Volume II. The Wife CHAPTER 15.
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For some time after her husband went out, Mrs. Riston suffered great distress of mind. The thought of having to give up her splendid house, was almost as terrible as the thought of death. If her husband should really fail in business, she felt that she could not survive the mortification.
"But I don't believe a word of it!" she roused herself by saying. "This is only a bug-bear that he has conjured up to frighten me."
In spite of her effort to believe this, she could not help feeling uneasy. About twelve o'clock, visitors began to drop in. Mrs. Riston was occupied with these for two or three hours. All, with flattering words, ministered to her vanity, and caused her to feel how intimately blended with her happiness, were the elegancies with which she was surrounded. But always the thought of what her husband had said, would pass through her mind, and produce the most acute pain.
At length she was alone again. It was past three o'clock, the hour for dining, but Mr. Riston had not yet returned. She dreaded to see him come in, and yet felt anxious about his prolonged absence, for it did not seem a precursor of good. The clock was striking four, when she heard his footsteps in the hall. He went into the parlor, but remained there only a moment. She next heard him ascending the stairs with a more deliberate step than usual. She looked up into his face with an anxious and inquiring eye, as he entered the chamber where she was sitting. Its expression startled her. There was something about it that she could not understand. She was not long in suspense.
"The worst has come to the worst, Ellen," he said, in a calm, cold voice, taking a chair by her side, and looking fixedly at her. "As I feared it would be, so it has turned out. I could hear of nothing, go where I would, but the splendid party, and the amount it must have, or really did cost; but nobody had any money to lend. Men who loaned me freely last week, and even yesterday, and who could have done it as easily today, had nothing to spare. From ten o'clock until three, I strove, with all the power I possessed, to get the amount of money needed to keep me from bankruptcy; but in vain. I am now a dishonored and broken merchant!"
A cry of anguish burst from the lips of his unhappy wife, as he said this.
"I do not upbraid you as the cause of my misfortune," he resumed, as soon as the excitement of Mrs. Riston's feelings had in some measure subsided. "That would avail nothing. But, it is only right for you to know that but for this house, and the style in which it is furnished, and the extravagant display made last night — my credit would have remained untarnished. The money needed to meet my payments today would have been easily procured, and in a few weeks my feet would have been on firm ground again. As it is, I shall have to give up all to my creditors, who will place my effects in the hands of trustees. Forced settlements will involve sacrifices, and the end will be, that I shall turn out to be an insolvent debtor, and be thrown penniless upon the world, to begin life again."
Mrs. Riston was stunned so much by this announcement, that she could not speak. Her face was pale as ashes, her hands clenched, and her eyes fixed like one in a spasm. So paralyzed was she, that she had to be carried to bed, scarcely sensible of anything that was passing around her.
A downward tendency is always rapid. Mr. Riston called a meeting of his creditors, and submitted, in a manly spirit, a statement of his affairs. Trustees were appointed, and all his effects placed in their hands. His elegant furniture was sold at public sale, within three weeks of the date of its purchase, and the cabinet-maker, upholsterer and others, as well as the wine merchant and confectioner, were compelled to await some ten or twelve months before receiving their final dividend on the bankrupt's assets, which left them minus thirty cents in the dollar on their claims.
Mrs. Riston retired to an obscure boarding-house, in the upper part of the city, in ten days after she had taken possession of her palace, as she had called it, with such lofty feelings. She retired a broken-spirited woman. Her husband's conduct in the trying ordeal through which he was compelled to pass, gained him the respect and regard of many, who were ready to assist him. He resumed business, after the lapse of two months, in a small way, and commenced again his upward struggle, fully resolved that his wife should never again have any control over him that was not the control of reason.
"If I feel able at any future time to go to housekeeping in a quiet, economical way, I shall not regard her objections," he said to himself, while thinking over his plans for the future. "She will have to be governed by my wishes now. I have yielded to her's long enough. I am willing to devote myself to business early and late, and to take upon myself all its attendant cares and anxieties for our mutual good. It is but right that she should fill the domestic sphere as fully as I do that of business. Had I insisted upon her doing so at first, her mind would never have become warped, nor her desires so extravagant. I might still have retained my good name — have still been engaged in a prosperous business. But the time past shall suffice. My clear convictions of right shall never yield one iota to her whims, passions or caprices."
Riston was as good as his word. He held, so to speak, a tight rein on his wife ever after. She, it must be said, was a more passive subject than before, and yielded to his wishes much easier. But she was not happy. She hardly ever went out, and scarcely any of her old friends cared about retaining her acquaintance. At home, she drooped about, and went through whatever domestic duties she had to perform, as if she were an automaton. She had no genuine love for her husband, and he felt it. Their meetings were cold, and their fellowship limited to a few common-place remarks, or questions and answers necessary to be made. Thus passed their days, neither of them caring how soon the time came for separation.
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