful; and when Godwin at length recovered, and all the illness and dying, if any, had to be done over again, Sybilla felt like one betrayed.

Alas! she was now wholly in the toils of the fowler. The violence of her feelings increased day by day; and no longer to attempt description of mysteries impossible to be understood, she returned one evening from an accidental and momentary interview with Captain Hope, who was in England on leave, wrought into a determination to do that herself which it had terrified her should be done by nature on her behalf. So Godwin fell into another fever, and its accompanying symptoms were so new that, though they were less violent than previously, they alarmed him much more. He, however, was not perhaps so easy a subject for experiment as a Suffolk laborer; and whether from one cause or another – whether from observation of the symptomatic nature of his fever, or observation in the cup from which he was drinking at the time, he suddenly fell back upon his pillows one morning, shot through with the conviction that his beautiful wife was poisoning him.

The stricken man lay staring out at the window with fixed eyes awhile, but neither in anger nor horror; for presently he turned his face upon his bed and wept with all his heart. The unkindness, the ingratitude of this woman, each carried in it a sting more venomous than the sting of death; but, like the sting of death, they subdued rather than infuriated him. That she who lay in his bed and sat at his board, whom at any rate he trusted so far, whom at least he jealously protected and cared for, should drain his life from him at her leisure – to-day, to-morrow, any day, as soon as the milk came to make porridge with – smote him more with its treachery than its cruelty. Oh, what seas of anguish broke over him in that hour – casting him to and fro, a helpless waif, utterly abandoned and broken up, in perhaps the lowest deeps of agony that ever man entered upon and lived. His soul shook as in an ague; his spirit seemed oozing from him, until, like a dwindled, half-spent breath, it flickered within him on weak, unfeathered wings, impatient of their own impotence. But soon – for in such extremities men sometimes live through the changes of years in an hour – a sudden access of firmness, of sternness stole upon this fainting spirit, which momentarily grew calmer and more stern, till it was cold and hard as steel. Again his eyes became fixed and staring, but now with an expression enough alone, in its frozen and freezing terror, to have brought Sybilla down upon her knees had she encountered it. And when, half an hour after, the sick man again turned his face wearily upon his pillow, in hope of sleep, he had resolved to let Sybilla do it!

O wretched woman! Little guessed she, when she came presently to look upon this sleeper, the pallor of his face already reflected upon her shrunken heart, how completely the power had passed out of her hands – how terrible, how eternal the punishment she herself should assist him in signalizing. Little knew she that if her soul were now for a time abandoned of all warning, of all saving voices, it was abandoned to the power of her husband, in the hollow of whose hand it lay. To open his hand before her eyes, calmly, mercifully to thrust an index-finger into the spots which already festered so deep in this soul, to put aside the cup not so much from his lips as her own, and hold up to her eyes, day by day, the chalice of repentance – all this was within the compass of his will. But he willed it not; he folded up his will and put it aside; he would rather yield his inclinations to hers, and passively close his fingers while he yielded. Why, what devil was in this man also?

From that day Godwin refused to see any physician, prescribing for himself from a private medicine-chest; and from that day he grew rapidly worse and worse. The olden terrors of Sybilla returned upon her as her husband sank so palpably; she slackened her hand, withheld it altogether in a paroxysm of mortal dread which passed very well for conjugal affection, but still from that day he grew rapidly worse and worse. Till in the noon of a certain night, while she was vainly endeavoring to sleep, in an adjoining chamber, the husband called hurriedly to the wife. The wife then rose, hastened to the door in nervous stupor, and stood rigidly looking in from the threshold. The calm, every-day appearance of the patient, as he sat up in his bed, restored her, however, to confidence; and, loosening her clenched hands, she advanced to the foot of the bed.

“Come nearer, Sybilla,” said Godwin. There was something new in the expression of his voice, and she went to his side like one walking on a lake. The sick man placed one arm round her.

“My wife,” he said, and the words fell whispering from his lips, soft as the sound of falling leaves. “My wife, this fever is coming to an end.”

Sybilla shook from head to foot.