"'Jane, I do not wish you to keep company with Mrs. Corbin.'
"'I WILL!' was my indignant reply.
"His face grew deadly pale. For a moment his whole frame trembled as if some fearful struggle were going on within. Then he quietly arose, and, without looking at me, left the room. Oh! how deeply did I regret uttering those unhappy words the instant they were spoken! But repentance came too late. For about the space of ten minutes, pride struggled with affection and duty. At the end of that time the latter triumphed, and I hastened after my husband to ask his forgiveness for what I said. But he was not in the parlours. He was not in the house! I asked a servant if she had seen him, and received for reply that he had gone out.
"Anxiously passed the hours until nightfall. The sad twilight, as it gathered dimly around, threw a deeper gloom over my heart. My husband usually came home before dark. Now he was away beyond his accustomed hour. Instead of returning gladly to meet his young wife, he was staying away, because that young wife had thrown off the attractions of love and presented to him features harsh and repulsive. How anxiously I longed to hear the sound of his footsteps—to see his face—to hear his voice! The moment of his entrance I resolved should be the moment of my humble confession of wrong—of my faithful promise never again to set up my will determinedly in opposition to his judgment. But minute after minute passed after nightfall—hours succeeded minutes—and these rolled on until the whole night wore away, and he came not back to me. As the gray light of morning stole into my chamber, a terrible fear took hold of me, that made my heart grow still in my bosom—the fear that he would never return—that I had driven him off from me. Alas! this fear was too nigh the truth. The whole of that day passed, and the next and the next, without any tidings. No one had seen him since he left me. An anxious excitement spread among all his friends. The only account I could give of him, was, that he had parted from me in good health, and in a sane mind.
"A week rolled by, and still no word came. I was nearly distracted. What I suffered, no tongue can tell, no heart conceive. I have often wondered that I did not become insane but from this sad condition I was saved. Through all, my reason, though often trembling, did not once forsake me. It was on the tenth day from that upon which we had jarred so heavily as to be driven widely asunder, that a letter came to me, post-marked New York, and endorsed 'In haste.' My hands trembled so that I could with difficulty break the seal. The contents were to the effect that my husband had been lying for several days at one of the hotels there, very ill, but now past the crisis of his disease, and thought by the physician to be out of danger. The writer urged me, from my husband, to come on immediately. In eight hours from the time I received that letter, I was in New York. Alas! it was too late; the disease had returned with double violence, and snapped the feeble thread of life. I never saw my husband's living face again."
The self-possession of Mrs. Cleaveland, at this part of her narrative, gave way. Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed violently, while the tears came trickling through her fingers.
"My dear Laura," she resumed, after the lapse of many minutes, looking up as she spoke, with a clear eye, and a sober, but placid countenance, "it is for your sake that I have turned my gaze resolutely back. May the painful history I have given you make a deep impression upon your heart; let it warn you of the sunken rock upon which my bark foundered. Avoid carefully, religiously avoid setting yourself in opposition to your husband; should he prove unreasonable or arbitrary, nothing is to be gained, and every thing lost by contention. By gentleness, by forbearance, by even suffering wrong at times, you will be able to win him over to a better spirit: an opposite course will as assuredly put thorns in your pillow as you adopt it. Look at the unhappy condition of the friends you have named; their husbands are, in their eyes, exacting, domineering tyrants. But this need not be. Let them act truly the woman's part. Let them not oppose, but yield, and they will find that their present tyrants' will become their lovers. Above all, never, under any circumstances, either jestingly or in earnest, say 'I will,' when you are opposed. That declaration is never made without its robbing the wife of a portion of her husband's confidence and love; its utterance has dimmed the fire upon many a smiling hearth-stone."
Laura could not reply; the relation of her aunt had deeply shocked her feelings. But the words she had uttered sank into her heart; and when her trial came—when she was tempted to set her will in opposition to her husband's, and resolutely to contend for what she deemed right, a thought of Mrs. Cleaveland's story would put a seal upon her lips. It was well. The character of Henry Armour too nearly resembled that of Mr. Cleaveland: he could illy have brooked a wife's opposition; but her tenderness, her forbearance, her devoted love, bound her to him with cords that drew closer and closer each revolving year. She never opposed him further than to express a difference of opinion when such a difference existed, and its utterance was deemed useful; and she carefully avoided, on all occasions, the doing of any thing of which he in the smallest degree disapproved. The consequence was, that her opinion was always weighed by him carefully, and often deferred to. A mutual confidence and a mutual dependence upon each other gradually took the place of early reserves, and now they sweetly draw together—now they smoothly glide along the stream of life blessed indeed in all their marriage relations. Who will say that Laura did not act a wise part? Who will say that in sacrificing pride and self-will, she did not gain beyond all calculation? No one, surely. She is not her husband's slave, but his companion and equal. She has helped to reform and remodel his character, and make him less arbitrary, less self-willed, less disposed to be tyrannical. In her mild forbearance, he has seen a beauty more attractive far than lip or cheek, or beaming eye.
Instead of looking upon his wife as below him, Henry Armour feels that she is his superior, and as such he tenderly regards and lovingly cherishes her. He never thinks of obedience from her, but rather studies to conform himself to her most lightly-spoken wish. To be thus united, what wife will not for a time sacrifice her feelings when her young self-willed husband so far forgets himself as to become exacting! The temporary loss will turn out in the future to be a great gain.