“Are my clothes in readiness, Lucy?”
She colored with vexation, and shame. “The baby has been very cross; I have not indeed had time. But I will go now.” Clifton went down to his solitary dinner, and when he returned found Lucy busy with her needle; it was evident even to his unskilled eye there was much to be done.
“It is impossible to wait. Give me the things as they are; I am so accustomed to wearing my shirts without buttons, and my stockings with holes in, that I shall find it nothing new—nor more annoying than I daily endure.” He threw the things carelessly into his carpet-bag, and left the room, nor did he say one kindly word in farewell, or affection. It was this giving away to violent anger, and using harsh language to his wife that had broken her spirit, almost her heart. She never even thought of reforming herself; she grieved bitterly, but hopelessly. Surely it is better when man and wife are joined together by the tie that “no man may put asunder,” to strive seriously, and in affection to correct one another’s faults? There is scarcely any defect of character, that a husband, by taking the right method may not cure; always providing his wife is not unprincipled. But he must be very patient; bear for a season; add to judicious counsel much tenderness and affection; making it clear to her mind that love for herself and solicitude for their mutual happiness are the objects in view. Hard in heart, and with little of woman’s devotion unto him to whom her faith is plighted, must the wife be who could long resist. Not such an one was Lucy Clifton; but her husband in the stormy revulsion of feeling that had attended the first breaking up of his domestic happiness, had done injustice to her mind, to the sweetness of disposition that had borne all his anger without retorting in like manner. If Clifton was conscious of his own quickness of temper, approaching to violence, he did not for one moment suppose, that he was the cause of any portion of the misery brooding over his daily path. He attributed it all to the procrastinating spirit of Lucy, and upon her head he laid the blame with no unsparing hand. He forgot that she had numbered twenty years, and was the mother of two children; that her situation was one of exertion, and toil under the most favorable circumstances; that he was much her senior, had promised to cherish her tenderly. Yet the first harsh word that dwelt on Lucy’s heart was from the lips of her husband! How tenderly in years long gone had she been nurtured! The kind arm of a father had guided and guarded her; the tender voice of a mother had lighted on her path like sunshine—and now? Oh ye, who would crush the spirit of the young and gentle, instead of leading it tenderly by a straight path in the way of wisdom—go down into the breaking heart and learn its agony; its desolation, when the fine feelings of a wasted nature go in upon the brain and consume it!
One morning Clifton entered the nursery, “Lucy,” he said; “my old classmate, and very dear friend Walter Eustace is in town. He came unexpectedly; his stay is short; I should like to ask him to spend the day with me. Could you manage, love, to have the time pass comfortably to my friend?” Lucy felt all the meaning conveyed in the emphasis on a word that from his lips sounded almost formidable in her ears.
“I will do what I can,” she answered sadly.
“Do not scruple Lucy to get assistance. Have every thing ready in time, and do not fail in having order, and good arrangement. There was a time Lucy, when Eustace heard much of you; I should be gratified to think he found the wife worthy of the praise the lover lavished so freely upon her. Sing for us to-night—it is long since the piano was opened!—and look, and smile as you once did, in the days that are gone, but not forgotten Lucy.” His voice softened unconsciously, he had gone back to that early time, when love of Lucy absorbed every feeling of his heart. He sighed; the stern, and bitter realities of his life came with their heavy weight upon him, and there was no balm in the future, for the endurance of present evils.
He turned and left the room; Lucy’s eye followed him, and as the door closed she murmured—“not forgotten! Oh, Clifton how little reason I have to believe you!” Lucy was absorbed in her own thoughts so long as to be unconscious of the flight of time. When she roused, she thought she would go down stairs and see what was to be done, but her little boy asked her some question, which she stopped to answer; half an hour more elapsed before she got to the kitchen. She told Betty she meant to hire a cook for the morrow—thought she had better go at once and engage one—yet, no, on second thoughts, she might come with her to the parlors and assist in arranging them; it would be quite time enough to engage the cook when they were completed. To the parlors they went, and Lucy was well satisfied with the result of their labor—but mark her comment: “What a great while we have been detained here; well, I am sure I have meant this three weeks to clean the parlors, but never could find time. If I could but manage to attend them every day, they would never get so out of order.”
The next morning came, the cook not engaged yet. Betty was despatched in haste, but was unsuccessful—all engaged for the day. So Betty must be trusted, who sometimes did well, and at others signally failed. Lucy spent the morning in the kitchen assisting Betty and arranging every thing she could do, but matters above were in the mean time sadly neglected, her children dirty, and ill dressed, the nursery in confusion, and Lucy almost bewildered in deciding what had better be done, and what left undone. She concluded to keep the children in the nursery without changing their dress, and then hastened to arrange her own, and go down stairs, as her husband and his friend had by this time arrived. Her face was flushed, and her countenance anxious; she was conscious that Mr. Eustace noticed it, and her uncomfortable feelings increased. The dinner, the dinner—if it were only over! she thought a hundred times. It came at last, and all other mortifications were as nothing in comparison. There was not a dish really well cooked, and every thing was served up in a slovenly manner. Lucy’s cheeks tingled with shame. Oh, if she had only sent in time for a cook. It was her bitterest thought even then. When the dinner was over Mr. Eustace asked for the children, expressing a strong desire to see them. Lucy colored, and in evident confusion, evaded the request. Her husband was silent, having a suspicion how matters stood.
Just then a great roar came from the hall, and the oldest boy burst into the room. “Mother! mother! Hannah shut me up she did!” A word from his father silenced him, and Lucy took her dirty, ill dressed boy by the hand and left the room. She could not restrain her tears, but her keen sense of right prevented her punishing the child, as she was fully aware, had he been properly dressed, she would not have objected to his presence, and that he was only claiming an accorded privilege. Mr. Eustace very soon left, and as soon as the door closed on him Clifton thought: “I never can hope to see a friend in comfort until I can afford to keep a house-keeper. Was there ever such a curse in a man’s house as a procrastinating spirit?” With such feelings it may be supposed he could not meet his wife with any degree of cordiality. Lucy said, “There was no help for it, she had done her very best.” Clifton answered her contemptuously; wearied and exhausted with the fatigues of the day, she made no reply, but rose up and retired to rest, glad to seek in sleep forgetfulness of the weary life she led. Clifton had been unusually irritated; when the morrow came, it still manifested itself in many ways that bore hard on Lucy; she did not reply to an angry word that fell from his lips, but she felt none the less deeply. Some misconduct in the child induced him to reflect with bitterness on her maternal management. She drew her hand over her eyes to keep back the tears, her lip quivered, and her voice trembled as she uttered:
“Do not speak so harshly Clifton, if the fault is all mine, most certainly the misery is also!”