Books: Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine
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T.S. Arthur >> Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine
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Things now wore a very serious aspect. A few weeks found the unhappy
young man reduced to the extremity of breaking up and selling his
furniture by auction in order to get money to live upon. There was
scarcely a store in Madison at which he had not sought for
employment. But all his efforts proved vain. He had a good trade;
why, you will ask, did he not endeavour to get work at that? You
forget. It was the trade of a tailor!--the calling so despised by
his wife. How could he own to her that he was but a tailor! How
could he break to her the disgraceful truth that she had married a
tailor!
The money obtained by selling their furniture did not last a very
long time.
"I will make another effort to obtain employment in Cincinnati,"
said the young man, after they were reduced almost to their last
dollar. "It is useless to try any longer in this place. I have
waited and hoped for some favourable turn of fortune, until my heart
is sick."
His wife made no objection, for she had none to make.
On the next day, Fletcher left for Cincinnati. He arrived there in
the night. On the following morning, he left the hotel at which he
had stopped, and, going into Main street, entered the first
merchant-tailor's shop that came in his way.
"Have you any work?" he asked.
"We have room for a journeyman, and are in want of one. Can you do
the best work?"
"I can."
"Did you serve your time in the city?"
"No. I am from the East."
"Very well. Here is a job all ready. You can go to work at once."
The young man did not hesitate. He took the bundle of work that was
given him, and was shown into the back shop. He wrote home
immediately that he had obtained employment, which he hoped would be
permanent, and that he would be in Madison, Saturday about midnight,
and leave again on Sunday evening. He did not say, however, what
kind of employment he had procured. That was a secret he meant, if
possible, to conceal. When he met his wife, he evaded her direct
questions as to the kind of employment he was engaged in, somewhat
to her surprise.
For a month, Fletcher went and returned from Cincinnati, weekly,
bringing home about eight dollars each week, after paying all his
expenses. By that time, his wife insisted so strongly upon going to
Cincinnati with him, and taking boarding, that he could make no
reasonable objection to the step. And so they removed, Fletcher
feeling many serious misgivings at heart, lest his wife should make
a discovery of the truth that she had married only a tailor!
"Where did you say the store was at which you are employed?" she
asked, a day or two after they were comfortably settled at a very
pleasant boarding-house in Cincinnati.
"On Main street," replied Fletcher, a little coldly.
"What is the name of the firm? I forget."
"Carter & Cassard."
Fletcher could not lie outright to his wife, so he told her the
truth, but with great reluctance.
No more was said then on the subject. About a week afterward, Mrs.
Fletcher said to her husband, "I was along Main street to-day, and
looked at the signs over every dry-goods store that I passed, but I
did not see that of Carter & Cassard."
In spite of all he could do, the blood rushed to the face of the
young man, and his eyes fell under the steady look directed toward
him by his wife.
"The store is there, nevertheless," said he. His manner and the tone
in which he spoke excited in the mind of his wife a feeling of
surprise.
For the next four days, there was a strong conflict in Fletcher's
mind between false pride and duty. It grieves me to say that, in the
end, the former conquered. On Saturday night, he came home with a
troubled look, and told his wife that he had lost his situation,
which he said had only been a temporary one. In this he certainly
went beyond the truth, for he had given it up voluntarily.
The poor young creature's heart sank in her. They had only been in
Cincinnati about two weeks; were among entire strangers, and all
means of subsistence were again taken from them. It is no wonder
that she wept bitterly upon receiving this sudden and distressing
intelligence. To see his wife in tears filled the heart of Fletcher
with the severest pangs. He more than half repented of what he had
done. But the thought of confessing that he was only a tailor made
him firm in his resolution to meet any consequence rather than that.
"He was a fool!" exclaimed Kate, no longer able to restrain her
indignation against the young man, and thus breaking in upon her
aunt's narrative.
"But remember, Kate, how contemptuously he had heard her speak of
his trade, and even vow that she would rather drown herself than
marry a tailor."
"Suppose she did say this, when a thoughtless girl"--
"As you are, Kate."
"Don't bring me into the matter, aunt. But suppose she did say so,
is that any reason for his starving her? He was bound to use his
best efforts for the support of his family, and ought to have been
thankful, under the circumstances, that he was a tailor."
"So I think. And his wife ought to have been thankful too."
