Kitabı oku: «Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine», sayfa 2

RULING A WIFE

AS a lover, Henry Lane was the kindest, most devoted, self-sacrificing person imaginable. He appeared really to have no will of his own, so entire was his deference to his beautiful Amanda; yet, for all this, he had no very high opinion of her as an intelligent being. She was lovely, she was gentle, she was good; and these qualities, combined with personal grace and beauty, drew him in admiration to her side, and filled him with the desire to possess her as his own.

As a husband, Henry Lane was a different being. His relation had changed, and his exterior changed correspondingly. Amanda was his wife; and as such she must be, in a certain sense, under him. It was his judgment that must govern in all matters; for her judgment, in the affairs of life, was held in light estimation. Moreover, as a man, it was his province to control and direct and her duty to look to him for guidance.

Yet, for all this, if the truth must be told, the conclusions of Amanda's mind were, in ordinary affairs, even more correct than her husband's judgment; for he was governed a great deal by impulses and first impressions, instead of by the reason of which he was so proud, while she came naturally into the woman's quick perceptions of right and propriety. This being the case, it may readily be seen that there was a broad ground-work for unhappiness in the married state. Amanda could not sink into a mere cipher; she could not give up her will entirely to the guidance of another, and cease to act from her own volitions.

It took only a few months to make the young wife feel that her position was to be one of great trial. She was of a mild and gentle character, more inclined to suffer than resist; but her judgment was clear, and she saw the right or wrong of any act almost instinctively. Love did not make her blind to every thing in her husband. He had faults and unpleasant peculiarities, and she saw them plainly, and often desired to correct them. But one trial of this kind sufficed to keep her silent. He was offended, and showed his state of mind so plainly, that she resolved never to stand in that relation to him again.

As time progressed, the passiveness of Amanda encouraged in Lane his natural love of ruling. His household was his kingdom, and there his will must be the law. In his mind arose the conceit that, in every thing, his judgment was superior to that of his wife: even in the smaller matters of household economy, he let this be seen. His taste, too, was more correct, and applied itself to guiding and directing her into a proper state of dressing. He decided about the harmony of colours and the choice of patterns. She could not buy even a ribbon without there being some fault found with it, as not possessing the elements of beauty in just arrangements. In company, you would often hear him say—"Oh, my wife has no taste. She would dress like a fright if I did not watch her all the time."

Though outwardly passive or concurrent when such things were said, Amanda felt them as unjust, and they wounded her more or less severely, according to the character of the company in which she happened at the time to be; but her self-satisfied husband saw nothing of this. And not even when some one, more plainly spoken than others, would reply to such a remark—"She did not dress like a fright before you were married," did he perceive his presumption and his errors.

But passiveness under such a relation does not always permanently remain; it was accompanied from the first by a sense of oppression and injustice, though love kept the feeling subdued. The desire for ruling in any position gains strength by activity. The more the young wife yielded, the more did the husband assume, until at length Amanda felt that she had no will of her own, so to speak. The conviction of this, when it formed itself in her mind, half involuntarily brought with it an instinctive feeling of resistance. Here was the forming point of antagonism—the beginning of the state of unhappiness foreshadowed from the first. Had Amanda asserted her right to think and act for herself in the early days of her married life, the jar of discord would have been light. It now promised to be most afflicting in its character.

The first activity of Amanda's newly forming state showed itself in the doing of certain things to which she was inclined, notwithstanding the expression of her husband's disapproval. Accustomed to the most perfect compliance, Mr. Lane was disturbed by this.

"Oh, dear! what a horrid looking thing!" said he one day, as he discovered a new dress pattern which his wife had just purchased lying on a chair. "Where in the world did that come from?"

"I bought it this morning," replied Amanda.

"Take it back, or throw it into the fire," was the husband's rude response.

"I think it neat," said Amanda, smiling.

"Neat? It's awful! But you've no taste. I wish you'd let me buy your dresses."

The wife made no answer to this. Lane said a good deal more about it, to all of which Amanda opposed but little. However, her mind was made up to one thing, and that was to take it to the mantuamaker's. The next Lane saw of the dress was on his wife.

