There are but few men, and especially mercantile men, who are used to calculate and consider consequences, that are found guilty of the folly of offering their hand to a poor and fashionable woman. What fascination the gay and beautiful Miss Scott threw over our young and rich widower—
“What dreams, what charms,
What conjurations, or what mighty magic”—
I cannot tell. The gossips of H——, at their tea parties, said she had “set her cap” at him. But I am not much acquainted with the witchcraft of “setting a cap,” or how much the term implies. This I know, that when Walter Kerr first saw Miss Harriet Scott, he thought, what every person said, “that she was very beautiful,” though he also thought that she was a vain girl, conscious of her own attractions, and much too fond of dress and display. But, after he had seen her frequently, and she spoke with him familiarly, and that, too, in a voice which was almost as sweet as her face was beautiful—and when he saw, or thought he saw, that she smiled on him more frequently and more sweetly than on any one else—he began to think that she was an interesting girl, and by no means the vain creature he had at first imagined her to be. It is dangerous when a man begins to think a woman interesting. As their acquaintance grew, he discovered that she had no vanity whatever.
“She is,” thought he unto himself, “the fairest and gentlest being I have met with since—I laid my Hannah in the dust,” he would have continued; but, as the thought arose in his bosom, a tear gathered in his eyes, a low sigh escaped from him, and a glow overspread his face.
Every day, however, the beautiful Miss Scott became more interesting in the eyes of the thriving merchant, and his wealth more and more attractive to her; till in an evil hour he offered her his hand, and with a sweet blush, like the shadow of a rose leaf on a lily, the proposal was accepted.
His neighbours said, that, if his first wife had enabled him to make a fortune, he had got one who would spend it now. And they had not been husband and wife many months, until events began to shew that there was some truth in what their neighbours said. The dress of Mrs Kerr was gayer and far more costly than it had ever been as Miss Scott; though it was, from its extravagance, a subject of conversation, or what was called “a town’s talk,” then; and even Walter could not avoid contrasting, in his own mind, the showy and expensive attire of his living spouse with the plain and modest neatness of her who was not. She was kind enough to the children for a time; and she called them “the little creatures,” and “Kerr’s children.” But she saw them seldom. “Not,” she said, “that she disliked them, but that she could not be troubled with children being much about her.”
She was not long, however, in beginning to hint that it was rather derogatory in a Major’s daughter to have become the wife of a provincial shopkeeper. The smell of the goods, too, shocked her nerves, and injured her health.
“The smell from the shop hurt your nerves, dear!” said her husband—and the apartments they inhabited were immediately over the shop and warehouse—“the smell from the shop hurt you!”—continued he—“that is very strange! My poor Hannah never complained of such a thing, and I’m sure many a hundred times has she stood in it from morning to night.”
“Don’t talk to me, sir, of your Hannah, if you please,” added she; “if I threw myself away upon you, I was not to be insulted with odious comparisons about your Hannah.”
“Odious, indeed!” thought Walter, with a sigh; but he durst not express what he thought; for before this he had begun to discover the inflammable materials which his wife’s temper was made of.