A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens Part 34

The stranger looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"His wife, ma'am! Why, bless you, he has not got any wife."

"Oh, I thought--I mean I heard"--here the little widow remembered the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, and stopped short before she told such a tremendous fib.

"Whatever you heard of his marrying was all nonsense, I can a.s.sure you.

I knew him well, and he had no thoughts of the kind about him. Some of the boys used to tease him about it, but he soon made them stop."

"How?"

"He just told them frankly that the only woman he ever loved had jilted him years before, and married another man. After that no one ever mentioned the subject to him, except me."

Mrs. Townsend laid her knitting aside, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.

"He was another specimen of the cla.s.s of men I was speaking of. I have seen him face death a score of times as quietly as I face the fire. 'It matters very little what takes me off,' he used to say; 'I've nothing to live for, and there's no one that will shed a tear for me when I am gone.' It's a sad thought for a man to have, isn't it?"

Mrs. Townsend sighed as she said she thought it was.

"But did he ever tell you the name of the woman who jilted him?"

"I know her _first_ name."

"What was it?"

"Maria."

The plump little widow almost started out of her chair, the name was spoken so exactly as Sam would have said it.

"Did you know her, too?" he asked, looking keenly at her.

"Yes."

"Intimately?"

"Yes."

"Where is she now? Still happy with her husband, I suppose, and never giving a thought to the poor fellow she drove out into the world?"

"No," said Mrs. Townsend, shading her face with her hand, and speaking unsteadily; "no, her husband is dead."

"Ah! but still she never thinks of Sam."

There was a dead silence.

"Does she?"

"How can I tell?"

"Are you still friends?"

"Yes."

"Then you ought to know, and you do. Tell me."

"I'm sure I don't know why I should. But if I do, you must promise me, on your honor, never to tell him, if you ever meet him again."

"Madam, what you say to me never shall be repeated to any mortal man, upon my honor."

"Well, then, she does remember him."

"But how?"

"As kindly, I think, as he could wish."

"I am glad to hear it, for his sake. You and I are the friends of both parties: we can rejoice with each other."

He drew his chair much nearer hers, and took her hand. One moment the widow resisted, but it was a magnetic touch, the rosy palm lay quietly in his, and the dark beard bent so low that it nearly touched her shoulder. It did not matter much. Was he not Samuel's dear friend? If he was not the rose, had he not dwelt very near it, for a long, long time?

"It was a foolish quarrel that parted them," said the stranger, softly.

"Did he tell you about it?"

"Yes, on board the whaler."

"Did he blame her much?"

"Not so much as himself. He said that his jealousy and ill-temper drove her to break off the match; but he thought sometimes if he had only gone back and spoken kindly to her, she would have married him after all."

"I am sure she would," said the widow piteously. "She has owned it to me more than a thousand times."

"She was not happy, then, with another."

"Mr.--that is to say, her husband--was very good and kind," said the little woman, thinking of the lonely grave out on the hillside rather penitently, "and they lived very pleasantly together. There never was a harsh word between them."

"Still--might she not have been happier with Sam? Be honest, now, and say just what you think."

"Yes."

"Bravo! that is what I wanted to come at. And now I have a secret to tell you, and you must break it to her."

Mrs. Townsend looked rather scared.

"What is it?"

"I want you to go and see her, wherever she may be, and say to her, 'Maria,'--what makes you start so?"

"Nothing; only you speak so like some one I used to know, once in a while."