"Oh, mercy!" he exclaimed, holding up his hand, "I thought you had burnt it. Why did you have it made up?"

"I like it," quietly answered Mrs. Lane.

"You like any thing."

"I haven't much taste, I know," said Amanda, "but such as it is, it is pleasant to gratify it sometimes."

Something in the way this remark was made it disturbed the self-satisfaction which was a leading feature in Mr. Lane's state of mind; he, however, answered—"I wish you would be governed by me in matters of this kind; you know my taste is superior to yours. Do take off that dress, and throw it in the fire."

Amanda did not reply to this, for it excited feelings and produced thoughts that she had no wish to manifest. But she did not comply with her husband's wishes. She liked the dress and meant to wear it, and she did wear it, notwithstanding her husband's repeated condemnation of her taste.

At this time they had one child—a babe less than a year old. From the first, Lane had encroached upon the mother's province. This had been felt more sensibly than any thing else by his wife, for it disturbed the harmonious activity of the natural law which gives to a mother the perception of what is best for her infant. Still, she had been so in the habit of yielding to the force of his will, that she gave way to his interference here in numberless instances, though she as often felt that he was wrong as right. Conceit of his own intelligence blinded him to the intelligence of others. Of this Amanda became more and more satisfied every day. At first, she had passively admitted that he knew best; but her own common sense and clear perceptions soon repudiated this idea. While his love of predominance affected only herself, she could bear it with great patience; but when it was exercised, day after day, and week after week, in matters pertaining to her babe, she grew restless under the oppression.

After the decided, position taken in regard to her dress, Amanda's mind acquired strength in a new direction. A single gratification of her own will, attained in opposition to the will of her husband, stirred a latent desire for repeated gratifications; and it was not long before Lane discovered this fact, and wondered at the change which had taken place in his wife's temper. She no longer acquiesced in every suggestion, nor yielded when he opposed argument to an assumed position. The pleasure of thinking and acting for herself had been restored, and the delight appertaining to its indulgence was no more to be suppressed. Her husband's reaction on this state put her in greater freedom; for it made more distinctly manifest the quality of his ruling affection, and awoke in her mind a more determined spirit of resistance.

Up to this time, even in the most trifling matters of domestic and social life, Lane's will had been the law. This was to be so no longer. A new will had come into activity; and that will a woman's will. Passive it had been for a long time under a pressure that partial love and a yielding temper permitted to remain; but its inward life was unimpaired; and when its motions became earnest, it was strong and enduring. The effort made by Lane to subdue these motions the moment he perceived them, only gave them a stronger impulse. The hand laid upon her heart to quiet its pulsations only made it beat with a quicker effort, while it communicated its disturbance to his own.

The causes leading to the result we are to describe have been fully enough set forth; they steadily progressed until the husband and wife were in positions of direct antagonism. Lane could not give up his love of controlling every thing around him, and his wife, fairly roused to opposition, followed the promptings of her own will, in matters where right was clearly on her side, with a quiet perseverance that always succeeded. Of course, they were often made unhappy; yet enough forbearance existed on both sides to prevent an open rupture—at least, for a time. That, however, came at last, and was the more violent from the long accumulation of reactive forces.

The particulars of this rupture we need not give; it arose in a dispute about the child when she was two years old. As usual, Lane had attempted to set aside the judgment of his wife in something pertaining to the child, as inferior to his own, and she had not submitted. Warm words ensued, in which he said a good deal about a wife's knowing her place and keeping it.

"I am not your slave!" said Amanda, indignantly; the cutting words of her husband throwing her off her guard.

"You are my wife," he calmly and half contemptuously replied; "and, as such, are bound to submit yourself to your husband."

"To my husband's intelligence, not to his mere will," answered Amanda, less warmly, but more resolutely than at first.

"Yes, to his will!" said Lane, growing blind from anger.

"That I have done long enough," returned the wife. "But the time is past now. By your intelligence, when I see in it superior light to what exists in my own, I will be guided, but, by your will—never!"

