第4章 AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES DICKENS(3)

The procession stopped at our door,for the bride to receive our congratulations.She was dressed in a shot silk,with a yellow handkerchief,and rows of a large gold chain.In the afternoon they sent to request us to go there.On our arrival we found them dancing out of doors,and a most melancholy affair it was.All the bride's sisters were not to be recognised,they had cried so.The mother sat in the house,and could not appear.And the bride was sobbing so,she could hardly stand!The most melancholy spectacle of all to my mind was,that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy.He seemed rather affronted at all the distress.We danced a Monferrino;I with the bridegroom;and the bride crying the whole time.The company did their utmost to enliven her by firing pistols,but without success,and at last they began a series of yells,which reminded me of a set of savages.But even this delicate method of consolation failed,and the wishing good-bye began.It was altogether so melancholy an affair that Madame B.dropped a few tears,and I was very near it,particularly when the poor mother came out to see the last of her daughter,who was finally dragged off between her brother and uncle,with a last explosion of pistols.As she lives quite near,makes an excellent match,and is one of nine children,it really was a most desirable marriage,in spite of all the show of distress.Albert was so discomfited by it,that he forgot to kiss the bride as he had intended to do,and therefore went to call upon her yesterday,and found her very smiling in her new house,and supplied the omission.The cook came home from the wedding,declaring she was cured of any wish to marry--but I would not recommend any man to act upon that threat and make her an offer.

In a couple of days we had some rolls of the bride's first baking,which they call Madonnas.The musicians,it seems,were in the same state as the bridegroom,for,in escorting her home,they all fell down in the mud.My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it is considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast,would be curiously mistaken.She was exceedingly humorous,and had a great delight in humour.Cheerfulness was habitual with her,she was very ready at a sally or a reply,and in her laugh (as I remember well)there was an unusual vivacity,enjoyment,and sense of drollery.She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected:as modestly silent about her productions,as she was generous with their pecuniary results.She was a friend who inspired the strongest attachments;she was a finely sympathetic woman,with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature.No claim can be set up for her,thank God,to the possession of any of the conventional poetical qualities.She never by any means held the opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings;she never suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her;she never recognised in her best friends,her worst enemies;she never cultivated the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated;she would far rather have died without seeing a line of her composition in print,than that I should have maundered about her,here,as "the Poet",or "the Poetess".

With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a woman,fresh upon me,it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close of this brief record,avoiding its end.But,even as the close came upon her,so must it come here.

Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be dreamed away,and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must be balanced by action in the real world around her,she was indefatigable in her endeavours to do some good.Naturally enthusiastic,and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her neighbour,she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects.Now,it was the visitation of the sick,that had possession of her;now,it was the sheltering of the houseless;now,it was the elementary teaching of the densely ignorant;now,it was the raising up of those who had wandered and got trodden under foot;now,it was the wider employment of her own sex in the general business of life;now,it was all these things at once.Perfectly unselfish,swift to sympathise and eager to relieve,she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded season,weather,time of day or night,food,rest.

Under such a hurry of the spirits,and such incessant occupation,the strongest constitution will commonly go down.Hers,neither of the strongest nor the weakest,yielded to the burden,and began to sink.

To have saved her life,then,by taking action on the warning that shone in her eyes and sounded in her voice,would have been impossible,without changing her nature.As long as the power of moving about in the old way was left to her,she must exercise it,or be killed by the restraint.And so the time came when she could move about no longer,and took to her bed.

All the restlessness gone then,and all the sweet patience of her natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul,she lay upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons.

She lay upon her bed through fifteen months.In all that time,her old cheerfulness never quitted her.In all that time,not an impatient or a querulous minute can be remembered.

At length,at midnight on the second of February,1864,she turned down a leaf of a little book she was reading,and shut it up.

The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was soon around her neck,and she quietly asked,as the clock was on the stroke of one:

"Do you think I am dying,mamma?"

"I think you are very,very ill to-night,my dear!""Send for my sister.My feet are so cold.Lift me up?"Her sister entering as they raised her,she said:"It has come at last!"And with a bright and happy smile,looked upward,and departed.

Well had she written:

Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel,Death,Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?

Oh what were life,if life were all?Thine eyes Are blinded by their tears,or thou wouldst see Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,And Death,thy friend,will give them all to thee.