Woman in the Nineteenth Century Part 16

I perceived, at first sight of her every-day face, that it was not unknown to me. Three or four years earlier, staying in the country-house of one of her friends, I had seen her picture. The house was very dull,--as dull as placid content with the mere material enjoyments of life, and an inert gentleness of nature, could make its inhabitants. They were people to be loved, but loved without a thought. Their wings had never grown, nor their eyes coveted a wider prospect than could be seen from the parent nest. The friendly visitant could not discompose them by a remark indicating any expansion of mind or life. Much as I enjoyed the beauty of the country around, when out in the free air, my hours within the house would have been dull enough but for the contemplation of this picture. While the round of common-place songs was going on, and the whist-players were at their work, I used to sit and wonder how this being, so sovereign in the fire of her nature, so proud in her untamed loveliness, could ever have come of their blood. Her eye, from the canvas, even, seemed to annihilate all things low or little, and able to command all creation in search of the object of its desires. She had not found it, though; I felt this on seeing her now. She, the queenly woman, the Boadicea of a forlorn hope, as she seemed born to be, the only woman whose face, to my eye, had ever given promise of a prodigality of nature sufficient for the entertainment of a poet's soul, was--I saw it at a glance--a captive in her life, and a beggar in her affections.

_Laurie._ A dangerous object to the traveller's eye, methinks!

_Aglauron._ Not to mine! The picture had been so; but, seeing her now, I felt that the glorious promise of her youthful prime had failed. She had missed her course; and the beauty, whose charm to the imagination had been that it seemed invincible, was now subdued and mixed with earth.

_Laurie._ I can never comprehend the cruelty in your way of viewing human beings, Aglauron. To err, to suffer, is their lot; all who have feeling and energy of character must share it; and I could not endure a woman who at six-and-twenty bore no trace of the past.

_Aglauron._ Such women and such men are the companions of everyday life. But the angels of our thoughts are those moulds of pure beauty which must break with a fall. The common air must not touch them, for they make their own atmosphere. I admit that such are not for the tenderness of daily life; their influence must be high, distant, starlike, to be pure.

Such was this woman to me before I knew her; one whose splendid beauty drew on my thoughts to their future home. In knowing her, I lost the happiness I had enjoyed in knowing what she should have been. At first the disappointment was severe, but I have learnt to pardon her, as others who get mutilated or worn in life, and show the royal impress only in their virgin courage. But this subject would detain me too long. Let me rather tell you of Mrs. V----'s sad history.

A friend of mine has said that beautiful persons seem rarely born to their proper family, but amidst persons so rough and uncongenial that _their_ presence commands like that of a reproving angel, or pains like that of some poor prince changed at nurse, and bound for life to the society of churls.

So it was with Emily. Her father was sordid, her mother weak; persons of great wealth and greater selfishness. She was the youngest by many years, and left alone in her father's house. Notwithstanding the want of intelligent sympathy while she was growing up, and the want of all intelligent culture, she was not an unhappy child. The unbounded and foolish indulgence with which she was treated did not have an obviously bad effect upon her then; it did not make her selfish, sensual, or vain. Her character was too powerful to dwell upon such boons as those nearest her could bestow. She negligently received them all as her due. It was later that the pernicious effects of the absence of all discipline showed themselves; but in early years she was happy in her lavish feelings, and in beautiful nature, on which she could pour them, and in her own pursuits. Music was her pa.s.sion; in it she found food, and an answer for feelings destined to become so fatal to her peace, but which then glowed so sweetly in her youthful form as to enchant the most ordinary observer.

When she was not more than fifteen, and expanding like a flower in each sunny day, it was her misfortune that her first husband saw and loved her. Emily, though pleased by his handsome person and gay manners, never bestowed a serious thought on him. If she had, it would have been the first ever disengaged from her life of pleasurable sensation. But when he did plead his cause with all the ardor of youth, and the flourishes which have been by usage set apart for such occasions, she listened with delight; for all his talk of boundless love, undying faith, etc., seemed her native tongue. It was like the most glowing sunset sky. It swelled upon the ear like music. It was the only way she ever wished to be addressed, and she now saw plainly why all talk of everyday people had fallen unheeded on her ear. She could have listened all day. But when, emboldened by the beaming eye and ready smile with which she heard, he pressed his suit more seriously, and talked of marriage, she drew back astonished. Marry yet?--impossible! She had never thought of it; and as she thought now of marriages, such as she had seen them, there was nothing in marriage to attract. But L---- was not so easily repelled; he made her every promise of pleasure, as one would to a child. He would take her away to journey through scenes more beautiful than she had ever dreamed of; he would take her to a city where, in the fairest home, she should hear the finest music, and he himself, in every scene, would be her devoted slave, too happy if for every now pleasure he received one of those smiles which had become his life.