The onward moving current of years, which, for some time, had been chafing amid obstructions, now met a sudden barrier, and flowed over in a raging torrent. A sharp retort met this firm declaration of Amanda, stinging her into anger, and producing a state of recrimination. While in this state, she spoke plainly of his assumption of authority over her from the first,—of her passiveness for a time,—of being finally aroused to opposition.

"And now," she added, in conclusion, "I am content to be your wife and equal, but will be no longer your passive and obedient slave."

"Your duty is to obey. You can occupy no other position as my wife," returned the blind and excited husband.

"Then we must part."

"Be it so." And as he said this, Lane turned hurriedly away and left the house.

Fixed as a statue, for a long time, sat the stunned and wretched wife. As the current of thoughts again flowed on, and the words of her husband presented themselves in even a more offensive light than when they were first uttered, indignant pride took the uppermost place in her mind.

"He will not treat me as a wife and equal," she said, "and I will no longer be his slave."

In anger Lane turned from his wife; and for hours after parting with her this anger burned with an all-consuming flame. For him to yield was out of the question. His manly pride would never consent to this. She must fall back into her true position. He did not return home, as usual, at dinner-time; but absented himself, in order to give her time for reflection, as well as to awaken her fears lest he would abandon her altogether. Towards night, imagining his wife in a state of penitence and distressing anxiety, and feeling some commiseration for her on that account, Mr. Lane went back to his dwelling. As he stepped within the door, a feeling of desertion and loneliness came over him; and unusual silence seemed to pervade the house. He sat down in the parlour for some minutes; but hearing no movement in the chamber above, nor catching even a murmur of his child's voice, a sound for which his ears were longing, he ascended the stairs, but found no one there. As he turned to go down again he met a servant.

"Where is Mrs. Lane?" he asked.

"I don't know," was answered. "She went out this morning, and has not returned."

"Where is Mary?"

"She took Mary with her."

"Didn't she say where she was going?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Lane asked no more questions, but went back into the room from which he had just emerged, and, sitting down, covered his face with his hands, and endeavoured to collect his thoughts.

"Has she deserted me?" he asked of himself in an audible husky whisper.

His heart grew faint in the pause that followed. As the idea of desertion became more and more distinct, Mr. Lane commenced searching about in order to see whether his wife had not left some communication for him, in which her purpose was declared. But he found none. She had departed without leaving a sign. The night that followed was a sleepless one to Lane. His mind was agitated by many conflicting emotions. For hours, on the next day, he remained at home, in the expectation of seeing or hearing from Amanda. But no word came. Where had she gone? That was the next question. If he must go in search of hers in what direction should he turn his steps? She had no relations in the city, and with those who resided at a distance she had cultivated no intimacy.

The whole day was passed in a state of irresolution. To make the fact known was to expose a family difficulty that concerned only himself and wife; and give room for idle gossip and gross detraction. Bad as the case was, the public would make it appear a great deal worse than the reality. In the hope of avoiding this, he concealed the sad affair for the entire day, looking, in each recurring hour, for the return of his repentant wife. But he looked in vain. Night came gloomily down, and she was still absent.

He was sitting, about eight o'clock in the evening, undetermined yet what to do, when a gentleman with whom he was but slightly acquainted named Edmondson, called at the door and asked to see him.

On being shown in, the latter, with some embarrassment in his manner, said—

"I have called to inform you, that Mrs. Lane has been at my house since yesterday."

"At your house!"

"Yes. She came there yesterday morning; and, since that time, my wife has been doing her best to induce her to return home. But, so far, she has not been able to make the smallest impression. Not wishing to become a party to the matter, I have called to see you on the subject. I regret, exceedingly, that any misunderstanding has occurred, and do not intend that either myself or family shall take sides in so painful an affair. All that I can do, however, to heal the difficulty, shall be done cheerfully."

"What does she say?" asked Lane, when he had composed himself.

"She makes no specific complaint."

"What does she propose doing?"

"She avows her intention of living separate from you, and supporting herself and child by her own efforts."

