"Old Mrs. Tazewell has departed this life at last!" said Winston
Aylett, entering his own parlor one bleak November evening on his
return from the village post-office. "I met Al. Branch on the road
just now. For a wonder he was sober--in honor of the occasion, I
suppose. He and Gus. Tabb are to sit up with the corpse to-night."
"When did she die?" queried his wife, drawing her skirts aside, that
he might get nearer the fire.
"At twelve o'clock to-day. That is, she ceased the unprofitable
business of respiration at that hour. She died, virtually, five
years ago. She has been little better than a mummy for that period."
"Poor old lady!" said Mabel Dorrance, regretfully, from her corner
of the hearth. "Hers was a kind heart, while she could think and act
intelligently. One of my earliest recollections is of the dainties
with which she used to ply me when I visited Rosa. She was an
indulgent parent and mistress, yet I suppose few even of those most
nearly related to her will mourn her loss."
"It would be very foolish if they did!" Mr. Aylett picked up the
tongs to mend the fire. "And very unnatural did they not rejoice at
being rid of a burden. The old place has been going to destruction
all these years, and it could not be sold while she cumbered the
upper earth."
No one replied directly to this delicate and feeling observation,
and Mrs. Aylett presently diverted the conversation slightly by
saying,-"And Alfred Branch has gone to tender his services to the family!
There is something romantic in his constancy to a memory. From the
day of Rosa's death, he has embraced every chance of testifying his
respect for and wish to serve her friends. He is a sadder wreck than
was Mrs. Tazewell. You would hardly recognize him, Mabel. His hair
and beard are white as those of a man of sixty-five, and his face
bloated out of all comeliness."
"White heat!" interjected Mr. Aylett. "He can not last much longer."
"And all because a pretty girl said him 'Nay!'" pursued the wife.
Mr. Aylett and Mr. Dorrance made characteristic responses in a
breath.
"The greater blockhead he!" said one.
The other, "His was never a rightly balanced mind, I suspect. I
always thought him weak and impressionable."
"Are your adjectives synonymous?" asked Mrs. Aylett playfully.
"Generally!"
Her brother had been reading at a distant window, while the daylight
sufficed to show him the type of his book. He now laid it by, and
came forward into the redder circle of radiance cast by the burning
logs. He was in his forty-third year, saturnine of visage, coldly
monotonous in accent, a business machine that did its work in good,
substantial style, and undertook no "fancy jobs." He had amassed a
handsome fortune, built a handsome house, and married a handsome
woman, all of which appendages to his consequence he contemplated
with grim complacency. As regarded spiritual likeness, mutual
affection, and assimilation of feeling and opinion, he and his wife
had receded, the one from the other, in the fourteen years of their
wedded life. There had been no decided rupture. Both disliked
altercations, and where radical opposition of sentiment existed,
they avoided the unsafe ground by tacit consent. Mabel's uniform
policy was that of outward submission to the mandates of her chief.