A Strange Story
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"Truth is stranger than fiction!"
Many years ago a young merchant in the city of Boston, who had started with a small capital, found himself seriously embarrassed. His business was that of a retail dry goods dealer. As his credit was fair, and he had several friends from whom he could borrow money, when occasion required, he did not fear any sudden disaster; but a sober view of his affairs satisfied him that in the end, unless saved from ruin by some fortunate event — ruin would certainly come.
Burton (that was the young man's name) was the son of a farmer, in moderate circumstances. At home, at school, everywhere, the "Poor Richard" philosophy had been as earnestly taught him as the creed and articles of faith — yes, more earnestly taught him; for the creed and articles were taught on one day in the week, and the "Poor Richard" philosophy during the other six. Burton had naturally a sound, well-balanced mind, and, under a different system of early training, would have made a wiser man.
As it was, the cardinal virtue in his eyes was money-making. The Ten Commandments were too well remembered to permit him to become a common plunderer; but all manner of sharp bargains that his ingenuity could suggest, were considered fair in trade, and practiced on every fitting occasion. Yet, as keen as he was, Burton so seriously overreached himself in bargain-making on two or three occasions, that he got himself embarrassed almost hopelessly. Still, he could not make up his mind to stop, settle up his business, and come out as nearly square as possible; but, in the hope of recovering himself by some fortunate speculation, still kept on buying, selling, and borrowing.
One day, as Burton sat in the back part of his store, pondering the chances for and against his future success, he saw a young lady enter, whom report said possessed a very handsome property. She was from the South, and had resided in Boston for some time with a distant relative of her father. Her parents had been dead for many years.
The young lady asked for various articles, which were shown her by a clerk, and as she examined the goods, and still continued to name other articles and express a desire to see them, Burton, with his eyes upon her, mused something after this fashion:
"If I could only win my way into the heart of someone with the substantial virtues she possesses, I might snap my fingers at the world. And why not? I'm as good as any, and as worthy of a rich wife as those who secure these prizes. 'Faint heart never won fair lady.' Aren't I good looking? Haven't I brains enough to hold my own with most people? It's a good idea. I'll look about me."
He paused suddenly, in his revery, for a movement of the young lady, which for a moment completely astonished him arrested his attention. He saw her, after she had paid for some trifling article, and while the clerk's attention was not directed towards her, stealthily take up a pair of kid gloves and conceal them in her muff. He felt his heart bound with a quick throb. Immediately the clerk turned to her, the young lady looked at him, and with a bow and a smile moved away and left the store.
Burton took up his hat, and, without saying a word to any one, passed quickly out. His store was in Washington Street, and the lady, as soon as she left it, turned into the first street leading therefrom. Burton followed. In Tremont Street she paused for a moment or two, thoughtfully, and, then crossing over, passed through one of the gates leading into the Common. She had not gone far, after being within the enclosure, before the young man was by her side.
"Miss Ledyard," said he, in a firm voice, "I saw you take a pair of gloves from my store just now, without paying for them. You have them in your muff at this moment!"
Thus suddenly and unexpectedly charged with the crime she had committed, the poor girl turned pale with fear and shame, and trembled so that she could scarcely stand.
"Oh, sir! here they are!" said she, in her alarm and bewilderment. "Take them! — and go — go — leave me, for mercy's sake!" drawing forth the gloves as she spoke.
"Oh, no, miss," replied Burton, coldly and severely. "I can't take them; nor can I leave you. You have been guilty of theft, and must answer to the law for your crime."
The poor girl turned deadly pale.
"Come!" said the young man. "Don't let us stand here to attract attention."
"Come? Where?" asked Miss Ledyard, in an agony of terror.
"We will take a turn across the Common," he said, still with an angry brow and a threatening tone. "By that time, I shall be able to determine how to act."
The girl moved on by his side, spell-bound.