This declaration aroused a feeling of indignant pride in the husband's mind. "It is my child as well as hers," said he. "She may desert me, if she will; but she cannot expect me to give up my child. To that I will never submit."

"My dear sir," said Mr. Edmondson, "do not permit your mind to chafe, angrily, over this unhappy matter. That will widen not heal, the breach. In affairs of this kind, pardon me for the remark, there are always faults on both sides; and the duty of each is to put away his or her own state of anger and antagonism and seek to reconcile the other, rather than to compel submission. As a man, you have the advantage of a stronger and clearer judgment,—exercise it as a man. Feeling and impulse often rule in a woman's mind, from the very nature of her mental conformation; and we should remember this when we pass judgment on her actions. There is often more honour in yielding a point than in contending for it to the end, in the face of threatened disaster. Let me then urge you to seek a reconciliation, while there is yet opportunity, and permit the veil of oblivion to fall, while it may, over this painful event. As yet, the fact has not passed from the knowledge of myself and wife. Heal the breach, and the secret remains where it is."

"If she will return, I will receive her, and forgive and forget all. Will you say this to her from me?"

"Why not go to her at once? See her face to face. This is the best and surest way."

"No," said Lane, coldly. "She has left me of her own choice; and, now, she must return. I gave her no cause for the rash act. Enough for me that I am willing to forgive and forget all this. But I am not the man to humble myself at the feet of a capricious woman. It is not in me."

"Mr. Lane, you are wrong!" said the visitor, in a decided tone. "All wrong. Do you believe that your wife would have fled from you without a real or imagined cause?"

"No. But the cause is only in her imagination."

"Then see her and convince her of this. It is the same to her, at present, whether the cause be real or imaginary. She believes it real, and feels all its effects as real. Show her that it is imaginary, and all is healed."

Lane shook his head.

"I have never humbled myself before a man, much less a woman," said he.

This remark exhibited to Mr. Edmondson the whole ground-work of the difficulty. Lane regarded a woman as inferior to a man, and had for her, in consequence, a latent feeling of contempt. He could understand, now, why his wife had left him; for he saw, clearly, that, with such an estimation of woman, he would attempt to degrade her from her true position; and, if she possessed an independent spirit, render her life wellnigh insupportable. Earnestly did he seek to convince Lane of his error; but to no good effect. As soon as all doubt was removed from the mind of the latter in regard to where his wife had gone, and touching the spirit which governed her in her separation from him, his natural pride and self-esteem—self-respect, he called it—came back into full activity. No, he would never humble himself to a woman! That was the unalterable state of his mind. If Amanda would return, and assume her old place and her old relation, he would forget and forgive all. This far he would go, and no farther. She had left of her own free will, and that must bring her back.

"You can say all this to her in any way you please; but I will not seek her and enter into an humble supplication for her return. I have too much self-respect—and am too much of a man—for that. If she finds the struggle to do so hard and humiliating, she will be the more careful how she places herself again in such a position. The lesson will last her a life-time."

"You are wrong; depend upon it, you are wrong!" urged Mr. Edmondson. "There must be yielding and conciliation on both sides."

"I can do no more than I have said. Passive I have been from the first, and passive I will remain. As for our child, I wish you to say to her, that I shall not consent to a separation. It is my child as much as hers; moreover, as father, my responsibility is greatest, and I am not the man to delegate my duties to another. Possession of the child, if driven to that extremity, I will obtain through aid of the law. This I desire that she shall distinctly understand. I make no threat. I do not wish her to view the declaration in that light. I affirm only the truth, that she may clearly understand all the consequences likely to flow from her ill-advised step."

The more Mr. Edmondson sought to convince Mr. Lane of his error, the more determinedly did he cling to it; and he retired at last, under the sad conviction that the unhappy couple had seen but the beginning of troubles.

Alone with his own thoughts, an hour had not elapsed before Mr. Lane half repented of his conduct in taking so unyielding a position. A conviction forced itself upon his mind that he had gone too far and was asking too much; and he wished that he had not been quite so exacting in his declarations to Mr. Edmondson. But, having made them, his false pride of consistency prompted him to adhere to what he had said.

