Sweethearts and Wives CHAPTER 10.
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The result proved the truth of Mr. Goodlow's fears. By the time Grace's guardian returned to Boston, which he did immediately upon learning the failure of the two banks — the stock had fallen to a rate which offered no inducement whatever to sell. All concerned felt much more disposed to let the whole matter rest where it was, and trust to a final apportionment — than sell at rates which would yield but a mere trifle compared to the whole amount involved.
A long conference with Mrs. Ellis on the day following Milnor's return from Boston had prevented any farther reference to the subject of re-locating there. Still, the idea was fully entertained, and the hope cherished, that the strong objections made by Grace would be laid aside. In this, however, Milnor found, by distant allusions to the subject, after the lapse of five or six weeks, that he was in error. Since the day on which news had been received of the loss of her property, she had become altogether changed. The mirthful, happy-hearted girl — had sunk into a gloomy, tearful state, from which no effort of either her husband or aunt could arouse her. To Mrs. Ellis, this was inexplicable. Not so, however, at least not altogether so, was it to Milnor. He remembered too well the secret feeling he had betrayed, and its instant effect upon the mind of his young wife; and he doubted not for a moment that her deep depression of spirits, arose mainly from the belief that he had not loved her and sought her for herself alone. In this idea he was not altogether wrong.
A suspicion of the genuineness of her husband's affection once aroused, and under circumstances which necessarily changed the tone of his thoughts from cheerful pleasure taking, to reflections of a very serious character, gained almost daily strength. Every act, and look, and tone, if not every word of her husband, strengthened this idea. She did not think to ask herself how far her own state of mind might affect his, or how far the change in external circumstances, necessarily requiring him to turn his mind to serious considerations of duty, might give him a soberer cast of thought. She only considered the fact that she had lost her property — and suddenly her kind, agreeable, devoted lover — had become the silent, gloomy, morose (so she imagined), dictatorial husband. She had seen his disappointment, and now she felt the coldness, indifference, and gloom arising from that disappointment.
The lack of habitual self-control in Milnor tended only to depress the spirits of his wife more and more. And her manner chafed him exceedingly. After stifling his own feelings with an effort, and assuming towards her a cheerful, affectionate manner, as he would often do in the effort to chase from her brow, the shadows which too constantly hung upon it — he would grow impatient, and indulge inwardly a chiding spirit if she did not meet him with a like effort to be cheerful. Had he maintained uniformly towards her, a calm, even, affectionate manner — he would soon have expelled from her mind, the cruel doubt that oppressed it. But this he could not do; his own feelings were too acute. After making a sincere effort to win her from her reserve and gloom, but without any visible effect — he would, in turn, become cold and reserved; and this she would attribute to feelings of indifference which he entertained towards her. She reasoned that her wealth was gone — and what did he care for her?
Thus matters had continued for several months; not, however, without intervals during which the young wife and husband had genuine feelings of affection towards each other; happy intervals, brief though they were, in which each felt the power, the warmth, the sweetness of pure, unselfish love, going out with an earnest desire to bless its object. But for these, their state would have been intolerable.
A more than usually earnest devotion of himself to the business of his profession during this period, tended only the more to strengthen Milnor's convictions that, if he remained in Westbrook, he never would be able to elevate himself. He could gain there a tolerable support, but neither his love of eminence, nor his strong desire to place his wife in her old position, as it regarded wealth, could be gratified. If he remained in Westbrook, he must live and die in obscurity. Such a thought he could not bear. While in this state of mind, he received a letter from old Mr. Goodlow, who had been made fully acquainted with the causes that kept him from re-locating to Boston, informing him that he had a very important suit which he wished prosecuted immediately, and that he wished him to come down at once and attend to it. The letter closed by saying, "I shall expect you in two or three days at the farthest."
With this letter in his pocket, Milnor returned home, and met his wife alone. He found her in a much more cheerful frame of mind than she had been for some time. As yet, no very apparent change had taken place in their external circumstances. Mrs. Ellis owned the beautiful dwelling in which they lived, and therefore, on their income being reduced, it was only necessary to make more economical internal arrangements — while externally things remained pretty much as before. The almost total loss which had been sustained by Grace was not, therefore, known in its full extent, as no one in the family chose to allude to it. Little change had, therefore, taken place in the associates of the young wife, and from these she drew a portion of cheerfulness. Two or three of these young friends had been with her during the morning, and she felt in a lighter mood than usual when her husband came in. The tender kiss which he gave her, as he drew her to his side, made her heart leap with pleasure, and glow with a pure affection.