"And I suppose she would have been if he had possessed the manliness
to tell her the truth."
"No doubt in the world of that," returned Aunt Prudence, and then
resumed her narrative:
A week was spent by the young man in another vain effort to find
employment as a clerk. Then he avowed his intention to go to
Louisville, and see if nothing could be done there.
"Try longer here, Joseph. Don't go away yet, earnestly and tearfully
pleaded his wife. "You don't know how hard it is for me to be
separated from you. I am lonely through the day, and the nights
pass, oh! so heavily. Something may turn up for you here. Try for a
while longer."
"But our money is nearly all gone. If I don't go now, I shall have
no means of getting away from this place. I feel sure that I can
find something to do there."
His wife pleaded with him, but in vain. To Louisville he went, and
there got work at the first shop to which he made application. At
the end of a week he sent his wife money, and told her that he had
procured temporary employment. She wrote back asking if she might
not join him immediately. But to this he objected, on the score
that, as his situation was not a permanent one, he might, in a few
weeks, be obliged to leave Louisville and go somewhere else. This,
to his wife, was by no means satisfactory. But she could do no less
than submit.
Thus separated, they lived for the next three months, Fletcher
visiting his wife and child once every two weeks, and spending
Sunday with them. During the time, he made good wages. But both
himself and wife were very unhappy. Earnestly did the latter plead
with her husband to be allowed to remove to Louisville. To this
however, he steadily objected. Daily he lived in the hope of
securing a clerkship in some store, and thus, being able to rise
above the low condition in which he was placed. The moment he
reached that consummation, so much desired, he would instantly
remove his family.
At length, it happened that Fletcher did not write once, instead of
several times, during one of the periods of two weeks that he was
regularly absent. The Sunday morning when he was expected home
arrived, but it did not bring, as usual, his anxiously looked-for
presence. His wife was almost beside herself with alarm. No letter
coming on Monday, she took her child and started for Louisville in
the first boat. She arrived at daylight, on Tuesday morning, in a
strange city, herself a total stranger to all therein, except her
husband, and perfectly ignorant as to where he was to be found. The
captain of the steamboat kindly attended her to a boarding-house,
and there she was left, without a single clue in her mind as to the
means of finding her husband. Inquiries were made of all in the
boarding-house, but no one had heard even the name of Joseph
Fletcher. As soon as she could make arrangements to get out, Mrs.
Fletcher visited all the dry-goods stores in the city, for in some
one of these she supposed her husband to be employed, although he
had never stated particularly the kind of business in which he was
engaged. This search, after being continued for a greater part of
the day, turned out fruitless. Night found the unhappy wife in an
agony of suspense and alarm. Some one at the boarding-house advised
her to have an advertisement for her husband inserted in a morning
paper. She did not hesitate long about this course. In the morning,
a brief advertisement appeared; and about nine o'clock a man called
and asked to see her.
She descended from her room to the parlour with a wildly throbbing
heart, but staggered forward and sank into a chair, weak almost as
an infant, when she saw that the man was a stranger, instead of her
husband, whom she had expected to meet.
"Are you Mrs. Fletcher?" he asked.
"I am," she faintly replied.
"You advertised for information in regard to your husband?"
"I did. Where is he? Oh, sir, has any thing happened to him?"
"No, ma'am, nothing serious. He has only been sick for a week or ten
days; that is, the man I refer to has. Your husband is a tailor?"
"Is the man you speak of a tailor?" eagerly asked Mrs. Fletcher.
"He is, ma'am; and has been working for me at No.--Fourth street."
"Then he is not my husband," replied the poor wife, bursting into
tears. "My husband is a clerk." In the bitterness of a keen
disappointment, rendered sharper by doubt and fear, Mrs. Fletcher
wept for some minutes. When she could command her feelings to some
extent, she thanked the tailor for calling, and repeated what she
had said, that the man at his house could not be her husband.
"He is from Cincinnati, ma'am; and goes there once in every two
weeks. I know that he has wife and child there," said the man.
"Still he cannot be my husband," replied Mrs. Fletcher; "for my
husband is not a tailor."
"No, not in that case, certainly." And the man owed and withdrew.
All day long the wife waited for some more satisfactory reply to her
advertisement, but no farther response to it was made. The call of
the tailor seemed like a mockery of her unhappy condition.