"To think," said Burton, with unmitigated sternness, "that one who has every comfort that money can bring, should be guilty of an act of petty larceny like this! — an act, for which a poor wretch, urged on by poverty, would be sent to the State's Prison. Surely your crime is tenfold greater, and should receive a tenfold punishment."
"Oh, sir, pity me!" pleaded the unhappy girl. "It was more a weakness than a crime. More a strange infatuation than a desire to do wrong, which has led me into this error."
"In the poor we call this stealing," said Burton. In the rich, it can have no other name."
"You will not" — pleaded the wretched creature, turning her beautiful eyes, filled with tears, upon Burton, "oh, you cannot forever destroy me for this little act of folly. I will remunerate you a thousand fold."
"Do you suppose that it is upon the value of the article that I stand? If so, you are grievously mistaken. It is the principle — the crime against society that is involved in the act."
"Oh, sir, spare me!" pleaded the now weeping girl.
"I will," said Burton, in a slightly changed voice; "but only upon one condition."
"Name it!" eagerly demanded his prisoner.
"That you become my wife!"
The girl instantly shrank from him, ejaculating an indignant,
"Never!"
"As you please," coldly retorted the young man. "It is your only hope of escape from the penalty of your crime!"
"Would you marry a thief?" asked the girl, gathering some composure.
"That is my look-out," was replied. "I clearly understand my position; and hope you as clearly understand yours."
"No happiness could grow out of such a marriage," said the girl.
"If I am willing to run the risk, you ought to think it a fortunate chance to escape the State's Prison."
"Take me before a justice," replied the girl, speaking with more than usual firmness.
"As you please, come!" And Burton placed his hand upon her arm. They walked in silence for a few rods, when Miss Ledyard stopped suddenly, and covering her face with her hands, began weeping bitterly. Burton saw a company of ladies and gentlemen approaching.
"Here are people coming," said he. "They will naturally wonder to see you as you are. If they ask questions, I can but tell the truth."
The young girl drew her veil quickly, and Burton offering his arm, after an instant's hesitation she took it, and they moved on in an opposite direction to that from which the strangers were approaching.
"I have heard of many kinds of cruelty, sir," said Miss Ledyard, as soon as she had a little recovered herself; "but yours is worst of all. Compel me to marry you, whom I do not know — have never before seen in my life — whose station is below mine!"
"Low as my station is," interrupted Burton, "I was never guilty of stealing. I came of honest blood. I hold myself to be a man of honor and integrity, and the equal of any in the land."
"If you have any sense of honor — any feeling — any touches of compassion — pity me and let me go!" sobbed Miss Ledyard.
"You have but a single choice of alternatives. That I have already given. The fact is, my dear young lady," — and Burton's tones softened — "I am driven to this act by the stern force of circumstances. I am not cruel by nature, as you suppose, but am only acting under the impulses of necessity. You are in my power, and I cannot let you go. It is in vain for you to plead with me. Am I warped in person? Am I debased in mind? Look upon me, and answer, from my form and face, if this be so?"
"You ask an impossible thing when you ask me to become your wife," replied Miss Ledyard, but not with the tones of anguish in which she had before spoken.
"No, I do not."
"Give me time to reflect."
"Not an hour. You must become my wife before we part."
Poor Miss Ledyard again burst into tears. But Burton was inexorable. Worn out, at length, by terror and the stern perseverance of her strange lover, the unhappy girl finally consented to his demand. The proper legal forms were complied with, and they went before a minister and were pronounced man and wife, in less than an hour from the time his strange wooing began. A more singular or inauspicious wedding was never, perhaps, celebrated; and Burton himself, so soon as calm reflection took the place of hurried excitement, after he had permitted his wife, on the conclusion of the ceremony, to go home to her friends, felt amazed at what had occurred.
"Was I mad?" he said to himself. "The whole thing appears incredible! And the consequences? What are they to be? Will this young creature, whom I have forced into so strange a union, consider herself bound by her marriage vow? And if she does not, what is my remedy? I have none. It was bad enough for me to frighten her into my wishes by threats of exposure which I never meant to keep. Suppose she confesses all to her friends, and they sue in her name for a divorce? But I will not look at the dark side. I will hope for a better outcome to this strange business."
