“I will.”
“O, Paley! Have I lost all influence over you?”
“I do not believe in this sort of influence. I repeat that I have done everything to please you; and before I told you that the house was for you, were you not delighted with it?”
This was a sore subject to her. I knew very well that she liked the house herself. Her mother intended to keep us in our present quarters, for the sake of the income to be derived from us. She could board us for ten dollars a week, and make something even at that, for salt fish and round steak form a cheap diet. I estimated that it cost five hundred dollars a year apiece to clothe the two younger daughters, and the profits on my board more than paid the bills. This was the whole matter in a nutshell. I do not think that Lilian was a party directly to the conspiracy, but she knew that it would upset all her mother’s plans if we left. Unfortunately for me, I had given the impression that I was made of money; that I not only had a large salary, but that I was the heir of Aunt Rachel, whose wealth was supposed to equal the capital of the Bank of England.
My wife was too proud to acknowledge that she had any interest in her mother’s scheme; it was safer to say that she did not like the house. I knew that her family was reduced to the greatest straits; that Mr. Oliphant’s income was utterly insufficient to keep up the style of former years. I knew that Mrs. Oliphant pinched herself in every possible way, that the prospects of her two unmarried daughters might not be injured. But I felt that I had done enough for the family when I relieved them of one mouth to feed, and one form to clothe. It certainly was not fair that I should pay the extravagant expenses of making the world believe that my wife’s two sisters were fine ladies.
I was fighting the battle for my own independence, and not less for that of my wife. I know that mothers-in-law are shamefully traduced, but only because such a one as Mrs. Oliphant is taken as a type of the whole class. I regard her as the exception, not the rule. Her plan required that she should hold my wife as a slave within the maternal home. In little things, I found that Lilian consulted the will of her strong-minded mother, rather than my feelings. For example, I once overheard Mrs. Oliphant tell my wife to induce me to go to a certain concert, simply because Miss Bertha desired to go. Lilian did induce me to go, and I went. She came up to the point by regular approaches. Not a word was said about Miss Bertha till I was closing the door behind me, as I went to the bank, when it was—“By the way, Paley, don’t you think we had better ask Bertha to go with us?” Of course I thought so, and she went with us. Lilian did not care a straw for the concert; neither did I.
This is only a specimen of the manner in which I was victimized. I not only dressed the two marriageable sisters, but I was to introduce them into society, by paying their bills at concerts, theatres, parties and balls. But this was not the most objectionable part of the arrangement. I could not endure the thought of having my wife made the cat’s paw for the monkey to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. She was not my wife, in the just and proper sense of the word. She did not think so much of my interests and my happiness as she did of her mother’s will and wish. Neither of us was to live for each other, but both of us for the Oliphants’ ambitious schemes. So thoroughly was I persuaded in my own mind of the justness of my position, that I was determined to stick to it, even if it resulted in a complete separation.
The door-bell rang, and we heard the sound of it in our room. I looked out the window. An express wagon stood before the door. The crisis had come, but I was as resolute as ever, and I expected to spend the night alone in the house in Needham Street.
“A man at the door wants to see you, Paley,” said Mrs. Oliphant, who did not keep a servant.
I went down to the door, and brought the man up with me. Lilian and her mother stood aghast. They appeared to be utterly confounded, and neither of them spoke in the presence of the stranger.