Night came, and all remained in doubt and darkness; and then the
mind of Mrs. Fletcher turned to the visit of the tailor, half
despairingly, in order to find some feeble gleam of hope. Perhaps,
she said to herself, as she thought about it, there is some mistake.
Perhaps it is my husband after all, and the man is in some error
about his being a tailor. As she thought, it suddenly flashed
through her mind that there had been a good deal of mystery made by
her husband about his situation in Cincinnati as well as in
Louisville, which always struck her as a little strange. Could it be
possible that his real business was that of a tailor? All at once
she remembered that her husband had been particularly silent in
regard to his early history. Trembling with excitement, she left the
house about eight o'clock in the evening, and started for the place
where she remembered that the tailor said he lived. He was in his
shop, and recollected her the moment she entered.
"Can I see the man you told me was named Fletcher?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am; and I sincerely hope there has been some mistake, and
that you will find him to be your husband; for he is very ill, and
needs to be nursed by a careful hand."
Mrs. Fletcher followed the tailor up stairs, her heart scarcely
beating under the pressure of suspense. In a small chamber in the
third story, the atmosphere of which was close, oppressive, and
filled with an offensive odour, she was shown a man lying upon a
bed. She needed not a second glance, as the dim light fell upon his
pale, emaciated face, to decide her doubts. Her husband lay before
her. Eagerly she called his name, but his eyes did not open. She
spoke to him again and again, but he did not recognise, even if he
heard her voice.
On inquiring, she found that he was ill with a violent fever, which
the doctor said was about at its crisis. This had been brought on by
too long continued labour--he having worked, often, sixteen and
seventeen hours out of the twenty-four--by that means earning a
third more wages than any journeyman in the shop.
Alarmed and troubled as she was, Mrs. Fletcher was utterly
confounded by all this. She could not comprehend it. All night she
hovered over the pillow of her husband, giving him medicine at the
proper times, placing the cooling draught to his lips or bathing his
hot forehead. Frequently she called his name, earnestly and
tenderly, but the sound awoke no motions in his sluggish mind.
Toward morning, she was sitting with her face resting against a
pillow, when his voice, speaking distinctly, aroused her from a half
slumber into which she had, momentarily, lost herself. In an instant
she was leaning over him, with his name upon her lips. His eyes were
opens and he looked steadily into her face. But it was evident that
he did not know her.
"Joseph! Joseph! don't you know me?" said she. "I am your wife. I am
here with you."
"Poor Mary!" he murmured, sadly, not understanding what was said.
"If she knew all, it would break her heart."
"What would break her heart?" quickly asked his wife.
"Poor Mary! She said she would never marry"--here the sick man's
voice became inarticulate.
But all was clear to the mind of Mrs. Fletcher. She remembered how
often she had made the thoughtless remark to which her husband
evidently referred. The tears again fell over her cheeks, until they
dropped even upon the face of her husband, who, after he had said
this, muttered for a while, inarticulately, and then, closing his
eyes, went off into sleep.
Toward morning a slight moisture broke out all over him, and his
sleep that was heavy, became soft and tranquil. The crisis was past!
In order not to disturb the quiet slumberer, Mrs. Fletcher sat down
by the bedside perfectly still. It was not very long before,
over-wearied as she was, sleep likewise stole over her senses. It
was daylight when she was awakened by hearing her name called.
Starting up, she met the face of her husband turned earnestly toward
her.
"Dear husband!" she exclaimed, "do you know me?"
"Yes, Mary. But how came you here?" he said, in a feeble voice.
"We will speak of that at some other time," she replied. "Enough
that I am here, where I ought to have been ten days ago. But that
was not my fault."
Fletcher was about to make some farther remark, when his wife placed
her finger upon his lips, and said--
"You must not talk, dear; your disease has just made a favourable
change, and your life depends upon your being perfectly quiet.
Enough for me to say that I know all, and love you just as well,
perhaps better. You are a weak, foolish man, Joseph," she added,
with a smile, "or else thought me a weak and foolish woman. But all
that we can settle hereafter. Thank God that I have found you; and
that you are, to all appearances, out of danger."
Aunt Prudence looked into Kate's face, and saw that tears were on
her cheeks.
"Would you have loved him less, Kate," she asked, "if he had been
your husband?"
