I must give an instance of the way in which Marion—I am tired of calling her Miss Clare, and about this time I began to drop it—exercised her influence over her friends. I trust the episode, in a story so fragmentary as mine, made up of pieces only of a quiet and ordinary life, will not seem unsuitable. How I wish I could give it you as she told it to me! so graphic was her narrative, and so true to the forms of speech amongst the London poor. I must do what I can, well assured it must come far short of the original representation.
One evening, as she was walking up to her attic, she heard a noise in one of the rooms, followed by a sound of weeping. It was occupied by a journeyman house-painter and his wife, who had been married several years, but whose only child had died about six months before, since which loss things had not been going on so well between them. Some natures cannot bear sorrow: it makes them irritable, and, instead of drawing them closer to their own, tends to isolate them. When she entered, she found the woman crying, and the man in a lurid sulk.
"What is the matter?" she asked, no doubt in her usual cheerful tone.
"I little thought it would come to this when I married him," sobbed the woman, while the man remained motionless and speechless on his chair, with his legs stretched out at full length before him.
"Would you mind telling me about it? There may be some mistake, you know."
"There ain't no mistake in that," said the woman, removing the apron she had been holding to her eyes, and turning a cheek towards Marion, upon which the marks of an open-handed blow were visible enough. "I didn't marry him to be knocked about like that."
"She calls that knocking about, do she?" growled the husband. "What did she go for to throw her cotton gownd in my teeth for, as if it was my blame she warn't in silks and satins?"
After a good deal of questioning on her part, and confused and recriminative statement on theirs, Marion made out the following as the facts of the case:—
For the first time since they were married, the wife had had an invitation to spend the evening with some female friends. The party had taken place the night before; and although she had returned in ill-humor, it had not broken out until just as Marion entered the house. The cause was this: none of the guests were in a station much superior to her own, yet she found herself the only one who had not a silk dress: hers was a print, and shabby. Now, when she was married, she had a silk dress, of which she said her husband had been proud enough when they were walking together. But when she saw the last of it, she saw the last of its sort, for never another had he given her to her back; and she didn't marry him to come down in the world—that she didn't!
"Of course not," said Marion. "You married him because you loved him, and thought him the finest fellow you knew."