——Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although he left
the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution, he added a
codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as tokens
of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became the possessor of the
wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for
him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was comforted with a small
legacy. The following extract relates to Iris: “——in consideration of her
manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance,
and by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a
certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situate in ——
Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being
the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several families, and
known as ‘the Rookery.’” Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and
the red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death’s-head ring was buried with
him.
XIV.
Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of
fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little
Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often
went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes
there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched
“sentimental” movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly
agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,
friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,
and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the Teacher
of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment,
loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that sinner, weeping
over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps
kissing, the little children,——so that the Gospels are still cried over
almost as often as the last work of fiction!
But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same who
had been called by her admiring pastor “The Model of all the Virtues.”
Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal hand, but full
of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had come to carry her
away, thinking that she had learned all she was likely to learn under her
present course of teaching. The Model, however, was to stay awhile,——a
week, or more,——before they should leave together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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