The Home Mission Part 14

"MY FORTUNE'S MADE."

My young friend, Cora Lee, was a gay, dashing girl, fond of dress, and looking always as if, to use a common saying, just out of a bandbox. Cora was a belle, of course, and had many admirers. Among the number of these, was a young man named Edward Dougla.s.s, who was the very "pink" of neatness in all matters pertaining to dress, and exceedingly particular in his observance of the little proprieties of life.

I saw, from the first, that if Dougla.s.s pressed his suit, Cora's heart would be an easy conquest, and so it proved.

"How admirably they are fitted for each other!" I remarked to my husband, on the night of their wedding. "Their tastes are similar, and their habits so much alike, that no violence will be done to the feelings of either in the more intimate a.s.sociations that marriage brings. Both are neat in person and orderly by instinct, and both have good principles."

"From all present appearances, the match will be a good one,"

replied my husband. There was, I thought, something like reservation in his tone.

"Do you really think so?" I said, a little ironically, for Mr.

Smith's approval of the marriage was hardly warm enough to suit my fancy.

"Oh, certainly! Why not?" he replied.

I felt a little fretted at my husband's mode of speaking, but made no further remark on the subject. He is never very enthusiastic nor sanguine, and did not mean, in this instance, to doubt the fitness of the parties for happiness in the marriage state--as I half imagined. For myself, I warmly approved of my friend's choice, and called her husband a lucky man to secure, for his companion through life, a woman so admirably fitted to make one like him happy. But a visit which I paid to Cora one day about six weeks after the honeymoon had expired, lessened my enthusiasm on the subject, and awoke some unpleasant doubts. It happened that I called soon after breakfast. Cora met me in the parlour, looking like a very fright.

She wore a soiled and rumpled morning wrapper; her hair was in papers; and she had on dirty stockings, and a pair of old slippers down at the heels.

"Bless me, Cora!" said I. "What is the matter? Have you been sick?"

"No. Why do you ask? Is my dishabille rather on the extreme?"

"Candidly, I think it is, Cora," was my frank answer.

"Oh, well! No matter," she carelessly replied, "my fortune's made."

"I don't clearly understand you," said I.

"I'm married, you know."

"Yes; I am aware of that fact."

"No need of being so particular in dress now."

"Why not?"

"Didn't I just say?" replied Cora. "My fortune's made. I've got a husband."

Beneath an air of jesting, was apparent the real earnestness of my friend.

"You dressed with a careful regard to taste and neatness, in order to win Edward's love?" said I.

"Certainly I did."

"And should you not do the same in order to retain it?"

"Why, Mrs. Smith! Do you think my husband's affection goes no deeper than my dress? I should be very sorry indeed to think that. He loves me for myself."

"No doubt of that in the world, Cora. But remember that he cannot see what is in your mind except by what you do or say. If he admires your taste, for instance, it is not from any abstract appreciation thereof, but because the taste manifests itself in what you do. And, depend upon it, he will find it a very hard matter to approve and admire your correct taste in dress, for instance, when you appear before him, day after day, in your present unattractive attire. If you do not dress well for your husband's eyes, for whose eyes, pray, do you dress? You are as neat when abroad as you were before your marriage."

"As to that, Mrs. Smith, common decency requires me to dress well when I go upon the street or into company, to say nothing of the pride one naturally feels in looking well."

"And does not the same common decency and natural pride argue as strongly in favour of your dressing well at home, and for the eye of your husband, whose approval and whose admiration must be dearer to you than the approval and admiration of the whole world?"

"But he doesn't want to see me rigged out in silks and satins all the time. A pretty bill my dressmaker would have against him! Edward has more sense than that, I flatter myself."

"Street or ball-room attire is one thing, Cora, and becoming home apparel another. We look for both in their places."

Thus I argued with the thoughtless young wife, but my words made no impression. When abroad, she dressed with exquisite taste, and was lovely to look upon; but at home, she was careless and slovenly, and made it almost impossible for those who saw her to realize that she was the brilliant beauty they had met in company but a short time before. But even this did not last long. I noticed, after a few months, that the habits of home were confirming themselves, and becoming apparent abroad. Her "fortune was made," and why should she now waste time or employ her thoughts about matters of personal appearance?

The habits of Mr. Dougla.s.s, on the contrary, did not change. He was as orderly as before, and dressed with the same regard to neatness.

He never appeared at the breakfast-table in the morning without being shaved; nor did he lounge about in the evening in his shirt-sleeves. The slovenly habits into which Cora had fallen annoyed him seriously; and still more so, when her carelessness about her appearance began to manifest itself abroad as well as at home. When he hinted any thing on the subject, she did not hesitate to reply, in a jesting manner, that her fortune was made, and she need not trouble herself any longer about how she looked.

Dougla.s.s did not feel very much complimented; but as he had his share of good sense, he saw that to a.s.sume a cold and offended manner would do no good.

"If your fortune is made, so is mine," he replied on one occasion, quite coolly and indifferently. Next morning he made his appearance at the breakfast table with a beard of twenty-four hours' growth.

"You haven't shaved this morning, dear," said Cora, to whose eyes the dirty-looking face of her husband was particularly unpleasant.

"No," he replied, carelessly. "It's a serious trouble to shave every day."

"But you look so much better with a cleanly-shaved face."

"Looks are nothing--ease and comfort every thing," said Dougla.s.s.

"But common decency, Edward."

"I see nothing indecent in a long beard," replied the husband.

Still Cora argued, but in vain. Her husband went off to his business with his unshaven face.

"I don't know whether to shave or not," said Dougla.s.s next morning, running his hand over his rough face, upon which was a beard of forty-eight hours' growth. His wife had hastily thrown on a wrapper, and, with slip-shod feet and head like a mop, was lounging in a large rocking-chair, awaiting the breakfast-bell.

"For mercy's sake, Edward, don't go any longer with that shockingly dirty face," spoke up Cora. "If you knew how dreadfully you look!"

"Looks are nothing," replied Edward, stroking his beard.

"Why, what's come over you all at once?"

"Nothing; only it's such a trouble to shave every day."

"But you didn't shave yesterday."

"I know; I am just as well off to-day as if I had. So much saved, at any rate."

But Cora urged the matter, and her husband finally yielded, and mowed down the luxuriant growth of beard.

"How much better you do look!" said the young wife. "Now don't go another day without shaving."