 | Chapter XI.
The Neglected Wife. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
11. Chapter XI.
The Neglected Wife.
TO the pedestrian, toiling over barriers of muddy
snow at the crossings, and picking his steps along
the pave—to the hardly more comfortable traveller, peering
from closed glasses of carriage or omnibus, dragged
slowly by laboring horses; and to the watchman, stamping
uneasily the sidewalk, with wet feet—it was a sight
suggestive of great comfort that met the glance directed
to warm, fire-lighted windows of splendid mansions lining
the aristocratic Avenues: and either of such beholders
might be pardoned, if a shade of envy flitted over his
mind, while fancying the luxurious happiness half-disclosed
from these elegant dwellings. But “all is not gold that
glisters,” is an axiom, the truth of which causes its triteness;
and the bright firelight in magnificent parlors may
cast its gleam upon pale cheeks and sad eyes, denoting, it
may be, the ice of despairing hearts.
Thus, truly, if the wayfarer's vision could have penetrated
through satin curtains to an apartment wherefrom
mellowed radiance shone upon the darkness without, it
might have discovered amid wealth and refinement which
the unthinking world sighs for, that their possessor was
area beneath. For, as the warm light danced hither and
thither, chasing shadows around the gorgeously frescoed
ceilings and gilded walls—flashing upon the polished surfaces
of curious woods that formed the furniture—playing
upon golden-framed antique paintings—glittering on the
rounded beauties of chiselled marble and alabaster—and
illumining emblazoned volumes of ancient and modern
literature—it did not, it could not dissipate the gloom of
a sorrowing spirit in their midst; it shed no warmth into
the bosom of an unhappy one who reclined upon the velvet
couch, with pale lips compressed, eyes painfully fixed, and
white fingers convulsively clenched upon a jewelled bosom.
There was no realization of surrounding luxuries in the
absorbed thoughts of that wretched one—of the wealth
that was hers—of the gold squandered for her pleasure.
Hours stole away; and quarter strokes tinkled again and
again upon the golden ball of the elaborate mantel clock;
but the cold, sad shadow moved not from that lady's
brow, her rigid fingers ceased not to press the almost
pulseless heart.
She was a young wife still, though five years wedded,
who had stepped from the threshold of her father's house,
with a heart rich in hopes, and a nature yet unschooled
by the hard lessons of endurance. And now, weary and
neglected, she wasted her existence in watching and waiting
for uncertain gleams of happiness with an unloving
husband.
The long time crept heavily, ere a loud peal of the
door-bell rang through the silent mansion, startling the
was as quickly shaded by a cloud, as, with a perceptible
shudder, she rose from the sofa, glancing nervously towards
the door. Again the bell-wire was violently agitated, and
the hurried steps of a servant, in the hall below, were succeeded
by the sound of unsteady feet ascending the stairs.
In another moment, the door of the boudoir was flung
open, and a man entered, advancing with swaying motion
towards the lady. It was her husband—Mr. Charles
Richmond, a gentleman whose acquaintance the reader
has already made, in the office of Mr. Jobson, real-estate
agent.
He was apparently about thirty-five years old, of elegant
form, and face which might be esteemed handsome,
though the blue eyes were shifting in their expression, and
the lips tremulous and undecided, while the full chin gave
token of a sensual nature. His dress was disordered, and
his flushed countenance and bloodshot eyes betrayed the
situation in which the unhappy wife, too unerringly, had
looked to see him appear. From the haunts of revellers,
reeling with the fumes of wine, he had returned to that
neglected woman, and now, unmindful of her greeting as
he approached, threw himself upon the sofa from which
she had arisen, half-muttering a drunken oath.
For a moment, the wife paused, as if irresolute—her
hands pressed upon her breast—and then, gliding hurriedly
to his side, laid her small hand upon his hot forehead.
“Charles!” she murmured. There was no answer.
“Dear Charles! you are ill!” whispered the lady,
bending over the man, unmindful of the poisonous
brow.
“Why have you not retired, madam?” muttered the
husband, with no manifestation of affection in his voice.
