Part 17 (2/2)
_To Henry Colden_
Philadelphia, Nov. 9.
What do you mean, Hal, by such a strain as this? I wanted no additional causes of disquiet. Yet you tell me to write cheerfully. I would have written cheerfully, if these letters, so full of dark forebodings and rueful prognostics, had not come to damp my spirits.
And is the destiny that awaits us so very mournful? Is thy wife necessarily to lose so many comforts and incur so many mortifications? Are my funds so small, that they will not secure to me the privilege of a separate apartment, in which I may pa.s.s my time with whom and in what manner I please?
Must I huddle, with a dozen squalling children and their notably-noisy or s.l.u.ttishly-indolent dam, round a dirty hearth and meagre winter's fire?
Must sooty rafters, a sorry truckle-bed, and a mud-enc.u.mbered alley, be my nuptial lot?
Out upon thee, thou egregious painter! Well for thee thou art not within my arm's length. I should certainly bestow upon thee a hearty-- _kiss_ or _two_. My blundering pen! I recall the word. I meant _cuff_; but my saucy pen, pretending to know more of my mind than I did myself, turned (as its mistress, mayhap, would have done, hadst thou been near me, _indeed_) her _cuff_ into a _kiss_.
What possessed thee, my beloved, to predict so ruefully? A very good beginning too! more vivacity than common! But I hardly had time to greet the sunny radiance--tis a long time since my cell was gilded by so sweet a beam--when a _black usurping mist_ stole it away, and all was dreary as it is wont to be.
Perhaps thy being in a house of mourning may account for it. Fitful and versatile I know thee to be; changeable with scene and circ.u.mstance. Thy views are just what any eloquent companion pleases to make them. She thou lovest is thy deity; her lips thy oracle. And hence my cheerful omens of the future; the confidence I have in the wholesome efficacy of my government. I, that have the _will_ to make thee happy, have the power too. I know I have; and hence my prompt.i.tude to give away all for thy sake; to give myself a _wife's_ t.i.tle to thy company, a conjugal share in thy concerns, and claim to reign over thee.
Make haste, and atone, by the future brightness of thy epistolary emanations, for the pitchy cloud that overspreads these sick man's dreams.
How must thou have rummaged the cupboard of thy fancy for musty sc.r.a.ps and flinty crusts to feed thy spleen withal,--inattentive to the dainties which a blue-eyed Hebe had culled in the garden of Hope, and had poured from out her basket into thy ungrateful lap.
While thou wast mumbling these refractory and unsavoury bits, I was banqueting on the rosy and delicious products of that Eden which love, when not scared away by evil omens, is always sure (the poet says) to _plant_ around us. I have tasted nectarines of her raising, and I find her, let me tell thee, an admirable _horticulturist_.
Thou art so far off, there is no sending thee a basketful, or I would do it. They would wilt and wither ere they reached thee; the atmosphere thou breathest would strike a deadly worm into their hearts before thou couldst get them to thy lips.
But to drop the basket and the bough, and take up a plain meaning:--I will tell thee how I was employed when thy letter came; but first I must go back a little.
In the autumn of _ninety-seven_, and when death had spent his shafts in my own family, I went to see how a family fared, the father and husband of which kept a shop in Front Street, where every thing a lady wanted was sold, and where I had always been served with great despatch and affability.
Being one day (I am going to tell you how our acquaintance began)-- being one day detained in the shop by a shower, I was requested to walk into the parlour. I chatted ten minutes with the good woman of the house, and found in her so much gentleness and good sense, that afterwards my shopping visits were always, in part, social ones. My business being finished at the counter, I usually went back, and found on every interview new cause for esteeming the family. The treatment I met with was always cordial and frank; and, though our meetings were thus merely casual, we seemed, in a short time, to have grown into a perfect knowledge of each other.
This was in the summer you left us, and, the malady breaking out a few months after, and all _shopping_ being at an end, and alarm and grief taking early possession of my heart, I thought but seldom of the Hennings.
A few weeks after death had bereaved me of my friend, I called these, and others whose welfare was dear to me, to my remembrance, and determined to pay them a visit and discover how it fared with them. I hoped they had left the city; yet Mrs. Henning had told me that her husband, who was a devout man, held it criminal to fly on such occasions, and that she, having pa.s.sed safely through the pestilence of former years, had no apprehensions from staying.
Their house was inhabited, but I found the good woman in great affliction. Her husband had lately died, after a tedious illness, and her distress was augmented by the solitude in which the flight of all her neighbours and acquaintances had left her. A friendly visit could at no time have been so acceptable to her, and my sympathy was not more needed to console her than my counsel to a.s.sist her in the new state of her affairs.
Laying aside ceremony, I inquired freely into her condition, and offered her my poor services. She made me fully acquainted with her circ.u.mstances, and I was highly pleased at finding them so good. Her husband had always been industrious and thrifty, and his death left her enough to support her and her Sally in the way they wished.
Inquiring into their views and wishes, I found them limited to the privacy of a small but neat house in some cleanly and retired corner of the city. Their stock in trade I advised them to convert into money, and, placing it in some public fund, live upon its produce. Mrs. Henning knew nothing of the world. Though an excellent manager within-doors, any thing that might be called business was strange and arduous to her, and without my direct a.s.sistance she could do nothing.
Happily, at this time, just such a cheap and humble, but neat, new, and airy dwelling as my friend required, belonging to Mrs. Fielder, was vacant. You know the house. 'Tis that where the Frenchman Catineau lived.
Is it not a charming abode?--at a distance from noise, with a green field opposite and a garden behind; of two stories; a couple of good rooms on each floor; with unspoiled water, and a kitchen, below the ground indeed, but light, wholesome, and warm.
Most fortunately, too, that incorrigible Creole had deserted it. He was scared away by the fever, and no other had put in a claim. I made haste to write to my mother, who, though angry with me on my own account, could not reject my application in favour of my good widow.
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