“Nothing wrong with Richard, I hope?” he said.
“I hope not, sir; and that is what I wanted to speak with you about, if you will be so good as to have a little patience with me. I am a simple woman, I know, sir; my husband (ah! _you_ would have understood _him_) always said I was; but the simple are sometimes wise unto salvation. You live, sir, like a Christian--you never keep open after six on Saturdays--so that my boy gets home early, and not too much worn with fatigue to enjoy the rest and perform the duties of the Sabbath; and, on Sunday, it does him good (he says) to see you in church before the bell has done ringing. I am sure, sir, you are a Christian.”
“I hope so; I am a believer; but many a believer does not live as becomes a follower of Christ,” replied Mr. Whitelock.
“My husband, sir, was one of those who suffered long, and was kind, and thought no evil; in short, sir, you can read his character in 1 Corinthians, chap. xiii. I owe him more than woman ever owed to man. His unfortunate attachment to me lost him his position in society: his father never forgave him for marrying a farmer’s daughter. I thought that I did right, because he, just one-and-twenty, said he could bend his lot to mine, and laugh at poverty, and not live without me, and such like things--as, perhaps, you have said yourself before you were married.”
“I beg your pardon, my good woman,” interrupted the bookseller, “but I never was married, and never uttered such absurdities in my life.”
Mrs. Dolland colored, and twisted the end of her shawl round her finger.
“Lucky, sir--lucky for you--and for--but I beg your pardon; perhaps you never were in love.”
Mr. Whitelock fidgeted, and grumbled something, and the widow’s instinct made her comprehend that he did not relish her conjectures. She continued--
“I believed every word he said: I could not understand his sacrifice, because I had never moved in his sphere; I thought it a fine thing to marry for love, and out-stare poverty. I did not know that the gaze of its stony eyes, and the clutch of its bony hands might drive him to his grave. They said he was consumptive from his birth: I don’t believe it; I know that labor and want take its form. I went to his father; I knelt to him; I told him I would leave my husband--go where they should never hear my name--if he would only receive him and his son; I did, indeed, sir; but he turned from me with cruel words. And, though he knew he was teaching a few poor scholars, just for bread, so he left him--and so he died. I only wish that young, poor girls, who think it a fine thing to many a gentleman, could know the misery it brings: the hardest lot can be borne alone; but to bring another to it, and that other the one you would die to make happy--_Oh! that is the hardest of all things to bear!_ I beg your pardon, sir; but if I did not begin from the first, you could not understand my feelings.”