It is by no means surprising that Burton walked the floor of his room throughout nearly the whole of the night that followed, nor that for days he was unable to attend to business. He allowed nearly a week to elapse before venturing to call upon his bride. She received him calmly, but coldly. He made no reference to what had occurred: stayed only a short time, and, on leaving, mentioned when he would see her again. At the second visit her manner was a little softened. His deportment was respectful, and he evidently sought to win her favor.
Thus he continued to visit her, week after week, until, strange to say, he awoke a tender interest in her heart; and, six months after their first meeting, they were publicly married; and no one present at the nuptial festivities had even a remote suspicion of what had previously occurred.
Forty thousand dollars was the fortune that Burton received with his bride. It enabled him to extend his business, and laid the foundation of a large fortune, which he acquired in the course of his next twenty years.
Singularly enough, the husband and wife in this remarkable union became most tenderly attached to each other. The penny-save, penny-gain philosophy, which Burton had been taught from earliest childhood, caused him to set an undue value upon wealth, and warped his judgment in many things; but he was, naturally, a man of kind feelings, and possessed more than common intelligence. His wife, except one unaccountable peculiarity, was a woman that almost any man could love. She was gentle, affectionate, and full of devoted tenderness; and leaned on her husband with the confidence and almost the fondness of a child.
But the drawback in her character was a sad and painful one. It was an obsession, to the controlling of which her better reason and sense of right were not at all times adequate. The taking of the gloves from his store, Burton had looked upon as a little peccadillo; as the result of a momentary weakness, which the lesson he gave her would fully correct. But he erred in this. The moral defect was far more deeply seated, and not so easy of eradication.
They had been married for five years, and had two children, before Burton's mind was startled from its pleasant dream of domestic happiness, by a suspicion of the truth. In two or three instances he had observed silver spoons in his wife's drawers, with strange initials on them; but they had created no question in his mind. They might be old relics of old friends, for anything he knew. Indeed, it was a matter of such little importance to him, that he did not even think about it. Bills were frequently sent to his store for articles purchased by his wife, which he paid, sometimes mentioning the fact at home, and sometimes saying nothing about it. At last, it occurred to him as singular that bills containing but a single article, sometimes of small value, should so frequently be rendered. There was a manner, too, about the way in which some of them were presented, that he could not understand. Whenever he asked at home if the charges were right, his wife invariably admitted them, and sometimes showed him the articles purchased.
One day, a large drawer, which his wife always kept locked, happened to be left open, and on going near it for something, Mr. Burton was a little surprised to notice that it was half-filled with a curious medley of jewelry, silverware, small articles of fancy dry goods, and a little of almost everything that could be named. He counted ten silver, and three gold thimbles; rings of various patterns; earrings, breastpins, laces, gloves, collars, and teaspoons, with a variety of initials engraved upon them; three butter knives, salt spoons, several large table-spoons; small ornaments of many kinds, and other things not needful to mention; most of them new.
Burton closed the drawer, after a hurried inspection of its contents, and left the room with his heart fluttering. The incident of the pair of gloves — never, of course, to be forgotten — now presented itself in a new light, and he pondered it with troubled feelings.
On the day following, a man came into his store, and handed him a bill.
"What is this?" he asked, before noticing the charge. "Oh!" he added, seeing that it was for a gold thimble purchased by his wife. A chilliness went creeping along his veins.
The charge for the thimble was ten dollars. As he was selecting a bill from his pocket-book, it occurred to him that this was more than double the value of the article.
"Ten dollars!" said he. "Isn't that a mistake? You meant to say five?"
There was a threat in the impertinent eye and voice of the man, as he replied, significantly —
"It's a cheaper thimble to you than it might be, sir. We always charge double — on sales of this kind."
Burton made no reply, but handed over the money, and took the man's receipt.