The night passed in broken and troubled sleep; and morning found him supremely wretched. Yet resentment still formed a part of Mr. Lane's feelings. He was angry with his wife, whom he had driven from his side, and was in no mood to bend in order to effect a reconciliation. At mid-day he returned from his business, hoping to find her at home. But his house was still desolate. With the evening he confidently expected her, but she was not there. Anxiously he sat, hour after hour, looking for another visit from Mr. Edmondson, but he came not again.

In leaving her husband's house, Mrs. Lane had gone, as has been seen, to the house of a friend. Mrs. Edmondson was an old school companion, between whom and herself had continued to exist, as they grew up, the tenderest relations. When she turned from her husband, she fled, with an instinct of affection and sympathy, to this friend, and poured her tears in a gild agony of affliction upon her bosom. In leaving her husband, she was not governed by a sudden caprice; nor was the act intended to humble him to her feet. Nothing of this was in her mind. He had trenched upon her province as a wife and mother; interfered with her freedom as an individual; and, at last, boldly assumed the right to command and control her as an inferior. The native independence of her character, which had long fretted under this rule of subordination, now openly rebelled, and, panting for freedom, she had sprung from her fetters with few thoughts as to future consequences.

The first day of absence was a day of weeping. Mrs. Edmondson could not and did not approve of what had been done.

"I am afraid, Amanda, that you have only made matters worse," said she, as soon as she could venture to suggest any thing at all upon the subject. "It is always easier to prevent than to heal a breach. The day has not yet closed. There is time to go back. Your husband need never know what has been in your mind. This hasty act may be entirely concealed from him."

But the long suffering wife had been roused to opposition. A new current of feeling was sweeping across and controlling her mind. She was, therefore, deaf to the voice of reason. Still her friend, as in duty bound, urged her to think more calmly on the subject, and to retrace the steps she had taken. But all was in vain. This being so, her husband, as has been seen, called upon Mr. Lane, and informed him that his wife was at his house. From this interview Mr. Edmondson returned disheartened, and reported all that had been said on both sides to his wife.

"My husband saw Mr. Lane last evening," said Mrs. Edmondson to Amanda on the next day.

"He did!" Amanda looked eagerly into the face of her friend, while she became much agitated.

"Yes. He called to let him know that you were here."

"What did he say?"

"He wishes you to return. All will be forgotten and forgiven."

"He said that?"

"Yes."

"I have done nothing for which I desire forgiveness," said Amanda, coldly, and with the air of one who is hurt by the words of another. "If he will not have me return as his wife and equal, I can never go back."

"For the sake of your child, Amanda, you should be willing to bear much."

"My child shall not grow, up and see her mother degraded."

"She is his child as well as yours. Do not forget that," said Mrs. Edmondson. "And it is by no means certain that he will permit you to retain the possession of an object so dear to him."

The face of Mrs. Lane instantly flushed at this, a suggestion which had not before been presented to her mind.

"Did he refer to this subject in conversing with your husband?" inquired Amanda, with forced calmness.

"He did."

"What did he say?"

"That, in any event, he could not and would not be separated from his child. And you know, Amanda, that the law will give to him its guardianship."

"The law!" There was a huskiness in Mrs. Lane's voice.

"Yes, Amanda, the law. It is well for you to view this matter in all its relations. The law regards the father as the true guardian of the child. If, therefore, you separate yourself from your husband, you must expect to bear a separation from your child; for that will be most likely to follow."

"Did he speak of the law?" asked Mrs. Lane, in a still calmer voice, and with a steady eye.

