“He has the best right to it,” rejoined the lady, “but he never uses command with me;—I vow I am an ungrateful wretch, and love him much less than he deserves to be loved.”
“That sentiment, my dear Mrs. Anson, is not founded on nature or truth. Gratitude and love are sensations as different in their natures, as your disposition and that of your husband; but for what should you be grateful to him? For having had the vanity to address, and the good fortune to win the loveliest creature that ever wildered human brain, or fired human heart? And how does he repay an affection which monarchs would value more than conquest?—by indifference,—nay, studied neglect.”
“You wrong him,” said the wife, but with much less warmth than she would have defended her husband a fortnight before, “his passion for literature, it is true, estranges him from me more than many wives would like, but I have reason to know he loves me well. Alas! why should love be such a sickly flower, that needs constant culture to keep it from perishing! Time was, when the hour he passed from my side was fraught with anxiety,—now, days glide by, and I scarcely think of him!”
“Think only of him,” returned the major, “whose love for you is as imperishable as it is ardent. Renounce the man who is unworthy of you, and—”
“Render myself unworthy of any man,” continued the lady, “no, I implore you, urge me to this no more; spare me, dear Henry, I entreat you.” And I will spare the reader the remainder of a dialogue which evinced yielding virtue on one side, and seductive sophistry on the other. “The woman who hesitates is lost,” says the proverb.
Charles Anson, a young man of high intellectual endowments, and fine personal appearance, had studied law in his native city—Philadelphia—and at an early age married the daughter of a merchant in moderate circumstances. The union was thought to have resulted from love on both sides, and indeed for four years the youthful pair enjoyed as much happiness as is allotted to mortals; when, depending on his professional exertions, no ambition disturbed their dreams, no envy of rank or grandeur poisoned their present blessings.
In a luckless hour, a relation, living in England, from whom Anson had no expectations, died, leaving him a large fortune. This sudden acquisition of wealth enabled him, much to his satisfaction, to quit a profession in which he wanted several requisites for great success. He turned his attention to a science which has since become popular in this country, and became so devoted to its pursuit, that he spent large sums of money in prosecuting it. His wife launched at once into a mode of life which she said her husband’s altered circumstances justified. She plunged deeply into fashionable dissipation, and although Anson seldom accompanied her into the gay circles she frequented, he never objected to her giddy course. His only wish was to see her happy. He was on a visit to an eastern city, collecting materials for a work on his favorite science, at the time I introduced his wife to the reader, and spring advanced before he was ready to bend his steps homeward. He had travelled, as was usual then, by land from New York, and having taken a whole day to perform the journey, it was night when the lumbering mail coach, set Anson down at the door of his house. He had received no answer to the last two letters he had written to his wife, and he feared she was ill. If any one of my readers has been long absent from a happy home, he can understand the trembling eagerness with which the traveller placed his foot upon his door-stone. He pulled at the bell, and its clear sound came back upon his ear, as he stood in breathless anxiety waiting for an answer to the summons. No hasty footstep, however, no opening of inner doors, no audible bustle within, gave token of admittance. Almost convulsively, he grasped again at the handle of the bell, and its startling response pealed through the adjacent dwellings. Slowly a sash creaked up in an adjoining house, and a petulant female voice said,—
“There’s no use of your disturbing the neighborhood by ringing there,—nobody lives in that house.”
Anson staggered back from the step, and falteringly enquired,—
“Has Mrs. Anson removed?”