Here was a confirmation of the strange suspicion that had begun to haunt him. His soul was filled with a terrible dread. How to act, he could not determine; nor could he estimate, by any known rules, the effect upon his wife's mind, if he were to reveal to her his too well confirmed suspicion of her dishonest proceedings. For days, he thought of little else. He looked at his wife's young, beautiful, and innocent face; he watched her, as with a mother's pure affection she ministered to the wants of her little ones; he felt her light arms about his neck, and her warm kiss upon his brow; and then turned his thoughts away from all this joy, to muse on the blasting secret he had discovered.
But truth warned him, that while he paused in astonishment and dismay, the strange infatuation of his wife might lead to the most dreadful consequences. As he thought of the past, he shuddered at the many narrow escapes from exposure that must have occurred, while he reposed in his fond dream of happiness. The avarice that had led him to act as he had done, five years before, was too plain an evidence of what was in the human mind, and he wondered that someone, pressed by necessity or urged on by a love of gain, had not used the dreadful secret of his wife's folly as a means of extorting money.
This last thought was but the shadow of approaching evil. While it occupied his mind, a stranger asked a private interview with him. There was something in the man's countenance that awoke an instinctive fear. When they were alone, he said, without apology or apparent concern for the smarting pain his words must occasion —
"Mr. Burton, I detected your wife, yesterday, in the act of purloining a gold watch from my store. I took it from her person, in the presence of my clerk. There are, therefore, two witnesses to the fact, and her conviction in a court of justice is certain, if I let the matter go into the hands of the police."
The man looked, without a quivering muscle, upon the instantly blanched face of the merchant; who, as soon as he could speak, said, in a pleading voice —
"But this, of course, you will not do?"
"Why not, sir?" sternly asked the man.
"What good will arise from it?"
"It will protect others, as well as myself, from loss. She visits my store frequently, and my losses may already be hundreds of dollars. Besides, I am bound as a good citizen, and also by the laws of the State, to give information to the proper authorities."
"I will fully remunerate you for all supposable losses," said the agonized merchant. "Do not, let me beg of you, make use of your fatal secret, to blast forever the happiness of my family. It is not for the value of the watch, that my unfortunate wife committed the folly of taking it. She has money at will to supply all her wants. But from a strange obsession — I can call it nothing else. She is more to be commiserated, than blamed. Cheerfully, most cheerfully, will I repay you for every loss you think you may have sustained."
"In the poor, your obsession would be called theft," retorted the man with a sneer; "and the wretch who took a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes, would be sent unpitied to prison. This excuse won't do, sir!"
Humiliated and distressed, Burton knew not what to reply. A sharp retort would only make matters worse. He, therefore, awaited in silence for what further the man had to say. He was not long kept in suspense. The proposition was in these words. It was made unblushingly.
"Circumstances have rendered me desperate, Mr. Burton. It may be, that, at some period of your life, you have felt as I do now; and may have acted, for all I know, in a similar spirit. But that is neither here nor there, at present. As I said, circumstances have made me desperate, and desperate cases admit the application of desperate remedies. This is all the excuse I have to offer for my present course of action. Suffice it to say, that I must have two thousand dollars tomorrow, or my credit is gone. Here is my due-bill for that sum. Give me your check in exchange. I do not come to extort money from you; only to coerce you into the loan of what I need. Circumstances have placed you in my power, and I must use you. At some future day, I will redeem my obligation; but how soon, I cannot tell. Meet my wishes in this matter, and your secret is safe."
Without a word of reply, Mr. Burton drew a check for two thousand dollars, and handed it to the man, who laid his due-bill on the desk at which the merchant sat, and departed.
"Gracious Heaven!" murmured the wretched man, bowing his head in silent anguish.
A warning like this was not to be unheeded. Even while he had been debating what to do, the most dreadful calamity that could befall them hung trembling over their heads. Leaving his store, Mr. Burton turned his steps homeward. He met his wife at the door of his residence, dressed to go out. Her face wore a smiling aspect. But the smile faded the moment her eyes rested upon the countenance of her husband.