"He would have been the same to me whatever might have been his
calling. That could not have changed him."
"No, certainly not. But I have a word or two more to add. As soon as
Fletcher was well enough to go to work, he took his place again upon
the shop-board, his wife feeling happier than she had felt for a
long time. In about six months he rose to be foreman of the shop,
and a year after that became a partner in the business At the end of
ten years he sold out his interest in the business, and returned to
the East with thirty thousand dollars in cash. This handsome capital
enabled him to get into an old and well-established mercantile house
as partner, where he remained until his death. About the time of his
return to the East, you, Kate, were born."
"I!" ejaculated the astonished girl.
"Yes. Their two older children died while they were in Louisville,
and you, their third child, were born about six months before they
left."
"I!" repeat Kate, in the same surprised tone of voice.
"Yes, dear, you! I have given you a history of your own father and
mother. So, as you're the daughter of a tailor, you must not object
to a tailor for a husband, if he be the right kind of a man."
It may very naturally be supposed that Kate had but little to say
against tailors after that, although we are by no means sure that
she had any intention of becoming the bride of one.
THE MAIDEN'S CHOICE.
"TWO offers at once! You are truly a favoured maiden, Rose," said
Annette Lewis to her young friend Rose Lilton, in a gay tone. "It is
husband or no husband with most of us; but you have a choice between
two."
"And happy shall I be if I have the wisdom to choose rightly," was
the reply of Rose.
"If it were my case, I don't think that I should have much
difficulty in making a choice."
"Don't you? Suppose, then, you give me the benefit of your
preference."
"Oh, no, not for the world!" replied Annette, laughing. "I'm afraid
you might be jealous of me afterwards."
"Never fear. I am not of a jealous disposition."
"No, I won't commit myself in regard to your lovers. But, if they
were mine, I would soon let it be known where my preference lay."
"Then you won't assist me in coming to a decision? Surely I am
entitled to this act of friendship."
"If you put it upon that ground, Rose, I do not see how I can
refuse."
"I do put it upon that ground, Annette. And now I ask you, as a
friend, to give me your opinion of the two young men, James
Hambleton and Marcus Gray, who have seen such wonderful attractions
in my humble self as to become suitors for my hand at the same
time."
"Decidedly, then, Rose, I should prefer Marcus Gray."
"There is about him, certainly, Annette, much to attract a maiden's
eye and to captivate her heart but it has occurred to me that the
most glittering surface does not always indicate the purest gold
beneath. I remember once to have seen a massive chain, wrought from
pure ounces, placed beside another that was far inferior in quality,
but with a surface of ten times richer hue. Had I not been told the
difference, I would have chosen the latter as in every way more
valuable; but when it was explained that one bore the hue of genuine
gold, while the other had been coloured by a process known to
jewellers, I was struck with the lesson it taught."
"What lesson, Rose?"
"That the richest substance has not always the most glittering
exterior. That real worth, satisfied with the consciousness of
interior soundness of principle, assumes few imposing exterior
aspects and forms."
"And that rule you apply to these two young men?"
"By that rule I wish to be guided, in some degree, in my choice,
Annette. I wish to keep my mind so balanced, that it may not be
swayed from a sound discrimination by any thing of imposing
exterior."
"But is not the exterior--that which meets the eye--all that we can
judge from? Is not the exterior a true expression of what is
within?"
"Not by any means, Annette. I grant that it should be, but it is
not. Look at the fact I have just named respecting the gold chains."
"But they were inanimate substances. They were not faces, where
thoughts, feelings, and principles find expression."
"Do you suppose, Annette, that bad gold would ever have been
coloured so as to look even more beautiful than that which is
genuine, if there had not been men who assumed exterior graces and
virtues that were not in their minds? No. The very fact you adduce
strengthens my position. The time was, in the earlier and purer
ages--the golden ages of the world's existence--when the countenance
was the true index to the mind. Then it was a well-tuned instrument,
and the mind within a skilful player; to whose touch every muscle,
and chord, and minute fibre gave answering melody. That time has
passed. Men now school their faces to deception; it is an art which
nearly all practise--I and you too often. We study to hide our real
feelings; to appear, in a certain sense, what we are not. Look at
some men whom we meet every day, with faces whose calmness, I should
rather say rigidity, gives no evidence that a single emotion ever
crosses the waveless ocean of their minds. But it is not so; the
mind within is active with thought and feelings; but the instrument
formed for it to play upon has lost its tune, or bears only relaxed
or broken chords."
