Miss Arbour continued: “Mr. Hexton after a while gave me to understand that he was my admirer, and before six months of acquaintanceship had passed my mother told me that he had requested formally that he might be considered as my suitor. She put no pressure upon me, nor did my father, excepting that they said that if I would accept Mr. Hexton they would be content, as they knew him to be a very well-conducted young man, a member of the church, and prosperous in his business. My first, and for a time my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I thought him mean, and because I felt he lacked sympathy with me.
“Unhappily I did not trust that impulse. I looked for something more authoritative, but I was mistaken, for the voice of God, to me at least, hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect stillness to make it out. It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I argued with it and was lost. I was guiltless of any base motive, but I found the wrong name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded myself. I reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy, and that his dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which ought to induce me to marry him, because he would correct my failings. I knew I was too inconsiderate, too rash, too flighty, and I said to myself that his soberness would be a good thing for me.
“Oh, if I had but the power to write a book which should go to the ends of the world, and warn young men and women not to be led away by any sophistry when choosing their partners for life! It may be asked, How are we to distinguish heavenly instigation from hellish temptation? I say, that neither you nor I, sitting here, can tell how to do it. We can lay down no law by which infallibly to recognise the messenger from God. But what I do say is, that when the moment comes, it is perfectly easy for us to recognise him. Whether we listen to his message or not is another matter. If we do not—if we stop to dispute with him, we are undone, for we shall very soon learn to discredit him.
“So I was married, and I went to live in a dark manufacturing town, away from all my friends. I awoke to my misery by degrees, but still rapidly. I had my books sent down to me. I unpacked them in Mr. Hexton’s presence, and I kindled at the thought of ranging my old favourites in my sitting-room. He saw my delight as I put them on some empty shelves, but the next day he said that he wanted a stuffed dog there, and that he thought my books, especially as they were shabby, had better go upstairs.
“We had to give some entertainments soon afterwards. The minister and his wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the conversation turned on parties and the dullness of winter evenings if no amusements were provided. I maintained that rational human beings ought not to be dependent upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy themselves and interest themselves with talk. Talk, I said—not gossip, but talk—pleases me better than chess or forfeits; and the lines of Cowper occurred to me—
‘When one, that holds communion with the skies,
Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
’Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.’
I ventured to repeat this verse, and when I had finished, there was a pause for a moment, which was broken by my husband’s saying to the minister’s wife who sat next to him, ‘Oh, Mrs. Cook, I quite forgot to express my sympathy with you; I heard that you had lost your cat.’ The blow was deliberately administered, and I felt it as an insult. I was wrong, I know. I was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to have been aware of the folly of placing myself above the level of my guests, and of the extreme unwisdom of revealing myself in that unguarded way to strangers. Two or three more experiences of that kind taught me to close myself carefully to all the world, and to beware how I uttered anything more than commonplace. But I was young, and ought to have been pardoned. I felt the sting of self-humiliation far into the night, as I lay and silently cried, while Mr. Hexton slept beside me.
“I soon found that he was entirely insensible to everything for which I most cared. Before our marriage he had affected a sort of interest in my pursuits, but in reality he was indifferent to them. He was cold, hard, and impenetrable. His habits were precise and methodical, beyond what is natural for a man of his years. I remember one evening—strange that these small events should so burn themselves into me—that some friends were at our house at tea. A tradesman in the town was mentioned, a member of our congregation, who had become bankrupt, and everybody began to abuse him. It was said that he had been extravagant; that he had chosen to send his children to the grammar-school, where the children of gentlefolk went; and finally, that only last year he had let his wife go to the seaside.
“I knew what the real state of affairs was. He had perhaps been living a little beyond his means, but as to the school, he had rather refined tastes, and he longed to teach his children something more than the ciphering, as it was called, and bookkeeping which they would have learned at the academy at which men in his position usually educated their boys; and as to the seaside, his wife was ill, and he could not bear to see her suffering in the smoky street, when he knew that a little fresh air and change of scene would restore her.
“So I said that I was sorry to hear the poor man attacked; that he had done wrong, no doubt, but so had the woman who was brought before Jesus; and that with me, charity or a large heart covered a multitude of sins. I added that there was something dreadful in the way in which everybody always seemed to agree in deserting the unfortunate. I was a little moved, and unluckily upset a teacup. No harm was done; and if my husband, who sat next to me, had chosen to take no notice, there need have been no disturbance whatever. But he made a great fuss, crying, ‘Oh, my dear, pray mind! Ring the bell instantly, or it will all be through the tablecloth.’ In getting up hastily to obey him, I happened to drag the cloth, as it lay on my lap; a plate fell down and was broken; everything was in confusion; I was ashamed and degraded.