"What is the matter? Are you not well, dear?" she asked, retiring from the door into the hall, as he came in.
"No," he replied. "I am not at all well."
The street-door was closed, and they went upstairs together. As soon as they entered their chamber, Burton turned the key, and then sunk with a pale face and heavily laboring chest upon a couch, while a groan struggled up from his bosom. An expression of alarm spread over the features of his wife, whose eager inquiries as to the cause and nature of his sudden illness were not answered for many minutes. At last he said —
"I need not tell you the contents of that drawer" — pointing to the one that contained the many articles she had taken unlawfully. "You know them too well."
Burton had scarcely uttered these words before he sprang forward, and was just in time to catch the falling body of his wife in his arms. Her countenance had become as pale as death, and every muscle in her body suddenly relaxed. He held her for a few moments in anguish to his bosom, and then laid her upon the bed. Days passed before she lifted her head from the pillow where he placed it, and then she looked like one who had just arisen from a long and severe illness.
Most earnestly did Burton desire to speak to his wife more particularly on the subject uppermost in his mind; but the bare mention of it had produced such painful consequences, that he could not introduce it again.
For weeks after, she was able to go about her house and look after its domestic arrangements, Mrs. Burton immured herself at home. Not once, during this time, did her husband, though often and earnestly he gazed into her pensive face, meet a glance from her downcast eyes. When he spoke to her, she answered him in a meek and tender voice; and she sedulously strove to minister in every way to his comfort.
One day happening to be alone in their chamber, he noticed that the drawer before mentioned was unlocked and partly open. He could not resist the desire he felt to look into it again. He did so. With the exception of a few articles of clothing and a book, it was empty. He took up the volume, and found it to be a small, beautifully-bound edition of theBible. It opened in his hands at a page where a leaf had been turned down; and he instantly remarked that the page was moist from tear-drops, which had fallen upon it here and there. One large drop led his eyes to a particular part of the page, and he read the line — "You shall not steal."
He closed the book; replaced it; shut the drawer, and sunk into a chair. Many thoughts crowded through his mind, and a ray of light dawned upon it.
On the same day, coming into his room, he found his wife standing by this drawer, with the book open in her hand. She laid it down and closed the drawer; but kept her head turned from him. When he at length saw her face, he noticed that a tear glistened upon one of her drooping lashes.
What was done with the articles she had accumulated in that drawer, he never knew. His conjecture was that she had destroyed them, or, as far as she could do so, had returned them to their various owners.
From that time, for seven or eight years, nothing occurred to give room for the fear that Mrs. Burton was lapsing into her old ways. No more bills came in, and no repository of suspicious-looking articles was discovered. But the consequences of past acts were not to be escaped. The man who had borrowed the two thousand dollars from Burton called upon him again and again, and always demanded more money, coupling his demand with a threat of exposure if it were not complied with immediately. His threat always produced the desired result. The various sums of money thus extorted, amounted to nearly fifteen thousand dollars. But for this circumstance, the mind of Mr. Burton would have attained confidence and repose on a subject that had dreadfully disturbed him, and the shock of awaking from a pleasant dream of security been even more terrible than it proved to be.
By this time his oldest child was nearly twelve years of age. He had three other children; and they, with his wife, made up a dear home-circle, in which the cares of business and the toil of the day were, when evening came, forgotten.
One morning, while Mr. Burton was engaged at his store, a messenger came from one of the police offices, with the intelligence that a lady who had been detected in the act of purloining a piece of lace from a dry goods store had been arrested, and, though refusing to give her name, had desired that he should be sent for.
