Hubert's Wife / A Story for You

by Minnie Mary Lee

Like many another man, he did not like to come home and find his wife gone. He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp, he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits—nay, often insist upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his wife could serve his policy, well and good. What was a wife for?

There were those who regarded Thornton Rush with positive fear. They quailed beneath the flash of his eye. Such dared not openly oppose him and were outwardly his friends. Some, lacking powers of penetration, deemed him better than he was, and thought there must be much hidden good in one who had won so sweet a woman for a wife. Few dared exhibit, or openly proclaim the intense disaffection with which he had inspired them. But those who did were bitter and unrelenting in animosity; were enemies indeed, worthy of the name. Foremost among these was Carlton Sharp. This Captain still led a company well drilled and faithful. On the other side, Thornton Rush, since about it was no smell of gunpowder, trained a goodly crew, with which he met the Captain's line. Victory was not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain res gestœ. And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that their vote weighs heavily.

Mrs. Lisle had already made one visit to her son, which lasted several months. During this visit Althea's eyes had been opened, and she had been led to wonder, as before in the case of her husband, for what purpose had been assumed the false garb of amiability during the time of her sojourn at Kennons. Both Mrs. Lisle and that strange woman's son were mysteries to Althea. To her mind of singular clearness and purity they were incomprehensible. Their falseness and hardness she was more ready to believe hallucinations of her own mind, rather than really glaring faults of character in them. Hence she strove to force herself to believe them better than they were. But this could not last—and at length the young wife was driven to the sad conclusion that her mother-in-law was not only harsh, unamiable, and unforgiving, but destitute of moral and religious principle, and that the man she had married was worthy such ignoble parentage.

Did Althea then learn to regard her husband with scorn and contempt? Did she become a woman's rights woman and inveigh against man's tyranny and woman's weak submission? Not yet. Althea was motherless, and to all intents fatherless. She had a warm, loving nature, and there were few in this world for her to love. She had given her first love to Thornton, and though she had become aware that it was not the deepest love of which her nature was susceptible she yet clung to him, shutting her eyes to his ill-disguised defects, striving to clothe him with the graces which she had at first supposed him to possess, and, insensibly to himself, refining and purifying by slight degrees his selfish nature.

Then Althea had a pleasant cottage, situated upon a grassy plain, and embosomed in native forest trees. She had her flowers, music, books, her day dreams and hours of inspiration, when she recited to the birds improvisations which might have thrilled or amused a more appreciative audience. Her naturally happy, cheerful disposition caught and reflected but the light, and dispensed warmth and harmony upon all around.

Althea had another grand source of happiness; it was in her one child, Master Johnny Temple, now just passed his third year. With considerable likeness to his father, this child possessed the hereditary beauty of the St. Legers, with that peculiar, queenly poise of the head that had distinguished Della Lisle.

He was then a remarkably beautiful child, with a winning and loving nature. To keep him nicely dressed was one of Althea's sweetest cares; and the little fellow had such a proud air he would have been taken for a royal prince.

Strange would it have been had not Thornton Rush been proud of such a wife and child. But he kept his pride and admiration shut away from their objects. He never took the trouble to tell Althea that she was dear to him, even if he chanced to think so; reversely he had a sullen way of appearing to think his family a trouble and burthen. Had Althea suddenly died some day he would have been shaken into due appreciation; as it was, her presence was like the sunlight that flooded him unconsciously, and to which he was so accustomed he never thought to be grateful for it.

You have seen a little boy with a pet dog. What a life that dog led! Harnessed to carts, sleds, made to draw heavy loads, after his young master, besides jerked this way and that, scolded, kicked, cuffed—what wonder the abused animal ran away or gave up the ghost? Then the boy's grief! His dear, precious only friend that he loved so devotedly! He mourns, sighs, weeps, not dreaming that he has himself done his dog to death. He is lost, having no one to love and torment.

"I will not mind his cross words, his petulance, his spasms of anger," constantly repeated the patient wife, but they entered her soul. "I will disarm him with smiles and pleasant words," she every day resolved; yet every day was she pierced anew with his arrowy verbality. "He shall have to remember me only as a good wife and true," she said mentally, even while her heart was ground as with a heel of iron.