"It would not be right to conceal from you this fact, Amanda. He did do so. And can you wholly blame him? It is his child as well as yours. He loves it, as you well know; and, as its father, he is responsible for it to society and to Heaven. This separation is your act. You may deprive him of your own society; but, have you a right, at the same time, to rob him of his child? I speak plainly; I would not be your friend did I not do so. Try, for a little while, to look away from yourself, and think of your husband; and especially of the consequences likely to arise to your child from your present act. It will not be a mere separation with passive endurance of pain on either side. There will come the prolonged effort of the father to recover his child, and the anguish and fear of the mother, as she lives in the constant dread of having it snatched from her hands. And that must come, inevitably, the final separation. You will have to part from your child, Amanda, if not in the beginning, yet finally. You know your husband to be of a resolute temper Do not give him a chance to press you to extremity. If he should come to the determination to recover his child from your hands, he will not stop short of any means to accomplish his purpose."

Mrs. Lane made no reply to this; nor did she answer to any further remark, appeal, or suggestion of her friend, who soon ceased to speak on the subject and left her to her own reflections, hoping that they might lead her to some better purpose than had yet influenced her in the unhappy business. On the day after, Mr. Edmondson met Lane in the street.

"I was about calling to see you," said the latter, "on the subject of this unhappy difficulty, to which, so reluctantly to yourself, you have become a party. It may be that I am something to blame. Perhaps I have been too exacting—too jealous of my prerogative as a husband. At any rate, I am willing to admit that such has been the case; and willing to yield something to the morbid feelings of my wife. What is her present state of mind?"

Mr. Edmondson looked surprised.

Remarking this, Lane said quickly, "Is she not at your house?"

"No," replied Mr. Edmondson, "she left us yesterday. We believed that she had gone home. My wife had a long conversation with her, in which she urged her, by every consideration, to return; and we had reason to think, when she left our house, that she went back to you."

"Such is not the case," said Mr. Lane, with disappointment, and something of sadness in his tone. "I have not seen her since the morning of our unhappy difference. Where can she have gone?"

Mr. Edmondson was silent.

"Did she say that she was going to return home?" asked Mr. Lane.

"No. But we had reason to think that such was her intention. Have you heard nothing from her?"

"Not a word."

"It is strange!"

Mr. Lane heaved a deep sigh. A few more brief questions and answers passed, and then the two men separated. The forsaken husband went home with a sadder heart than he had yet known. The absence of his wife and child for several days—both objects of real affection—and absent under such peculiar and trying circumstances, had subdued, to a great extent, his angry feelings. He was prepared to yield much. He would even have gone to his wife, and acknowledged that he was partly in error, in order to have brought about a reconciliation. Something that she had said during their last, exciting interview, which he had rejected as untrue, or not causes of complaint, had represented themselves to his mind; and in the sober reflecting states that were predominant, he saw that he had not in all things treated her as an equal, nor regarded her at all times as possessing a rational freedom as independent as his own. Though he did not excuse her conduct, he yet thought of it less angrily than at first, and was willing to yield something in order to restore the old relations.

Anxiety and alarm now took possession of his mind. The distance between them had become wider, and the prospect of a reconciliation more remote. Amanda had gone, he could not tell whither. She had neither money nor friends; he knew not into what danger she might fall, nor what suffering she might encounter. It was plain from the manner of her leaving the house of Mr. Edmondson, that her resolution to remain away from him was fixed. He must, therefore, seek her out, and invite her to return. He must yield if he would reconcile this sad difficulty. And he was now willing to do so. But, where was she? Whither should he go in search of the wanderer?

The very means which her friend had taken to induce Mrs. Lane to return to her husband, had driven her farther away. The hint touching her husband's legal rights in the child, and his resolution to assert them, filled her with the deepest alarm, and determined her to put it beyond his power, if possible, to deprive her of the only thing in life to which her heart could now cling. Toward her husband, her feelings were those of an oppressed one for an oppressor. From the beginning, he had almost suffocated her own life by his pressure upon her freedom of will. She remembered, with, tears, his tenderness and his love; but soon would come the recollection of his constant interference in matters peculiarly her own; his evident contempt for her intellect; and his final efforts to subdue her rising independence, and make her little less than a domestic slave—and the fountain of her tears would become dry. Added to all this, was the fact of his resolution to recover his child by law. This crushed out all hope from her heart. He had no affection left for her. His love had changed to hate. He had assumed toward her the attitude of a persecutor. Nothing was now left for her but self-protection.