“What are you doing, up at this hour?”
“I could not sleep, Charles!”
“Stuff! you have been dozing over a book, all the
evening! Your eyes are red, and” —
“I have been weeping,” half rose to the wife's lips, but
she repressed the avowal, and turned aside to hide the sob
which choked her.
“Go to bed, Helen! Do you hear?”
“Charles! why do you treat me thus? It is unkind—
it is”—exclaimed the wife; and a gush of tears, not to
be restrained, concluded what she would have uttered.
The husband laughed sneeringly. “Pooh! pooh!—
your sex have always tears at their disposal,” he said.
“Go to bed!”
“Charles! do you—do you mean to be so cruel?”
“Will you leave me, madam?”
The wife turned silently away, tottering towards her
chamber-door, while the man, with a drunken yawn,
stretched himself at length upon the couch.
“Are you not gone yet?” he muttered, perceiving that
the unhappy woman had paused in the middle of the floor,
and was gazing mournfully back towards him.
“Charles!—my husband!” was the response, as, with
a sudden impulse, the lady retraced her steps to the
sofa, and sank, kneeling beside it. “You do not mean
to be unkind to me! I know you do not! How have
me!”
“Will you go to bed, madam?”
“Cruel, cruel! I cannot bear it! Charles, if you
have ever cared for me, tell me why you treat me in this
manner? Night after night, you come without a smile or
kind word. I have not complained, Charles—I thought it
would pass over! But, indeed, indeed, I cannot bear this
treatment! It is breaking my heart!”
As the lady said this, she bowed her head upon the
sofa, by her husband's side, and the thick, brown tresses
of her hair fell, disordered, to the floor.
“Really, you are very careless of your toilet, madam!”
remarked the man, with his former sneering laugh. “You
must be quite sleepy! I beg you to retire!”
Those loosened tresses were then flung back quickly,
and a look, in which tenderness, grief, and despair, struggled
for the mastery, fell upon the countenance of the
heartless husband, causing the flush upon his cheeks to
fade for an instant into pallor. For a full minute, that
strange glance perused his regular features, till the blue,
insincere eye fell beneath it, and the mobile lip quivered as
with fear. Then, as if, in that strange look, the wife read
terrible truths, concealed before, she rose, without a word,
moved towards her chamber-door, and, pausing at the
threshold, murmured in a voice very low, but clearly
audible:
“Good-night, Charles! God bless you!”
For a quarter of an hour after the door of her chamber
had closed upon his unhappy wife, Charles Richmond
mantel-clock ticked with solemn distinctness, and the fire-shadows
flitted irregularly in the light of the blazing sea-coal.
But, as the golden quarters struck again, he started
suddenly, and, rising from the sofa, walked towards a door
opposite to that of the bed-chamber, and, opening it,
entered an inner apartment, furnished luxuriously, like the
boudoir, with the addition of a sumptuous bookcase, escritoir,
and articles of toilet furniture, denoting it to be his
private dressing-room. Here, turning on the gaslight, he
seated himself at a table, whereon stood an ivory cabinet,
which he presently unlocked, taking from it several papers,
and spreading them on the table before him. The effects
of his evening's dissipation seemed somewhat to confound
his ideas; for some minutes elapsed ere he proceeded further,
but leaned moodily upon his elbows, rubbing his
fingers alternately through his thick auburn hair, and
over his flushed face. At length, slowly collecting his
faculties, he poured out a glass of water from a silver
pitcher which stood beside the cabinet, and drank it at a
draught; then proceeded with his examination of the
papers.
There were several notes, traced in a delicate, female
hand, which he glanced at, and laid aside; a packet of
business-like papers, that were evidently bills and receipts;
a few discolored sheets, seeming to be old letters,
which he hastily tossed back into the casket; and, finally,
a roll whereon was scheduled a list of some sort, which
latter seemed to be the object of his scrutiny; for he
unfolded it carefully, and, drawing from his pocket a
Mr. Jobson, began slowly to compare the two.