He saw her yielding, and hastened to secure her. Her father was delighted, as fathers are strangely wont to be, that he was likely to be deprived of his child, his pet, his pride. The mother was threefold delighted that she would have a daughter married so _young_,--at least three years younger than any of her elder sisters were married.

Both lent their influence; and Emily, accustomed to rely on them against all peril, and annoyance, till she scarcely knew there was pain or evil in the world, gave her consent, as she would have given it to a pleasure-party for a day or a week.

The marriage was hurried on; L---- intent on gaining his object, as men of strong will and no sentiment are wont to be, the parents thinking of the eclat of the match. Emily was amused by the preparations for the festivity, and full of excitement about the new chapter which was to be opened in her life. Yet so little idea had she of the true business of life, and the importance of its ties, that perhaps there was no figure in the future that occupied her less than that of her bridegroom, a handsome man, with a sweet voice, her captive, her adorer. She neither thought nor saw further, lulled by the pictures of bliss and adventure which were floating before her fancy, the more enchanting because so vague.

It was at this time that the picture that so charmed me was taken. The exquisite rose had not yet opened its leaves so as to show its heart; but its fragrance and blushful pride were there in perfection.

Poor Emily! She had the promised journeys, the splendid home. Amid the former her mind, opened by new scenes, already learned that something she seemed to possess was wanting in the too constant companion of her days. In the splendid home she received not only musicians, but other visitants, who taught her strange things.

Four little months after her leaving home, her parents were astonished by receiving a letter in which she told them they had parted with her too soon; that she was not happy with Mr. L----, as he had promised she should be, and that she wished to have her marriage broken. She urged her father to make haste about it, as she had particular reasons for impatience. You may easily conceive of the astonishment of the good folks at home. Her mother wondered and cried. Her father immediately ordered his horses, and went to her.

He was received with rapturous delight, and almost at the first moment thanked for his speedy compliance with her request. But when she found that he opposed her desire of having her marriage broken, and when she urged him with vehemence and those marks of caressing fondness she had been used to find all-powerful, and he told her at last it could not be done, she gave way to a paroxysm of pa.s.sion; she declared that she could not and would not live with Mr. L----; that, so soon as she saw anything of the world, she saw many men that she infinitely preferred to him; and that, since her father and mother, instead of guarding her, so mere a child as she was, so entirely inexperienced, against a hasty choice, had persuaded and urged her to it, it was their duty to break the match when they found it did not make her happy.

"My child, you are entirely unreasonable."

"It is not a time to be patient; and I was too yielding before. I am not seventeen. Is the happiness of my whole life to be sacrificed?"

"Emily, you terrify me! Do you love anybody else?"

"Not yet; but I am sure shall find some one to love, now I know what it is. I have seen already many whom I prefer to Mr. L----."

"Is he not kind to you?"

"Kind! yes; but he is perfectly uninteresting. I hate to be with him.

I do not wish his kindness, nor to remain in his house."

In vain her father argued; she insisted that she could never be happy as she was; that it was impossible the law could be so cruel as to bind her to a vow she had taken when so mere a child; that she would go home with her father now, and they would see what could be done.

She added that she had already told her husband her resolution.

"And how did he bear it?"

"He was very angry; but it is better for him to be angry once than unhappy always, as I should certainly make him did I remain here."

After long and fruitless attempts to reason her into a different state of mind, the father went in search of the husband. He found him irritated and mortified. He loved his wife, in his way, for her personal beauty. He was very proud of her; he was piqued to the last degree by her frankness. He could not but acknowledge the truth of what she said, that she had been persuaded into the match when but a child; for she seemed a very infant now, in wilfulness and ignorance of the world. But I believe neither he nor her father had one compunctious misgiving as to their having profaned the holiness of marriage by such an union. Their minds had never been opened to the true meaning of life, and, though they thought themselves so much wiser, they were in truth much less so than the poor, pa.s.sionate Emily,--for her heart, at least, spoke clearly, if her mind lay in darkness.

They could do nothing with her, and her father was at length compelled to take her home, hoping that her mother might be able to induce her to see things in a different light. But father, mother, uncles, brothers, all reasoned with her in vain. Totally unused to disappointment, she could not for a long time believe that she was forever bound by a bond that sat uneasily on her untamed spirit. When at last convinced of the truth, her despair was terrible.

"Am I his? his forever? Must I never then love? Never marry one whom I could really love? Mother! it is too cruel. I cannot, will not believe it. You always wished me to belong to him. You do not now wish to aid me, or you are afraid! O, you would not be so, could you but know what I feel!"