Burton's head reeled. It was some moments before he was able to move from the spot where he stood. Then he started from the store, and ran at full speed to the office where the lady — he knew it to be his wife — was detained. On entering, he saw her seated in a chair, looking like marble. She lifted her eyes to his face, as he entered; then let them droop slowly. Her limbs slightly quivered, and she fell forward from the chair into his arms, insensible. There were many people in the office, witnesses of this scene; and to most of them, Mr. Burton was well known. There had already been a hearing of the case, in which the theft was clearly proved; and Burton was permitted to give bail for his wife's appearance to answer to the charge, and take her away, which he did with as little delay as possible.
At last had come the consequences so often dreaded, and to prevent which Burton had allowed thousands of dollars to be extorted from him. The dry goods dealer, when he learned who the lady was, and also learned the fact of the strange propensity which impelled her at times, like a kind of obsession, to take things that did not belong to her — deeply regretted what he had done under the impulse of a momentary indignation. But it was too late to retract. The matter had passed from his hands, and was now with the commonwealth.
For weeks the unhappy woman kept her bed, and refused to answer to any word of her husband's, as earnestly and kindly as he spoke to and entreated her. During most of the time she was in tears, feeling deeply it may be hoped, the evil of what she had done, and, in sincere repentance, earnestly resolving to conquer, though by a higher power than she possessed, the impulse that led her into wrong.
As for Burton, he was completely broken down. He did not love his wife less tenderly for this last act, which had destroyed the happiness of both; for he knew the good that was in her, and knew the strange propensity which led her, almost blindly, into wrong; nay, he loved her even more tenderly for her helplessness and deep affliction.
Time went on, and the case of Mrs. Burton was called in court. But there was no appearance. Months before, her husband had closed up his business, and gone with his family, no one knew, or, with reference to the law, cared to know where. The prosecuting attorney was glad of an excuse to let the matter drop, and there it has ever since rested.
But not so quietly have rested the anxious hearts of Burton and his wife, now residing, under an assumed name, in a Southern city. The daily newspapers are opened by them with a kind of nervous dread of evil tidings, and a stranger, who bears the aspect of a northern man, rarely enters the store of the merchant without creating a sudden bound of his heart, agitating his bosom for hours.
Years have gone by. But since the lapse from integrity which was threatened with such dreadful consequences to Mrs. Burton, she has been able to resist and successfully control the almost insane desire to commit petty thefts, which had been for years an overmastering impulse. The various reactions upon her of this evil tendency, whenever she allowed it to lead her into wrong actions, were of a nature calculated to show her its enormity, and to prompt to earnest struggles for the mastery over it. Such power it was not impossible for her to gain, for no one is permitted to live and grow up to a responsible age, whose evil inclinations may not be successfully resisted and kept in entire subjection to good, no matter how active they may be — for all are held in freedom. The circumstances of her life were such as, under a wise Providence, best concurred to give her the power to resist an impulse, that, when unopposed, carried her away like a vessel on a rapid stream.
As for Burton, the consequences of a wrong act — a base, unmanly act — were visited upon him in a way little dreamed of — in a way the most painful and afflicting. His whole life has been, and continues to be, one of fear and trembling; not only for the wife he loves most tenderly, but for his children, whose every act is watched with anxious scrutiny; and whose slightest departure from a just regard of other's rights, is visited by instant reproof or correction. This watchfulness of mind; this ever looking at the precept — "You shall not steal," and holding in abhorrence its violation, has not only been useful in rightly educating his children, and giving them strength to overcome the peculiar natural tendency inherited from their mother, but has made Mr. Burton himself much more careful than he would otherwise have been in paying a just regard to the rights of others. Thus, has he, also, been reacted upon by consequences growing out of his own wrong deed, and the reaction has helped to give him power to subdue the evil lust of his mind by which it was created.
Few marriages occur that do not, in some way, create surprise, or induce remarks upon the unfitness of the parties for the union into which they have entered. But no marriage grows out of merely fortuitous circumstances.
Here, as everywhere else, a wise Providence directs or restrains selfishness and base motives, and brings the greatest good possible to be obtained out of both. Perhaps a more marked instance of this, than the one we have given, cannot be found.
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