"You have a strange, visionary way of talking sometimes, Rose,"
replied Annette, as her friend ceased speaking. "All that may do for
your transcendentalists, or whatever you call them; but it won't do
when you come down to the practical matter-of-fact business of
life."
"To me, it seems eminently a practical principle, Annette. We must
act, in all important matters in life, with a just discrimination;
and how can we truly discriminate, if we are not versed in those
principles upon which, and only upon which, right discriminations
can be made?"
"I must confess, Rose," replied her young friend, "that I do not see
much bearing that all this has upon the matter under discussion; or,
at least, I cannot see the truth of its application. Gold never
assumes a leaden exterior."
"Well?"
"We need not be very eminent philosophers to tell one from the
other."
"No, of course not."
"Very well. Here is Marcus Gray, with a genuine golden exterior, and
James Hambleton with a leaden one."
"I do not grant the position, Annette. It is true that Mr. Hambleton
is not so brilliant and showy; but I have found in him one quality
that I have not yet discovered in the other."
"What is that?"
"Depth of feeling, and high moral principle."
"You certainly do not pretend to affirm that Mr. Gray has neither
feeling nor principle?"
"Of course I do not. I only say that I have never yet perceived any
very strong indications of their existence."
"Why, Rose!"
"I am in earnest, Annette. I doubt not that he possesses both, and,
I trust, in a high degree. But he seems to be so constantly acting a
brilliant and effective part, that nature, unadorned and simple, has
no chance to speak out. It is not so with Mr. Hambleton. Every word
he utters shows that he is speaking what he really feels; and often,
though not so highly polished in speech as Mr. Gray, have I heard
him utter sentiments of genuine truth and humanity, in a tone that
made my heart bound with pleasure at recognising the simple
eloquence of nature. His character, Annette, I find it no way
difficult to read; that of Marcus Gray puzzles my closest scrutiny."
"I certainly cannot sympathize with you in your singular notions,
Rose," her friend replied. "I have never discovered either of the
peculiarities in these young men that you seem to make of so much
importance. As for Mr. Gray, he is a man of whom any woman might
feel proud; for he combines intelligence with courteous manners and
a fine person: while this Hambleton is, to me, insufferably stupid.
And no one, I am sure, can call his address and manners any thing
like polished. Indeed, I should pronounce him downright boorish and
awkward. Who would want a man for a husband of whom she would be
ashamed? Not I, certainly."
"I will readily grant you, Annette," said Rose, as her friend ceased
speaking, "that Mr. Hambleton's exterior attractions are not to be
compared with those of Mr. Gray; but, as I said before, in a matter
like this, where it is the quality of the mind, and not the external
appearance of the man alone, that is to give happiness, it behooves
a maiden to look beneath the surface, as I am trying to do now."
"But I could not love a man like Mr. Hambleton, unless, indeed,
there were no possibility of getting any one else. In that case, I
would make a choice of evils between single blessedness and such a
husband. But to have two such offers as these, Rose, and hesitate to
make a choice, strikes me as singular indeed!"
"I do not hesitate, Annette," was the quiet reply.
"Have you, then, indeed decided, Rose?"
"I have--and this conversation has caused me to decide; for, as it
has progressed, my mind has been enabled to see truly the real
difference in the characters of my suitors."
"You have, then, decided in favor of Mr. Gray?"
"Indeed I have not, Annette. Though I admire his fine talents and
his polished exterior, yet I have never been able to perceive in him
those qualities upon which my heart can rest in confidence. He may
possess these in even a higher degree than Mr. Hambleton, but I am
afraid to run so great a risk. In the latter, I know there are moral
qualities that I can love, and that I can repose upon."
"But he is so dull, Rose."
"I really do not think so, Annette. There is not so much flash about
him, if I may use the word, as about Mr. Gray. But as to his being
dull, I must beg to differ with you. To me, his conversation is
always interesting."
"It never is so to me. And, besides all that, his tastes and mine
are as widely different as the poles. Why, Rose, if you become his
wife, you will sink into obscurity at once. He never can make any
impression on society. It is not in him."
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