To one who might observe this young man, as he now
sat under the light of a shaded chandelier, the aspect of
his features would not have been prepossessing, handsome
as he was generally conceded to be by female connoisseurs,
who envied Helen Richmond the possession of such an
“elegant” husband. A close reader of the human countenance
might discern in the compressed though feeble
lips, and changing eye, as well as in the narrow space
between the brows, the token of a crafty, and, perhaps,
cruel nature. There was a certain sweetness in the conformation
of the mouth, when slightly curved, which might
pass, to a loose glance, like the mark of amiability; but a
shrewd inspector would detect no permanence in this, but
rather the chance or studied expression of yielding muscles.
Altogether, though regular in feature, and of clear
complexion, Charles Richmond's face was not a face to
attract the love of a cautious observer. Certainly, if now
scanned keenly, the changing flickers of vexation, cunning,
and triumph, which it variously betrayed, were not at all
pleasing to follow.
“No brothers or sisters—sole heiress!” muttered the
young man, as he perused the papers attentively. “Jobson
has done his business well! I hardly thought the old
man was so wealthy.” Here he seemed to be mentally
computing the sum of certain figures in the column before
him. “A house in F — street; two blocks upon —
Avenue; eight lots in South Brooklyn; two stores in
Broadway; bonds, mortgages, stock securities! 'Egad!
down the schedule, and passed his jewelled fingers several
times through his glossy hair.
“And all may be mine!—all! for he has neither chick
nor child but Rebecca!” The young man rose, as he said
this, and walked up and down the apartment, with hurried
steps.
“Curses!” he muttered between his set teeth, as he
paused again, near the door, and stretched out his clenched
hand in the direction of his wife's chamber. “Were it not
for her!—a whining, pale-faced fool!” The man's eye, as he
said this, glittered with a wicked light, which it was well
for Helen she could not see, or she had learned more of
her husband's character than had been revealed during
her years of married life. But at this moment, a suppressed
cough echoed from the bed-chamber, and the
sound seemed to change the current of thought in the
brain of him who listened; for he laughed strangely, and
said: “Hah! she fears she is in a decline! My treatment,
she will tell me, has brought on consumption. She coughs
a great deal, of late—that's true!”
With these words, Charles Richmond walked back to
the table, and proceeded to return the various papers to
their receptacle; but, twice, ere he locked that casket
again, he glanced over the schedule, muttering, as he
read: “It may—it must be mine! Helen cannot live
long, and—it must be so!”
What were the thoughts of this heartless man, and
what the intentions darkly shadowed forth by his disconnected
words, were not such as generally permit sleep to
an hour longer, was wrapped in slumber, upon the sofa in
his wife's boudoir; and there, at daybreak, Helen found
him, as she stole tremblingly forth from her own chamber,
and crept softly to his side, imprinting a kiss upon the
forchead shaded by auburn curls; then, fearful of rebuke,
fled back to weep upon her pillow.
An hour later, Richmond awoke, and, after hastily performing
his ablutions, in the adjoining dressing-room appropriated
to his own use, pulled the bell-rope violently,
and ordered the servant who responded to have breakfast
served at once in his library. It was soon announced as
ready, and then the husband left his wife's boudoir, without
a manifestation of solicitude concerning one who had
kissed and wept over his sleeping form. When he had
departed, Helen stole out once more from her chamber,
listening to his footsteps, and half-murmuring his name, as
if she hoped to call him back.
But the man was beyond the influence of her voice or
her affection. Wrapped in his selfishness, scheming alone
for personal enjoyment, Charles Richmond had walked
beyond the circle of household peace, and given himself
over to the demons of pride and falsehood. He was no
longer to be controlled by a wife's love, nor moved by a
wife's devotion.
And yet that neglected wife had bestowed upon the
dark spirit who now plotted her ruin, all that he possessed
of wealth and position. A few years since, Helen Ellwood
moved, the belle of a southern city, the idol of a doting
father, her only relative, and the toast of the fashionable
if lacking her presence—an evening circle from which she
was absent, accounted dull and tedious. A beauty and
an heiress, was it a wonder that she was openly flattered
and courted by a host of male admirers, or that she was
secretly abused and slandered by half her female acquaintances?
