With a strange mingling of emotions, Sarah listened to the dialogue between the gentlemen. She was anxious that Lewis should acquit himself creditably. Brilliant, like Philip, he could never be; but in sterling sense, not many men were his superiors. She had never had cause to be ashamed of him; for one so unpretending and judicious was not liable to make himself ridiculous. Whence, then, the solicitude with which she hung upon his every word? her disappointment when he did not equal the ideal reply she had fashioned, as she heard the words that called it forth? Several times she joined in the conversation, invariably to corroborate Lewis' assertions, or to supply something he had omitted to state. Philip Benson was a student of human nature. Was his mind sufficiently abstracted from his domestic annoyances to divine the motive that Sarah herself only perceived afterwards in solitary self-examination? Not love of, or admiration for the intrinsic excellence of the man whose name she bore; not fear lest his modesty should lessen his merits in the eyes of others; but a selfish dread that his acute interlocutor, discerning in him nothing likely to attract or win the affection of a woman such as he knew her to be, might guess her true reason for marrying Mr. Hammond. The timorous progeny of one guilty secret can only be numbered by the minutes during which it is borne in the bosom. Like the fabled Lacedæmonian boy, Sarah carried the gnawing horror with a fortitude that looked like cheerfulness. Habit cannot lighten the weight of a clinging curse; but strength and hardness come in time, if the burdened one is not early crushed by his load.
The sisters spent most of the day in Lucy's room; the latter stretched upon the lounge, as she declared, "completely used up." Mrs. Hunt came around early in the forenoon, and into her sympathizing ears the spoiled child poured the story of her woes and wrongs; Sarah sitting by with a swelling, rebellious heart. With indecorous contempt for one of the most binding laws of married state—inviolable secrecy as to the faults of the other party to the momentous compact—mother and daughter compared notes upon their husbands, and criticised the class generally as the most wrong-headed, perverse, and dictatorial of all the necessary evils of society.
Mrs. Benson, the elder, and her pleasure-loving daughter-in-law had differed seriously several months before the death of the former. Philip, while espousing his wife's cause to the rest of his family, had, in private, taken her to task for what he considered objectionable in her conduct; her heads of offence being mainly extravagant love of gay company, and the gallant attentions of gentleman visitors; neglect of dress and all efforts to please, when there was no company by; and a decided indisposition to share in the household duties, which his mother's increasing feebleness made onerous to her.
"Ah, mother!" sighed the interesting complainant, raising herself to shake up her pillow, then sinking again upon it. "If girls only realized what is before them when they marry, few would be brave enough to change their condition. When I picture to myself what I was at home—a petted darling—never allowed to inconvenience myself when it could possibly be avoided; courted in society; free as air and light-hearted as a child; and then think of all that I have endured from the unkindness of strangers, and the—well—the want of sympathy in him for whom I had given up my dear old home and friends—I ask myself why I did not remain single!"
The prudent matchmaker shook her head. "Marriage is a lottery, they say, my dear; but I am very sure that single life is a blank. You had no fortune, and in the event of your father's death would have been almost destitute. I am sorry your father did not insist upon Mr. Benson's giving you your own establishment at once. I hope, now the old lady is out of the way, you will have things more according to your notions."
"Don't you believe that! As if there were not two sisters-in-law, living but four miles off, and driving over every other day to 'see how pa is.' That means, to see whether Lucy is letting things go to wreck and ruin. I understand their spiteful ways! Philip shuts his ears when I talk about them; but I am determined that I will not bear much more meddling!"
Decidedly, Lucy Benson married was a woeful declension from the seraphic spinster depicted in our earlier chapters; but, as in time past, so in time present and to come, the sparkling sugar, whose integrity and sweetness appeared indestructible, while it was kept dry and cool, if dampened, undergoes an acetous fermentation, and the delicate sweet-meat, exposed to the air at a high temperature, becomes speedily a frothing mass, evolving pungent gases. The pretty doll who anticipates, in the connubial state, one long fete-day of adoration received, and benign condescension dispensed, is as certain to awake from this dream as from any other, and upon the temper in which she sustains the disenchantment, depends a vast proportion of her future welfare and peace.
Lucy's behavior to her babe was a mixture of childish fondling and neglect. Fortunately, the little "Hunt's" special attendant was an elderly woman, long established as "Maumer" in the Benson family, and her devotion to her charge prevented any present evil effects from his mother's incompetence or carelessness. Philip's pride in, and love for his boy were extreme. When he came in that evening, Sarah chanced to be in the nursery adjoining her chamber, watching and inciting the two babies to a game of romps. She held one on each knee, the nurses standing by in amused gratification.
"That is surely my little man's voice!" said Philip, as he and Lewis came up the stairs.
"Let me see!"—and Mr. Hammond peeped into the playroom. "Walk in!" he continued, throwing the door wide open. "Isn't there a pair of them?"