"I shall have to leave you for a little while, Grace," he said, after he had sat for some minutes with her head leaning against him, and her small white hand in his.
"Oh no! Why should you go away, Lewis?" she replied, instantly rising up, and looking into his face with a troubled expression, a suspicion instantly crossing her mind that his declaration had something to do with her too long-continued coldness and real unkind manner towards him, of which her aunt had but the day before succeeded in making her sensible, as well as of the consequences, in a loss of his affection, which might result. She felt that she had been unjust to him.
"Business, Grace," returned her husband. "I have just received a letter requiring my immediate presence at Boston professionally."
"Boston! Business at Boston! What have you to do with business there?" Grace said, her face growing pale.
"Mr. Goodlow has written me that he has a very important suit just pending, which he wishes me to appear in."
"But there are plenty of attorneys in Boston. Why send for you?"
"I know nothing of his reasons, Grace. I only know that he offers the case to me, and that it is my duty to attend to it."
"Even if I do not wish you to go there?" Grace said, looking him steadily in the face.
"I have not dreamed of opposition from you, Grace, in any matter of mere business," Milnor replied, seriously. "A wife should have sufficient confidence in her husband to be willing to rest all matters of this kind with him."
"Grant all that," Grace said, while an expression of impatience flashed over her countenance. "But should not a husband have some regard to the feelings and wishes of his wife, even in matters of business?"
"Certainly he should — all reasonable regard. Now, if you will give me one sound reason why I ought not to go to Boston and attend to this suit for Mr. Goodlow — I will not go there."
"Sound reasons to your mind are very different now, I find, from what they were a few months ago. A sweetheart and a husband are two different things!" This was said with a good deal of bitterness, and then followed a gush of tears.
Milnor was deeply disturbed by this unkind allusion, and yet one so full of truth. As a sweetheart — all had been smooth sailing upon a summer sea. But as a husband — he found himself upon troubled waters, and amid difficult and dangerous straits. Before, too, he had been culpably indifferent as to the course their bark might take — content to leave the helm in the fairy hand of the maiden, whose slightest wish, he had made a law. But now, his own strong arm and clear intelligence were required for safety, and he dared not weakly yield the rudder.
A young wife's tears, when they flow from a husband's opposition to her wishes, are powerful arguments, and it requires great firmness to withstand them. But even these arguments in time lose their force, more especially if they come too often in the place of justly-spoken words. For this reason, they did not weigh heavily with Milnor. But he soothed Grace as best he could with tender acts and words of affection. When she had become once more calm, he said to her, in a very serious tone,
"Grace, to prevent all misconception and misunderstanding, I shall, for once, speak to you very plainly. I hope you will bear with me patiently, and believe that I have loved you, and still love you, truly. Notwithstanding, I cannot see it right to act in everything according to your wishes; and remember, that it is not usually an enemy who opposes our faults— but our best friend. Before our marriage, I did, as you have alleged, act differently from the manner in which I have acted in some cases since. This, I am satisfied, you have been led to think, is because I have been disappointed in not having received wealth at your hands; for which, and not for yourself, I was led to address you. In this you do megreat injustice. It is an unkind suspicion, and no wonder that it has produced its legitimate fruits — unhappiness for us both. The cause, believe me, and I say it in all sincerity, does not lie there. I was to blame in deceiving you before marriage, into the vain idea that a man has no will of his own; that a wife's wishes and preferences — will always be the wishes and preferences of her husband. In the very nature of things, this cannot be so.
