Hubert's Wife / A Story for You

by Minnie Mary Lee

"How fortunate he should have come now, just in this time of my distress," she whispered to herself, as she was about to retire, stopping to weep over the little night-wrapper, whose wearer was gone, but which still had its place beneath her pillow. She had a thought, too, which she did not whisper, and it was this: "how fortunate too that he should have come while Thornton is gone, that no thundercloud may hang over us."

Hubert had made a short visit to Kennons. Mr. Fuller was still overseer of the plantation, which he had conducted satisfactorily. Mrs. Lisle had, of course, returned to Thornton Hall. Amy and Chloe were installed in their cabins of old, and had supervision of the white house. From these faithful servants Hubert had learned the deception that had been practiced upon his father, during that parent's close of life. At least, he learned how letter after letter had been written, how impatiently his arrival had been awaited, and with what bitter disappointment that father had quitted the world, unreconciled that his son came not.

These communicative old women unfolded to their pet young master, as they still loved to call him, the plan that father had cherished with regard to himself and Althea. For this also was not unknown to them. Duncan Lisle had dropped into Amy's ear more than one hint of this kind. He had none other to confide in; and during a sleepless night, while Amy watched, he whiled away an hour discoursing of his son, and of the project in view. This faithful servant had Althea's picture treasured with jealous care.

"You shall see it, Massa 'Ubert, an' see what you've done gone an' lost," unrolling the precious memento from its many wrappings, as if it had been a mummy embalmed.

Hubert beheld "what he had lost" first with admiration, then with a sigh. But the sigh was not for himself only; it was for what that sweet-faced soul must suffer, under such guardianship as that of Thornton Rush.

Hubert Lisle at once rightly inferred the destination of those letters which had never reached him; and he glared fiercely at the fireplace now filled with green boughs, that had afforded flame to enwrap aught so precious. O, cruel flames, to blot out two such privileges—giving consolation to a dying father, and receiving from his hands a wife little less beautiful or good than an angel! And more cruel than flame, than direful fate, than death itself, the heart of Rusha Lisle, which Hubert would fain have trodden into indiscriminate dust, in his first moments of grief and wrath.

An intense desire of revenge took possession of this outraged son; more particularly of revenge against Thornton Rush, whose duplicity in winning Althea was circumstantially detailed to him.

Hubert Lisle had not only traveled extensively, but had read and studied deeply. He had scanned all religions, from that of Confucius to Mormonism and Free-loveism, which is beyond religion, and had no settled faith in any. He had dived into German transcendentalism and metaphysics so deeply that he came out clogged and permeated as a fly miraculously escaped from a jar of honey. He was naturally good and true, simple minded and high principled; but unlicensed, untrammelled thought, unsubjective to God's law, had rendered him liable to erect false theories upon unsound premises, and had undermined in a measure that nice sense of right and wrong, which had been his proud, happy birth-right. Yet he would have been startled to have been told that he was not now, as ever, a bold lover of the truth, that he scorned not deception and hypocrisy and all manner of evil. He would have bounded, as from the sting of a serpent, from open temptation to meanness and wrong. He walked upon the border of a precipice, not knowing but he was upon the open plain. Thus walketh human frailty, when unenlightened by faith in God and unfortified by heavenly counsel.

A modern "reformer," self-styled, acting as a "spiritual medium," is said thus to have addressed a visitor:

"It is my very strong impression that you are my affinity. You are to be my husband; I am to be your wife. You must seek a divorce; so will I, and happiness awaits us."