Brilliant at all times, she spoke and was obeyed.
The men bowed to her slightest behest, the women called
her “love,” “darling,” and “charming,” and almost broke
their swelling hearts with envy at her graces. But jealousy
was of no effect, while the gentlemen acknowledged
Helen's attractions; and at length the lesser lights in that
firmament of beauty, wherein the heiress was the sun,
united in a sisterly wish that some matrimonial eclipse
would soon take place, obscuring, if not extinguishing, the
overpowering brightness of this southern cynosure.
But Helen remained long in “maiden meditation fancy
free,” though her refusals of ambitious swains, and they
were many, were chronicled with due seasoning of remark,
until her reputed fastidiousness furnished a constant theme
for the innocent gossip of all the unmarried young ladies
of thirty and upwards—a fastidiousness which, in their
eyes, assumed the character of heartless arrogance, when
a certain Mr. Peyton, in the first flush of youth, and a
large fortune, was unceremoniously rejected by the young
beauty, and thereupon plunged into reckless dissipation.
But, at this juncture, and even before the charitable
gossip of the young ladies had been entirely expended,
another event caused the spontaneous elevation of all the
fair hands and sparkling eyes of the neighborhood. Miss
Richmond, a young lawyer, without clients, but a capital
performer on the flute—without fortune, but an unexceptionable
waltzer—with a graceful shape, delicate hands,
and azure eyes—the whole constituting him, when en
promenade, in close-fitting frock coat, as dashing a walking
companion as any lady could desire.
The town was paralyzed—the gossips affected to condemn,
but secretly rejoiced—the young gentlemen grew
indignant, and voted Richmond “an artful scamp.” But,
after a few weeks, the newly-wedded pair gave a sumptuous
entertainment, to which hundreds of “friends” were
invited; whereupon the guests all agreed that Richmond
was “a lucky dog,” and “a clever fellow;” and thenceforth
they envied him, drank his wine, abused, and dined
with him as often as they were invited.
The death of her only parent followed shortly after the
marriage of Helen Ellwood to the husband of her choice,
and in another year, Mr. Charles Richmond removed from
the South to the city of New York. Here the young man
began to mingle in gay society—to patronize his “club,”
the Opera, and the “turf;” and here the wife experienced
the first bitterness of her life, in witnessing the altered
demeanor of her husband. Her rejected suitor, Peyton,
had also transferred his residence to the northern metropolis,
a few years sufficing him to squander, in a thousand
follies, an ample patrimony to which he had succeeded at
his majority. Mrs. Richmond met the gentleman occasionally
in society, and grieved to see that his ruddy cheek
had lost its hue, that wrinkles bordered his somewhat
features had given place to the cold smoothness of a
worldly face.
But if she remarked this change in Peyton, that
individual was no less quick in discerning evidence of
some secret uneasiness in her own bosom; his eager perception
taught him that something was hidden beneath a
veil of assumed calmness—a veil that hid, perchance, her
eyes, but could not prevent unbidden tears from stealing
through its gossamer threads.
At first, the rejected lover experiened a secret satisfaction
in fancying that the proud beauty who had denied his
suit, was now a prey to concealed suffering. But, as, in
various interviews during several years, he marked with
jealous scrutiny a gradual but constant wasting of the
woman's beauty, and could not but divine that some worm
was gnawing at her peace of mind, the young man began
to feel a renewed interest in her to whom he had been
once passionately devoted. He longed to learn the cause
of her unquiet, which, surrounded as she was by luxuries,
and apparently ardently loved by her husband, seemed, at
best, an anomaly; for, never did he suspect the existence
of that domestic tyranny which Richmond, after a few
years, had reduced to a sort of systematic torture. In
society, the wife never permitted a shadow to rest upon
her snowy brow, or the trace of a tear to dim the lustre of
her eyes. Still the life of any circle in which she might be
thrown, though seldom, of late years, mingling in fashionable
throngs, no one, save a reader of the heart, could
have imagined that Mrs. Richmond's light laugh and
and thoughtless girlish nature.
