“I do not doubt it, Clara. But it looks so as if I had been governed by mercenary views in offering you marriage when I ought to have known, and did know in fact, that I was not able to make your external condition as comfortable as it should be.”
“Alfred! don’t speak in this way. Do I not know you to be incapable of such baseness? I could not wrong, by an unjust suspicion, one whom I love as my own life.”
And Clara drew her arm about her husband’s neck affectionately, and pressed her lips upon his forehead.
“Forgive this weakness,” said the young man. “It is wrong, I know.”
“Yes, it is wrong, very wrong. So now, let the shadow pass from your brow, and the light come back again.”
But the weight was not removed from Ellison’s feelings. And though he swept the shadow from his brow at the word of Clara, it did not pass from his heart. It was a great relief for the moment to know that he possessed the means of support for himself and wife until he could win his way to professional eminence; but this fact did not heal the wound his natural independence and sense of honor had received. Even in the language Clara had used as a means of encouragement, he saw rebuke, though he knew that it was given unconsciously.
The amount of Clara’s property, independent of her western land, was about five thousand dollars in good stocks, that were paying an annual dividend of six per cent. On the interest of this she had been living for some years. But an addition of three hundred dollars was not sufficient to meet the deficiency in Ellison’s income. Had the value of the stock been only two or three thousand dollars, the necessity for selling it would have been so apparent to Clara’s mind, as to cause her to suggest its disposal. But Ellison was not wrong in his supposition that his wife would think the mere additional income arising from the stocks all that he needed in his present embarrassment. But the sum of three hundred dollars was not enough for him at present, for he had no certain income of his own. He might succeed in earning, by means of his pencil, two, three or four hundred dollars a year for the next four or five years; but at their present rate of expense this would leave a serious deficiency. He could not say to his wife that even her three hundred dollars would not make his income sufficient, for that would be a too broad declaration of the fact, that, while actually unable to support himself he had assumed the additional expense of a wife. And a step so unreasonable could not be explained satisfactorily, except by bringing in the additional fact that this wife was reputed to be worth some twenty thousand dollars.
To the mind of the unhappy young man was presented only a choice of evils. He must lay open fully to his wife the whole truth in regard to his circumstances, or attempt to struggle on with debt and discouragement, working and hoping for a brighter day in the future when he could feel free and independent. He preferred the latter.
It was impossible for a scene such as took place between Ellison and his wife to transpire without leaving an impression behind. Clara’s thoughts, after she was alone, naturally recurred to what had passed, and she became aware of a pressure upon her feelings. She did not suspect her husband of improper motives in seeking her hand, yet the fact that he had proposed a marriage while his income was insufficient to support a wife, was indicative of a weakness in his mind, or a want of sound judgment and discretion, that it was not pleasant to think about. This conclusion was based on the supposition that he had made no calculations in regard to her property—an impression which, in the late interview, he had evidently designed to make; and she gave him the full benefit of this conclusion, for, in her eyes, he was incapable of any thing mean, selfish, or false.