The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

Other men’s wives were intellectual if not beautiful, or beautiful if not intellectual, but mine was neither. It is my candid judgment, and I write it with sorrow and pity, that she had not a single good quality. (I have thought it all over, before proceeding, and assert it again: Not one.) I think she never went to bed in her life that she did not drink some sort of tea for some sort of complaint, and it was her only boast that in all the world a woman could not be found who “bore up” as well as she did. She took pride in nothing else; she had no other ambition than to demonstrate that such was the case, and had no other delight than to cite evidences of it. I beg you will remember that these are cold, calculated assertions of fact, and not illustrative in any degree. I have spent several weeks in writing this letter, in a manner that cannot be misconstrued; every word has been weighed, and put down after its effect and the impression it would convey had been carefully considered.

She took not the slightest interest in me nor my affairs; indeed, she took interest in nothing except her family, which worried her so much that frequently she awakened in the night, and cried for hours like a silly child for fear her mother, or her father, or her brothers, or her sisters, were not well, although there would not be the slightest reason to suppose they were not enjoying their usual health. This circumstance is particularly worthy of note when it is known that she did not get along with her family, for they were always quarrelling when together, and although they were the most ordinary people, she talked of them, and wondered what would they say to this or that, so much that I gently remonstrated with her. This she construed into an attack, and while I lived with her she regularly vindicated “her family” whenever I came into her presence, in a manner indicating that they were of royal blood. They moved away from there after we had been married a few years, and this gave her occasion to bewail her separation from them, which she never lost opportunity to do. Her father was a perfect type of a common man; the mother was a little better, perhaps, but the brothers and sisters did not average with the young people in the poor town where they were brought up, so that this great admiration was unwarranted, and ridiculous. But if it were disagreeable when “her family” were in the same town with us, it was unbearable when they were away. For every month of their separation she added a hall, park or castle to her father’s possessions—which consisted in reality of battered household goods that a really vigorous man could have carried away on his back. Finally I began to think seriously of running away.

Inasmuch as this is a hurried sketch of my life, I will mention as a single example of how we lived, and which might be multiplied by any figure below a thousand, that if I complained that we seldom had fish on the table, we had fish regularly thereafter until I complained that we had nothing else, whereupon she said I was a grumbler, and hard to please, and from that time fish was banished from the house. No matter how much I longed for fish after that, I was afraid to ask for it, for we would then get nothing else.

I think I never sat down at the table with her that she did not bring out a depraved private dish for herself which I abhorred and despised. Tripe boiled in vinegar was one of these; roasted cheese was another, and the fumes from either made me so sick that I was compelled to get up and go out. She persisted in bringing these dishes to the table to “show her spirit,” although many times she did not want them, I am thoroughly convinced.

In addition to the disagreeable qualities I have hastily mentioned, she was always complaining; if not of me, of her health; if not of her health, of the trouble the child was, or of the house in which we lived, which I am certain was the best she had ever seen; but she never complained of my long voyages, and I think she enjoyed my absence as much as I did hers. In short, although by this time I realized the fitness of a suitable marriage, I knew mine was the most unsuitable in the world; that we had nothing in common; that we should grow gradually worse instead of better, and that I should surely become, by reason of it, a dissatisfied, incapable and worthless man. Therefore, I began to weigh the consequences of running away.

This brought to mind the love I bore the child, which had grown steadily during the eight years since she was born, and I came to the conclusion that if I remained as I was I should become a man so gross and selfish as to shrink under her increasing intelligence and refinement, for she was as pure and good as an angel, and I concluded it would be better for her to think of me as a good man dead than as a bad man alive, therefore after I had lived in the manner I have described for nearly nine years, making my voyages as long as possible, I went away, and determined never to return.

The more I thought of it, once I was away, the stronger my determination became never to enter the presence of my wife again, and after thinking of it night and day for several weeks, I accepted the disgrace. Public opinion is always against a man in matters of this kind, no difference what his wrongs may be, and men who are contemplating running away from family difficulties themselves regard the offence the greatest of which some one else can be guilty, but I accepted the consequences, and felt relief when I knew I was finally rid of her.

I had accumulated a good deal of property during my career as a shipmaster, and I left it all, except the ship, and in such condition that she could use it. The ship I determined to keep as my share, as it was no more than half. My first idea was to locate somewhere—I had no idea where, but a long way off—and after Agnes had reached a reasoning age, to secretly write her the story I have written to you, and ask her to decide between us, in the hope that she would come to me. This hope supported me, and without it I could never have put into execution my plan of escape.

On reaching the first port after sailing from home, I pretended to find evidences of mutiny among the crew, which caused me a great deal of pain, for many of the men had been with me for years, and were as true and honest as men become, but it was necessary to carry out my plan, and I discharged them all. After they had left the place by taking positions on other ships, I engaged another crew, and went into another trade, which carried me thousands of miles further away from my own country. Again I discharged the crew, and after allowing the ship to be idle in the docks for several weeks, I rebuilt and repainted it in such a manner that its old acquaintances would not have known it had they encountered it on the high seas. I also changed the name. After another voyage, I sold the ship at a sacrifice, and took passage for my native land as Damon Barker, where I arrived after an absence of two years, and by mingling with seafaring men, I heard that the “Agnes” had been lost, which impression was generally accepted.

I then determined to locate in the West, and for this purpose bought the machinery which you have often seen in operation on Bull River, as I believed milling would be a profitable business. I worked for a time as a laborer in a mill, to become familiar with its workings, and I bribed the head man to teach me at night. How I came to locate within twenty miles of my wife and child, God only knows, for they arrived here before I did, although I did not know it until four years afterward, as I have already related. What has occurred since, you know.