Such was Helen Richmond, after five years of wedded
life with the man she loved. Faded and sinking, with
all her tenderness chilled and beaten back upon her
own heart, the wife saw herself solitary amid society,
starving in spirit, with every luxury around her.
It was Richmond's usual custom to breakfast alone, and
Helen dared not intrude her presence, though she yearned
to throw herself upon his breast, and, in his sober moments,
reveal to him how, day by day, she was slowly,
surely perishing under his neglect. Poor trembler! little
did she dream that such a revelation from her lips would
but yield a greater satisfaction to his selfish soul! little
did she suspect the feverish anxiety with which Charles
Richmond watched and waited for the death of her whom
he had sworn to love, to cherish and protect.
Helen folded her hands across her fluttering bosom, and
walked to the next apartment, wherein, upon her husband's
table, stood his writing-desk and the casket containing
his private papers. As she crossed the threshold,
her eyes bent vacantly to the floor, a folded paper on the
carpet suddenly drew her notice, and she stooped, absently,
to reach it. It was a letter, and the first words at its
head at once arrested her attention; for, though very
simple, they were fraught with interest to her. Those
words, traced in a female hand, were, “My ever-cherished
and beloved Charles.”
It had been better for Helen Richmond, on reading this
first line, to have cast the fatal missive amid the fiery coals
perusal. But a spell seemed to be upon the poor wife,
holding her steadfast where she had paused, with the
letter open before her straining eyes, till all—even to the
last syllable—had been burned into her brain for ever.
Yet it was no love-note—no tender wooing of a rival in
her husband's heart. It was of a remote date, moreover—
showing it to have been written months before her marriage
with Charles. Yet, old and free from rivalship as it
was, that letter had power to blanch the cheek of Helen
to a deeper paleness, and to check, with fearful suddenness,
the pulses of her stricken heart. It ran as follows:
“Your letter was received yesterday, and I have
spent the hours since in weeping and prayer. I have
prayed for you, dear Charles! with my heart sobbing, well-nigh
to break. O could I ever dream that you would
leave me for another? But I must not chide you—God
knows how I love you, dearest—I would lay down my life
for you cheerfully, without a murmur. But it is a hard
sacrifice you require of me—to give you up to another
woman, Charles! when you have sworn to love no other
one but your Margaret. You tell me you do not love the
lady—that you will marry her only for your worldly prospeets!
O Charles! I feel this is all wrong; but, alas!
what dare I say to you? I am poor—without fortune but
my deep love—God knows, I would resign a throne for
your affection, if I were a queen, instead of a portionless
girl. Charles! what was it that you said?—O Heaven!
would remain unchanged, and we should be happy after
your marriage! After your marriage, Charles! Do you
not know me better? Do you think I would consent to
do wrong, even of my great love for you? No, Charles!
after your marriage, we must never meet more! Beloved,
bear with me—it is the last time I shall annoy you. You
will wed the lady, Charles! Do not wrong her trust!—
be kind to her when she becomes your—wife! make her
happy! love her—and forget me! I shall not live a
great while, dear Charles; for my heart will break, in
thinking of the past, and of my hopes, all, all withered.
Farewell, dearest! I submit to your wishes, but I must
never see you after you are another's. Adieu, Charles!—
for the last time, my Charles! God bless and protect
you! Dear, dear Charles — husband!—I resign you.
Farewell, forever!
The letter was creased with folding, and there were
stains upon the pages, as if tears, dropping upon it while
the ink was yet wet, had blotted some of the words.
But Helen Richmond did not notice aught of this, for the
contents of the missive—a revelation of the dreadful truth
that Richmond had never loved her—had already accomplished
their work upon her brain. Pressing the fatal
letter to her bosom, she sank senseless upon the floor.
| Chapter XI.
The Neglected Wife. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |