"Miss Wyman, may I have the pleasure of calling upon you at your
father's house?"
"Oh, yes, sir; I shall be most happy to see you." She spoke with
feeling.
"Then I shall visit you frequently. In your society I promise myself
much happiness."
Anna's eyes fell to the floor, and the colour deepened on her
cheeks. When she looked up, Elliott was gazing steadily in her face,
with an expression of admiration and love.
Her heart was lost. Carpenter, that love of a man, was not thought
of--or, only as one of her rejected lovers.
When Anna laid her head upon her pillow that night, it was not to
sleep. Her mind was too full of pleasant images, central to all of
which was the elegant, accomplished, handsome Mr. Elliott. He had,
she conceived, as good as offered himself, and she, much as she
wished to reject three lovers before she accepted one, felt strongly
inclined to accept him, and so end the matter.
Now, who was Mr. Thomas Elliott? A few words will portray him. Mr.
Elliott was twenty-six; he kept a store in the city; had been in
business for some years, but was not very successful. His habits of
life were not good; his principles had no sound, moral basis. He
was, in fact, just the man to make a silly child like Anna Wyman
wretched for life. But why did he seek for one like her? That is
easily explained. Mr. Wyman was reputed to be pretty well off in the
world, and Mr. Elliott's affairs were in rather a precarious
condition; but he managed to keep so good a face upon the matter,
that none suspected his real condition.
After visiting Anna for a short time, he offered his hand. If it had
not been that her sixteenth birthday was so near, Anna would have
declined the offer, for Thomas Elliott did not grow dearer to her
every day. There were young men whom she liked much better; and if
they had only come forward and presented their claims to favour, she
would have declined the offer. But time was rapidly passing away.
Anna was ambitious of being engaged before she was sixteen, and
married, if possible. Her mother had rejected two offers, and she
was anxious to do as much. Here was a chance for one rejection--but
was she sure of another offer in time? No! There was the difficulty.
For some days she debated the question, and then laid it before her
mother. Mrs. Wyman consulted her husband, who did not much like
Elliott; but the mother felt the necessity of an early marriage, and
overruled all objections. Her advice to Anna was to accept the
offer, and it was accepted, accordingly.
A fond, wayward child of sixteen may chance to marry and do well,
spite of all the drawbacks she will meet; but this is only in case
she happen to marry a man of good sense, warm affections, and great
kindness, who can bear with her as a father bears with a capricious
child; can forgive much and love much. But give the happiness of
such a creature into the keeping of a cold, narrow-minded, selfish,
petulant man, and her cup will soon run over. Bitter, indeed, will
be her lot in life.
Just such a man was Thomas Elliott. He had sought only his own
pleasures, and had owned no law but his own will. For more than ten
years he had been living without other external restraints than
those social laws that all must observe who desire to keep a fair
reputation. He came in when he pleased and went out when he pleased.
He required service from all, and gave it to none--that is, so far
as he needed service, he exacted it from those under him, but was
not in the habit of making personal sacrifices for the sake of
others. Thus, his natural selfishness was confirmed. When he
married, it was with an end to the good he should derive from the
union--not from a generous desire to make another happy in himself.
Anna was young, vivacious, and more than ordinarily intelligent and
pretty. There was much about her that was attractive, and Elliott
really imagined that he loved her; but it was himself that he loved
in her fascinating qualities. These were all to minister to his
pleasure. He never once thought of devoting himself to her
happiness.
On the night of the wedding, which took place soon after Anna's
sixteenth birthday, the bride was in that bewildered state of mind
which destroys all the rational perceptions of the mind. Her whole
soul was in a pleasing tumult, and yet she did not feel happy; and
why? Spite of the solemn promise she had made to love and honour her
husband above all men, she felt that there were others whom she
could have loved and honoured more than him, were they in his place.
But this, reason told her, was folly. They had not presented
themselves, and he had. They could be nothing to her--he must be
every thing. To secure a husband early was the great point, and that
had been gained. This thought, whenever it crossed her mind, would
cause her to look around upon her maiden companions with proud
self-complacency, They were still upon the shores of expectancy. She
had launched her boat upon the sunny sea of matrimony, and was
already moving steadily away under a pleasant breeze.
Alas! young bride, thy hymeneal altar is an altar of sacrifice. Love
is not the deity who is presiding there. Little do they dream who
have led thee, poor lamb! garlanded with flowers, to that altar, how
innocent, how true, how good a heart they were offering up upon its
strange fires. But they will know in time, and thou wilt know when
it is too late.
Two years from the period of their marriage, Elliott and his wife
were seated in a small room moderately well furnished. He was
leaning back in a chair, with arms folded, and his chin resting on
his bosom. His face was contracted into a gloomy scowl. Anna, who
looked pale and troubled, was sewing and touching with her foot a
cradle, in which was a babe. The little one seemed restless. Every
now and then it would start and moan, or cry out. After a time it
awoke and commenced screaming. The mother lifted it from the cradle
and tried to hush it upon her bosom, but the babe still cried on. It
was evidently in pain.
"Confound you! why don't you keep that child quiet?" exclaimed the
husband, impatiently casting at the same time an angry look upon his
wife.
Anna made no reply, but turned half away from him, evidently to
conceal the tears that suddenly started from her eyes, and strove
more earnestly to quiet the child. In this she soon succeeded.
"I believe you let her cry on purpose, whenever I am in the house,
just to annoy me," her husband resumed in an ill-natured tone.
"No, Thomas, you know that I do not," Anna said.
"Say I lie, why don't you?"
"Oh, Thomas, how can you speak so to me?" And his young wife turned
toward him an earnest, tearful look.
"Pah! don't try to melt me with your crying. I never believed in it.
Women can cry at any moment."
There was a convulsive motion of Mrs. Elliott's head as she turned
quickly away, and a choking sound in her throat. She remained
silent, ten minutes passed, when her husband said in a firm voice,
"Anna, I'm going to break up."
Mrs. Elliott glanced around with a startled air.
"It's true, just what I say--your father may think that I'm going to
make a slave of myself to support you, but he's mistaken. He's
refused to help me in my business one single copper, though he's
able enough. And now I've taken my resolution. You can go back to
him as quick as you like."
Before the brutal husband had half finished the sentence, his wife
was on her feet, with a cheek deadly pale, and eyes almost starting
from her head. Thomas Elliott was her husband and the father of her
babe, and as such she had loved him with a far deeper love than he
had deserved. This had caused her to bear with coldness and neglect,
and even positive unkindness without a complaint. Sacredly had she
kept from her mother even a hint of the truth. Thus had she gone on
almost from the first; for only a few months elapsed before she
discovered that her image was dim on her husband's heart.
"You needn't stand there staring at me like one moon-struck"--he
said, with bitter sarcasm and a curl of the lip. "What I say is the
truth. I'm going to give up, and you've got to go home to them that
are more able to support you than I am; and who have a better right,
too, I'm thinking."
There was something so heartless and chilling in the words and
manner of her husband, that Mrs. Elliott made no attempt to reply.
Covering her face with her hands, she sunk back into the chair from
which she had risen, more deeply miserable than she had ever been in
her life. From this state she was aroused by the imperative
question,
"Anna, what do you intend doing?"
"That is for you to say"--was her murmured reply.
"Then, I say, go home to your father, and at once."
Without a word the wife rose from her chair, with her infant in her
arms, and pausing only long enough to put on her shawl and bonnet,
left the house.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were sitting alone late on the afternoon of the
same day, thinking about and conversing of their child. Neither of
them felt too well satisfied with the result of her marriage. It
required not even the close observation of a parent's eye, to
discover that she was far from happy.
"I wish she were only single"--Mr. Wyman at length said. "She
married much too young--only eighteen now, and with a cold-hearted
and, I fear, unprincipled and neglectful husband. It is sad to think
of it."
"But I was married as young as she was, Mr. Wyman?"
"Yes; but I flatter myself you made a better choice. Your condition
at eighteen was very different from what hers is now. As I said
before, I only wish she were single, and then I wouldn't care to see
her married for two or three years to come."
"I can't help wishing she had refused Mr. Elliott. If she had done
so, she might have been married to a much better man long before
this. Mr. Carpenter is worth a dozen of him. Oh dear! this marriage
is all a lottery, after all. Few prizes and many blanks. Poor Anna!
she is not happy."
At this moment the door opened, and the child of whom they were
speaking, with her infant in her arms, came hurriedly in. Her face
was deadly pale, her lips tightly compressed, and her eyes widely
distended and fixed.
"Anna!" exclaimed the mother, starting up quickly and springing
toward her.
"My child, what ails you?" was eagerly asked by the father, as he,
too, rose up hastily.
But there was no reply. The heart of the child was too full. She
could not utter the truth. She had been sent back to her parents by
her husband, but her tongue could not declare that! Pride, shame,
wounded affections, combined to hold back her words. Her only reply
was to lay her babe in her mother's arms, and then fling herself
upon the bosom of her father.
All was mystery then, but time soon unveiled the cause of their
daughter's strange and sudden appearance, and her deep anguish. The
truth gradually came out that she had been deserted by her husband;
or, what seemed to Mrs. Wyman more disgraceful still, had been sent
home by him. Bitterly did she execrate him, but it availed nothing.
Her ardent wish had been gratified. Anna was engaged at sixteen, and
married soon after; but at eighteen, alas! she had come home a
deserted wife and mother! And so she remained. Her husband never
afterward came near her. And now, at thirty, with a daughter well
grown, she remains in her father's house, a quiet, thoughtful,
dreamy woman, who sees little in life that is attractive, and who
rarely stirs beyond the threshold of the house that shelters her.
There are those who will recognise this picture.
So much for being engaged at sixteen!