"Too often the very opposite takes place, and the wife sinks into perfect subordination, having her will almost entirely passive — except in such matters as create no concern in the husband's mind. But this is an extreme as well as the other, and both disorderly. The true relation is, that in those matters peculiarly adapted to man's province, such as the business of providing for a family, his judgment as to right courses of action should have great weight with the wife, who should endeavor to see the force of his reasons, rather than oppose him from mere weak preference for another way more agreeable to her feelings. This, I think, ought to be your course. Before our marriage, there existed hardly anything about which we could differ. Pleased to see you pleased — I was ever ready to minister to your gratification. I thought not of myself. I even neglected duties to fulfill a wish on your part. If you expressed a sentiment that differed from my own, I let it pass, because I could not bear to oppose you. But since our marriage, followed so soon by the loss of your property, a circumstance that of itself has greatly disturbed you — I found myself in a new relation towards you. In the first place, I saw that I was suspected of having been governed by mercenary feelings in addressing you. And, in the second place, as new obligations devolved upon me by this very loss, obligations to the performance of which I was urged by the very strength of my love for you — I found myself opposed where an imperative sense of duty urged me to action.
"I allude now to my wish to re-locate to Boston. In this opposition I saw nothing but pride and weakness on your part. And yet to these, my rational convictions have thus far been compelled to yield. Is this right? My reason tells me that it is not. And now, when business calls me temporarily away, and I see clearly that I ought to go — you oppose me, without rational argument, and then refer to the difference of my conduct towards you, as a sweetheart and as a husband. Might I not retort upon you with justice? But I will not, Grace!
"I have spoken now with great plainness, not in anger, not with a wish to chide — but moved by the deep affection which I bear to you, to speak the truth, because it seems to me that I ought so to speak. Throw off this state of weak deference to what anyone may say or think! Be a true woman! Stand firmly by your husband, and sustain him in his struggle for eminence, and you shall share his reward. Strengthen my hands — and I will press onward with pride, and obtain a high place; oppose me — and I may sink into obscurity."
Milnor spoke with deep pathos, looking his wife steadily in the face, and marking the effect of every word. But her mind was too much disturbed, and her pride too deeply wounded by what he said, to feel the force of any of that strong enthusiasm his closing sentences were intended to awaken.
"What would you have me do?" she asked, after he had ceased speaking, her eye stern and bright, and her lips firmly compressed.
"I would have you reconsider your objections to re-locating to Boston, and bring some juster argument against going there than any you have yet advanced."
This was too much for Grace. To her mind it indicated a total indifference to her feelings. He would drag her to Boston, and expose her to mortification and insult — merely because he had taken a fancy to the place.
"I will never go there!" she replied, with strong emphasis, while her cheek glowed with passion.
Milnor received this declaration with perfect calmness. It fell like a heavy weight upon his feelings, crushing them into passiveness. But it did not weaken his resolution to act from the pure dictates of reason. An instant resolution was taken, from a clear perception that it was right — to act henceforth, in all matters pertaining to his duties as a man of business, from his own rational convictions alone; to go wherever business called him, and in doing so, simply to declare that he was going; and yet, in all this, to maintain towards Grace the kindest and gentlest demeanor possible; to consult her wishes and her tastes whenever he could do so without a departure from duty; and never to allow himself to be agitated by her words or manner, under any circumstances whatever.
<p align="justify">Although this was an almost instantaneous operation of his mind, yet all the conspiring circumstances were such as to make it clear to him that there was but one true way for him to act, and that the one so vividly presented to him. He did not make any reply to the declaration of Grace, but waited a few moments, and then made some remark on a subject unconnected with the one they had been conversing about, and this in a voice that was calm, kind, and somewhat indifferent.
The strong, unguarded declaration of Grace startled even herself with its indiscretion, and made her pause in a thoughtful review of her own state and the motives from which she was acting. She felt that she was wrong; but her mind was in too excited a state to make any acknowledgment of that wrong, even if pride would have permitted such a thing. She looked for some cutting retort, or some equally mad declaration from her husband, and was beginning to brace up her mind into opposition and self-determination — when he spoke about something mainly indifferent, in the calm, kind way just referred to. She was at once disarmed, but troubled. The tone of her husband's voice indicated a change in his mind, and that a sudden and important one. What that change was, she could not imagine — and yet it had reference to her. She had acted unkindly towards him — of this she now became conscious, and it had wrought in his feelings towards her, and in his intended actions towards her, an important revolution. What were they? What were now his real feelings? She would give anything to know. But pride was too strong to permit an overture or a confession of wrong. She could bear mental suffering — but she could not humble her pride.
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