212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

A
A
SHABBY GENTEEL STORY
CHAPTER I
T that remarkable period when Louis XVIII. was restored a
second time to the throne of his fathers, and all the English
who had money or leisure rushed over to the Continent,
there lived in a certain boarding-house at Brussels a genteel young
widow, who bore the elegant name of Mrs. Wellesley Macarty.
In the same house and room with the widow lived her mamma,
a lady who was called Mrs. Crabb. Both professed to be rather
fashionable people. The Crabbs were of a very old English stock,
and the Macartys were, as the world knows, County Cork people ;
related to the Sheenys, Finnigans, Clancys, and other distinguished
families in their part of Ireland. But Ensign Wellesley Mac, not
having a shilling, ran off with Miss Crabb, who possessed the same
independence ; and after having been married about six months to
the lady, was carried off suddenly, on the 18th of June, 1815, by
a disease very prevalent in those glorious times—the fatal cannonshot
morbus. He, and many hundred young fellows of his regiment,
the Clonakilty Fencibles, were attacked by this epidemic on the
same day, at a place about ten miles from Brussels, and there
perished. The Ensign's lady had accompanied her husband to the
Continent, and about five months after his death brought into the
world two remarkably fine female children.
Mrs. Wellesley's mother had been reconciled to her daughter by
this time—for, in truth, Mrs. Crabb had no other child but her
runaway Juliana, to whom she flew when she heard of her destitute
condition. And, indeed, it was high time that some one should
come to the young widow's aid ; for as her husband did not leave
money, nor anything that represented money, except a number of
tailors' and bootmakers' bills, neatly docketed, in his writing-desk,