CHAPTER II.
That may gar one cry, but it canna gar me mind.
Heart of Mid Lothian.
“Well, Charlotte,” said Mr. Gilmer, after they had been married about six weeks, “I suppose our wedding gaieties are nearly over?”
“Oh! I hope not,” cried she, looking almost aghast at the idea. “Why they have scarcely more than begun. There would be very little use in being a bride indeed, if it were to end so soon,” she continued.
“So soon!” replied her husband. “Why I should think that even you would be tired of this incessant gaiety. I fairly long for one quiet dinner and evening at home.”
“I agree with you,” she returned, “the dinners are bores. To be obliged to sit four or five mortal hours and talk is very dull. But the balls are delightful, and I hope may continue these three months. You don’t dance, however,” she added, “and I don’t wonder you find it tiresome. Mamma used to complain of it too, and I dare say it is dull to you old folks who look on. But to us who waltz, you don’t know how charming it is,” and as she shook back her curls and looked up in his face, with such an expression of youthful delight, he was compelled to swallow with good humor the being classed with “Mamma” and the “old folks,” unpleasant as it might be, in the hope that she would soon weary of this heartless gaiety, and ceasing to be a child, “put away childish things.”
Finding, however, that her youth was more than a match for his patience, he soon wearied of playing the indulgent lover, and within two months after their marriage he said,
“Charlotte, after to-night we go to no more evening parties. I am thoroughly tired of them, and you have had enough for this season.”
She would have remonstrated, but the decision, almost amounting to sternness with which he spoke, startled her, and she only pouted without replying. Her usual resource, to complain of her husband to her mother, was left her, and Mrs. Vivian’s spirit quickly fired at seeing her darling child thwarted, and she said with the feeling more natural than judicious in a mother-in-law,
“Tell your husband, Charlotte, that if he does not wish to go, I am always ready to accompany you,” and the young wife returned triumphantly to her husband to say, “that mamma would take her to Mrs. Johnson’s.” Mr. Gilmer could not reasonably object to the arrangement, little as he liked it; but thus Mrs. Vivian laid the foundation of a dislike between her son-in-law and self that took root but to flourish and strengthen with time.
Mrs. Vivian calling soon after on her daughter, found her poring over a large volume most intently.
“What are you reading, Charlotte?” inquired her mother.
“Oh!” she said, tossing the book from her, “the stupidest thing you ever read. Mr. Gilmer insisted on my reading it. He wants me to ‘cultivate my mind,’ to read and think, but I won’t think for him,” she said, pettishly pushing the book from her, “he can’t make me do that, do what he will. Now is it not hard,” she said, appealing to her mother, “that just as I have left school, I should be surrounded by masters and forced to study? He insisted on engaging Signor F. to give me Italian lessons, as he says that time will hang heavy on my hands if I have nothing to do when he is absent. Not nearly as heavy, I can tell him, as when I have something to do I don’t like. And, then, these stupid dinners he will give, where he has only grave, sensible old men. If I had thought I was to lead such a life as this, I would have married a young man at once;” and thus she poured out her complaints, which were “as fresh from a warm young heart,” as Mr. Gilmer himself could have desired in his most enthusiastic mood. In fact, he was beginning to find that this “cultivating a wife’s mind” was not the easy delightful task he had once promised himself; and the naïveté that had so charmed him before his marriage, annoyed him now not a little, as he saw it amuse his friends, particularly Mr. Lowndes, whose quick eye would involuntarily glance at him as his wife let forth most unconsciously some of the little disagrémens of their ménage. That same naïveté is the most unmanageable quality in an establishment where all does not run smoothly, and for that very reason, perhaps, often more amusing to strangers. But we pity the proud reserved man who is to be tortured with the “simplicity” by which he was once captivated.
And if she was weary of the “grave sensible men” that surrounded his table, he was not less so of her young companions, who chattered and gossiped till his ears fairly ached with their nonsense.
The career of self indulgence, generally denominated a “gay life,” that Mr. Gilmer had led, was not the best of preparations for an indulgent husband, and resuming, as time wore on, the selfishness that had been laid asleep or aside in the first excitement of winning his little beauty, he became more decided and less tender in his manner toward his young wife. Finding he could not make her a companion, and having no respect for her understanding, nor sympathy in her tastes, he soon began to treat her as a child, that is, as a being having no rights. She on her side, quicker in feeling than defining, felt as every child feels, when defrauded of their due, that she had claims to assert as well as himself; and thus commenced a struggle that each urged as far as they dared. We say dared, for there was a cold, stern decision about him, that awed her in spite of herself; and he saw a look in her eye sometimes that told him it were best not to push matters to extremities, or he might raise a spirit, once raised not so easily laid. Mrs. Vivian seeing her beautiful child consigned to the cold selfishness rather of a step-father, than the indulgent affection of a devoted husband as she had expected, injudiciously took part in their little differences, and could not help giving her son-in-law an occasional cut that neither sweetened his temper nor mended his manners. He respected her understanding, and feared her penetration; and fear and respect too often engender dislike; and it was not long before a state of feeling arose between mother and son-in-law less seldom than sorrowful.
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