Home Scenes and Home Influence Part 26

"His face grew deadly pale. For a moment his whole frame trembled as if some fearful struggle were going on within. Then he quietly arose, and, without looking at me, left the room. Oh! how deeply did I regret uttering those unhappy words the instant they were spoken!

But repentance came too late. For about the s.p.a.ce of ten minutes, pride struggled with affection and duty. At the end of that time the latter triumphed, and I hastened after my husband to ask his forgiveness for what I said. But he was not in the parlours. He was not in the house! I asked a servant if she had seen him, and received for reply that he had gone out.

"Anxiously pa.s.sed the hours until nightfall. The sad twilight, as it gathered dimly around, threw a deeper gloom over my heart. My husband usually came home before dark. Now he was away beyond his accustomed hour. Instead of returning gladly to meet his young wife, he was staying away, because that young wife had thrown off the attractions of love and presented to him features harsh and repulsive. How anxiously I longed to hear the sound of his footsteps--to see his face--to hear his voice! The moment of his entrance I resolved should be the moment of my humble confession of wrong--of my faithful promise never again to set up my will determinedly in opposition to his judgment. But minute after minute pa.s.sed after nightfall--hours succeeded minutes--and these rolled on until the whole night wore away, and he came not back to me. As the gray light of morning stole into my chamber, a terrible fear took hold of me, that made my heart grow still in my bosom--the fear that he would never return--that I had driven him off from me. Alas! this fear was too nigh the truth. The whole of that day pa.s.sed, and the next and the next, without any tidings. No one had seen him since he left me. An anxious excitement spread among all his friends. The only account I could give of him, was, that he had parted from me in good health, and in a sane mind.

"A week rolled by, and still no word came. I was nearly distracted.

What I suffered, no tongue can tell, no heart conceive. I have often wondered that I did not become insane but from this sad condition I was saved. Through all, my reason, though often trembling, did not once forsake me. It was on the tenth day from that upon which we had jarred so heavily as to be driven widely asunder, that a letter came to me, post-marked New York, and endorsed 'In haste.' My hands trembled so that I could with difficulty break the seal. The contents were to the effect that my husband had been lying for several days at one of the hotels there, very ill, but now past the crisis of his disease, and thought by the physician to be out of danger. The writer urged me, from my husband, to come on immediately. In eight hours from the time I received that letter, I was in New York. Alas! it was too late; the disease had returned with double violence, and snapped the feeble thread of life. I never saw my husband's living face again."

The self-possession of Mrs. Cleaveland, at this part of her narrative, gave way. Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed violently, while the tears came trickling through her fingers.

"My dear Laura," she resumed, after the lapse of many minutes, looking up as she spoke, with a clear eye, and a sober, but placid countenance, "it is for your sake that I have turned my gaze resolutely back. May the painful history I have given you make a deep impression upon your heart; let it warn you of the sunken rock upon which my bark foundered. Avoid carefully, religiously avoid setting yourself in opposition to your husband; should he prove unreasonable or arbitrary, nothing is to be gained, and every thing lost by contention. By gentleness, by forbearance, by even suffering wrong at times, you will be able to win him over to a better spirit: an opposite course will as a.s.suredly put thorns in your pillow as you adopt it. Look at the unhappy condition of the friends you have named; their husbands are, in their eyes, exacting, domineering tyrants. But this need not be. Let them act truly the woman's part.

Let them not oppose, but yield, and they will find that their present tyrants' will become their lovers. Above all, never, under any circ.u.mstances, either jestingly or in earnest, say '_I will_,'

when you are opposed. That declaration is never made without its robbing the wife of a portion of her husband's confidence and love; its utterance has dimmed the fire upon many a smiling hearth-stone."

Laura could not reply; the relation of her aunt had deeply shocked her feelings. But the words she had uttered sank into her heart; and when her trial came--when she was tempted to set her will in opposition to her husband's, and resolutely to contend for what she deemed right, a thought of Mrs. Cleaveland's story would put a seal upon her lips. It was well. The character of Henry Armour too nearly resembled that of Mr. Cleaveland: he could illy have brooked a wife's opposition; but her tenderness, her forbearance, her devoted love, bound her to him with cords that drew closer and closer each revolving year. She never opposed him further than to express a difference of opinion when such a difference existed, and its utterance was deemed useful; and she carefully avoided, on all occasions, the doing of any thing of which he in the smallest degree disapproved. The consequence was, that her opinion was always weighed by him carefully, and often deferred to. A mutual confidence and a mutual dependence upon each other gradually took the place of early reserves, and now they sweetly draw together--now they smoothly glide along the stream of life blessed indeed in all their marriage relations. Who will say that Laura did not act a wise part?

Who will say that in sacrificing pride and self-will, she did not gain beyond all calculation? No one, surely. She is not her husband's slave, but his companion and equal. She has helped to reform and remodel his character, and make him less arbitrary, less self-willed, less disposed to be tyrannical. In her mild forbearance, he has seen a beauty more attractive far than lip or cheek, or beaming eye.

Instead of looking upon his wife as below him, Henry Armour feels that she is his superior, and as such he tenderly regards and lovingly cherishes her. He never thinks of obedience from her, but rather studies to conform himself to her most lightly-spoken wish.

To be thus united, what wife will not for a time sacrifice her feelings when her young self-willed husband so far forgets himself as to become exacting! The temporary loss will turn out in the future to be a great gain.

A MOTHER'S INFLUENCE.

"THERE come the children from school," said Aunt Mary, looking from the window. "Just see that Clarence! he'll have Henry in the gutter.

I never saw just such another boy; why can't he come quietly along like other children? There! now he must stop to throw stones at the pigs. That boy'll give you the heart-ache yet, Anna."

Mrs. Hartley made no reply, but laid aside her work quietly and left the room to see that their dinner was ready. In a few minutes the street-door was thrown open, and the children came bounding in full of life, and noisy as they could be.

"Where is your coat, Clarence?" she asked, in a pleasant tone, looking her oldest boy in the face.

"Oh, I forgot!" he replied, cheerfully; and turning quickly, he ran down stairs, and lifting his coat from where, in his thoughtlessness, he had thrown it upon the floor, hung it up in its proper place, and then sprang up the stairs.

"Isn't dinner ready yet?" he said, with fretful impatience, his whole manner changing suddenly. "I'm hungry."

"It will be ready in a few minutes, Clarence."

"I want it now. I'm hungry."

"Did you ever hear of the man," said Mrs. Hartley, in a voice that showed no disturbance of mind, "who wanted the sun to rise an hour before its time?"

"No, mother. Tell me about it, won't you?"

All impatience had vanished from the boy's face.

"There was a man who had to go upon a journey; the stage-coach was to call for him at sun-rise. More than an hour before it was time for the sun to be up, the man was all ready to go, and for the whole of that hour he walked the floor impatiently, grumbling at the sun because he did not rise. 'I'm all ready, and I want to be going,' he said. 'It's time the sun was up, long ago.' Don't you think he was a very foolish man?"

Clarence laughed, and said he thought the man was very foolish indeed.

"Do you think he was more foolish than you were just now for grumbling because dinner wasn't ready?"

Clarence laughed again, and said he did not know. Just then Hannah, the cook, brought in the waiter with the children's dinner upon it.

Clarence sprang for a chair, and drew it hastily and noisily to the table.

"Try and see if you can't do that more orderly, my dear," his mother said, in a quiet voice, looking at him, as she spoke, with a steady eye.

The boy removed his chair, and then replaced it gently.

"That is much better, my son."

And thus she corrected his disorderly habits, quieted his impatient temper, and checked his rudeness, without showing any disturbance.

This she had to do daily. At almost every meal she found it necessary to repress his rude impatience. It was line upon line, and precept upon precept. But she never tired, and rarely permitted herself to show that she was disturbed, no matter how deeply grieved she was at times over the wild and reckless spirit of her boy.

On the next day she was not very well; her head ached badly all the morning. Hearing the children in the pa.s.sage when they came in from school at noon, she was, rising from the bed where she had lain down, to attend to them and give them their dinners, when Aunt Mary said--"Don't get up, Anna, I will see to the children."

It was rarely that Mrs. Hartley let any one do for them what she could do herself, for no one else could manage the unhappy temper of Clarence; but so violent was the pain in her head, that she let Aunt Mary go, and sank back upon the pillow from which she had arisen. A good deal of noise and confusion continued to reach her ears, from the moment the children came in. At length a loud cry and pa.s.sionate words from Clarence caused her to rise up quickly and go over to the dining-room. All was confusion there, and Aunt Mary out of humour and scolding prodigiously. Clarence was standing up at the table, looking defiance at her, on account of some interference with his strong self-will. The moment the boy saw his mother, his countenance changed, and a look of confusion took the place of anger.

"Come over to my room, Clarence," she said, in a low voice; there was sadness in its tones, that made him feel sorry that he had given vent so freely to his ill-temper.

"What was the matter, my son?" Mrs. Hartley asked, as soon as they were alone, taking Clarence by the hand and looking steadily at him.

"Aunt Mary wouldn't help me when I asked her."

"Why not?"

"She would help Henry first."

"No doubt she had a reason for it. Do you know her reason?"

"She said he was youngest." Clarence pouted out his lips, and spoke in a very disagreeable tone.

"Don't you think that was a very good reason?"

"I've as good a right to be helped first as he has."

"Let us see if that is so. You and Marien and Henry came in from school, all hungry and anxious for your dinners. Marien is oldest--she, one would suppose, from the fact that she is oldest, would be better able to feel for her brothers, and be willing to see their wants supplied before her own. You are older than Henry, and should feel for him in the same way. No doubt this was Aunt Mary's reason for helping Henry first. Had she helped Marien?"

"No, ma'am."

"Did Marien complain?"

"No, ma'am."

"No one complained but my unhappy Clarence. Do you know why you complained? I can tell you, as I have often told you before; it is because you indulge in very selfish feelings. All who do so, make themselves miserable. If, instead of wanting Aunt Mary to help you first, you had, from a love of your little brother, been willing to see him first attended to, you would have enjoyed a real pleasure.

If you had said--'Aunt Mary, help Harry first,' I am sure Henry would have said instantly--' No, Aunt Mary, help brother Clarence first.' How pleasant this would have been! how happy would all of us have felt at thus seeing two little brothers generously preferring one another!"

There was an unusual degree of tenderness, even sadness in the voice of his mother, that affected Clarence; but he struggled with his feelings. When, however, she resumed, and said--"I have felt quite sick all the morning; my head has ached badly--so badly that I have had to lie down. I always give you your dinners when you come home, and try to make you comfortable. To-day I let Aunt Mary do it, because I felt so sick; but I am sorry that I did not get up, sick as I was, and do it myself; then I might have prevented this unhappy outbreak of my boy's unruly temper, that has made not only my head ache ten times as badly as it did, but my heart ache also"--