University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Henry Smith.

Deborah found no one in Doncaster to supply the place
of Betty Allison in the daily intercourse of familiar and
perfect friendship. That indeed was impossible; no aftermath
has the fragrance and the sweetness of the first crop.
But why do I call her Deborah? She had never been
known by that name to her new neighbors; and to her very
father she was now spoken of as Mrs. Dove. Even the
Allisons called her so in courteous and customary usage, but
not without a melancholy reflection, that when Deborah
Bacon became Mrs. Dove, she was in a great measure lost
to them.

Doncaster has less of the Rus in Urbe now than it had in
those days, and than Bath had when those words were

placed over the door of a lodging-house, on the North
Parade. And the house to which the Doctor brought home
his bride, had less of it than when Peter Hopkins set up
the gilt pestle and mortar there as the cognizance of his
vocation. It had no longer that air of quiet respectability
which belongs to such a dwelling in the best street of a
small country town. The Mansion House, by which it was
dwarfed and inconvenienced in many ways, occasioned a
stir and bustle about it, unlike the cheerful business of a market
day. The back windows, however, still looked to the
fields, and there was still a garden. But neither fields nor
garden could prevail over the odor of the shop, in which, like
in Milton's Chaos, rhubarb and peppermint, and valerian, and
assafœtida, “strove for mastery,” and to battle brought their
atoms. Happy was the day when peppermint predominated;
though it always reminded Mrs. Dove of Thaxted
Grange, and the delight with which she used to assist Miss
Allison in her distillations. There is an Arabian proverb
which says, “The remembrance of youth is a sigh.”
Southey has taken it for the text of one of those juvenile
poems in which he dwells with thoughtful forefeeling upon
the condition of declining life.

Miss Allison had been to her, not indeed as a mother, but
as what a stepmother is, who is led by natural benevolence,
and a religious sense of duty, to perform as far as possible
a mother's part to her husband's children. There are more
such stepmothers than the world is willing to believe, and
they have their reward here as well as hereafter. It was
impossible that any new friend could fill up her place in
Mrs. Dove's affections, — impossible that she could ever feel
for another woman the respect, and reverence, and gratitude,
which blended with her love for this excellent person.
Though she was born within four miles of Doncaster, and

had lived till her marriage in the humble vicarage in which
she was born, she had never passed four-and-twenty hours
in that town before she went to reside there; nor had she
the slightest acquaintance with any of its inhabitants, except
the few shopkeepers with whom her little dealings had lain,
and the occasional visitants whom she had met at the
Grange.

An Irish officer in the army, happening to be passenger
in an armed vessel during the last war, used frequently to
wish that they might fall in with an enemy's ship, because
he said, he had been in many land battles, and there was
nothing in the world which he desired more than to see
what sort of a thing a sea-fight was. He had his wish,
and when after a smart action, in which he bore his part
bravely, an enemy of superior force had been beaten off,
he declared with the customary emphasis of an Hibernian
adjuration, that a sea-fight was a mighty sairious sort of
thing.

The Doctor and Deborah, as soon as they were betrothed,
had come to just the same conclusion upon a very
different subject. Till the day of their engagement, nay,
till the hour of proposal on his part, and the very instant
of acceptance on hers, each had looked upon marriage,
when the thought of it occurred, as a distant possibility,
more or less desirable, according to the circumstances which
introduced the thought, and the mood in which it was entertained.
And when it was spoken of sportively, as might
happen, in relation to either the one or the other, it was
lightly treated as a subject in which they had no concern.
But from the time of their engagement, it seemed to both
the most serious event of their lives.

In the Dutch village of Broek, concerning which, singular
as the habits of the inhabitants are, travellers have related
more peculiarities than ever prevailed there, one
remarkable custom shows with how serious a mind some of

the Hollanders regard marriage. The great house-door is
never opened but when the master of the house brings
home his bride from the altar, and when husband and
wife are borne out to the grave. Dr. Dove had seen that
village of great baby-houses; but though much attached
to Holland, and to the Dutch as a people, and disposed to
think that we might learn many useful lessons from our
prudent and thrifty neighbors, he thought this to be as preposterous,
if not as shocking a custom, as it would be to
have the bell toll at a marriage, and to wear a winding-sheet
for a wedding garment.

We look with wonder at the transformations that take
place in insects, and yet their physical metamorphoses are
not greater than the changes which we ourselves undergo
morally and intellectually, both in our relations to others
and in our individual nature. Chaque individu, considéré
separément, differe encore de lui-même par l'effet du tems;
il devient un autre, en quelque manière, aux diverses époques
de sa vie. L'enfant, l'homme rait, le vieillard, sont comme
autant d'étrangers unis dans une seule personne par le lien
mystérieux du souvenir.[28] Of all changes in life, marriage is
certainly the greatest, and though less change in every respect
can very rarely be produced by it in any persons
than in the Doctor and his wife, it was very great to
both. On his part it was altogether an increase of happiness;
or rather, from having been contented in his station
he became happy in it, so happy as to be experimentally
convinced that there can be no “single blessedness”
for man. There were some drawbacks on her
part, — in the removal from a quiet vicarage to a busy
street; in the obstacle which four miles opposed to that
daily and intimate intercourse with her friends at the
Grange, which had been the chief delight of her maiden
life; and above all, in the separation from her father, — for

even at a distance which may appear so inconsiderable, such
it was; but there was the consolatory reflection, that those
dear friends and that dear father concurred in approving
her marriage, and in rejoicing in it for her sake; and the
experience of every day and every year made her more and
more thankful for her lot. In the full liturgic sense of the
word, he worshipped her, that is, he loved and cherished and
respected and honored her; and she would have obeyed
him cheerfully as well as dutifully, if obedience could have
been shown where there was ever but one will.