At last convinced, she then declared that if she could not be legally separated from L----, but must consent to bear his name, and never give herself to another, she would at least live with him no more. She would not again leave her father's house. Here she was deaf to all argument, and only force could have driven her away. Her indifference to L---- had become hatred, in the course of these thoughts and conversations. She regarded herself as his victim, and him as her betrayer, since, she said, he was old enough to know the importance of the step to which he led her. Her mind, naturally n.o.ble, though now in this wild state, refused to admit his love as an excuse. "Had he loved me," she said, "he would have wished to teach me to love him, before securing me as his property. He is as selfish as he is dull and uninteresting. No! I will drag on my miserable years here alone, but I will not pretend to love him nor gratify him by the sight of his slave!"

A year and more pa.s.sed, and found the unhappy Emily inflexible. Her husband at last sought employment abroad, to hide his mortification.

After his departure, Emily relaxed once from the severe coldness she had shown since her return home. She had pa.s.sed her time there with her music, in reading poetry, in solitary walks. But as the person who had been, however unintentionally, the means of making her so miserable, was further removed from her, she showed willingness to mingle again with the family, and see one or two young friends.

One of these, Almeria, effected what all the armament of praying and threatening friends had been unable to do. She devoted herself to Emily. She shared her employments and her walks; she sympathized with all her feelings, even the morbid ones which she saw to be sincerity, tenderness and delicacy gone astray,--perverted and soured by the foolish indulgence of her education, and the severity of her destiny made known suddenly to a mind quite unprepared. At last, having won the confidence and esteem of Emily, by the wise and gentle cheek her justice and clear perceptions gave to all extravagance, Almeria ventured on representing to Emily her conduct as the world saw it.

To this she found her quite insensible. "What is the world to me?" she said. "I am forbidden to seek there all it can offer of value to Woman--sympathy and a home."

"It is full of beauty still," said Almeria, looking out into the golden and perfumed glories of a June day.

"Not to the prisoner and the slave," said Emily.

"All are such, whom G.o.d hath not made free;" and Almeria gently ventured to explain the hopes of larger span which enable the soul that can soar upon their wings to disregard the limitations of seventy years.

Emily listened with profound attention. The words were familiar to her, but the tone was not; it was that which rises from the depths of a purified spirit,--purified by pain, softened into peace.

"Have you made any use of these thoughts in your life, Almeria?"

The lovely preacher hesitated not to reveal a tale before unknown except to her own heart, of woe, renunciation, and repeated blows from a hostile fate.

Emily heard it in silence, but she understood. The great illusions of youth vanished. She did not suffer alone; her lot was not peculiar.

Another, perhaps many, were forbidden the bliss of sympathy and a congenial environment. And what had Almeria done? Revenged herself?

Tormented all around her? Clung with wild pa.s.sion to a selfish resolve? Not at all. She had made the best of a wreck of life, and deserved a blessing on a new voyage. She had sought consolation in disinterested tenderness for her fellow-sufferers, and she deserved to cease to suffer.

The lesson was taken home, and gradually leavened the whole being of this spoiled but naturally n.o.ble child.

A few weeks afterwards, she asked her father when Mr. L---- was expected to return.

"In about three months," he replied, much surprised.

"I should like to have you write to him for me."

"What now absurdity?" said the father, who, long mortified and hara.s.sed, had ceased to be a fond father to his once adored Emily.

"Say that my views are unchanged as to his soliciting a marriage with me when too childish to know my own mind on that or any other subject; but I have now seen enough of the world to know that he meant no ill, if no good, and was no more heedless in this great matter than many others are. He is not born to know what one const.i.tuted like me must feel, in a home where I found no rest for my heart. I have now read, seen and thought, what has made me a woman. I can be what you call reasonable, though not perhaps in your way. I see that my misfortune is irreparable. I heed not the world's opinion, and would, for myself, rather remain here, and keep up no semblance of a connection which my matured mind disclaims. But that scandalizes you and my mother, and makes your house a scene of pain and mortification in your old age. I know you, too, did not neglect the charge of me, in your own eyes. I owe you grat.i.tude for your affectionate intentions at least.

"L---- too is as miserable as mortification can make one like him.

Write, and ask him if he wishes my presence in his house on my own terms. He must not expect from me the affection, or marks of affection, of a wife. I should never have been his wife had I waited till I understood life or myself. But I will be his attentive and friendly companion, the mistress of his house, if he pleases. To the world it will seem enough,--he will be more comfortable there,--and what he wished of me was, in a great measure, to show me to the world.

I saw that, as soon as we were in it, I could not give him happiness if I would, for we have not a thought nor employment in common. But if we can agree on the way, we may live together without any one being very miserable except myself, and I have made up my mind."