The Wedding Guest Part 25

From a desire to break the somewhat awkward silence, or from some other motive, he praised each favourite dish, and declared he had seldom eaten so good a supper.

Rising from table, they proceeded as usual to the parlour; and now Mary was amply rewarded for the sacrifice of her own taste, if sacrifice it could be called, by the surprise and pleasure visible in her husband's countenance as he looked around, and by the affectionate kiss which he imprinted upon her cheek.

"And you will forgive my hasty words, will you not?" Mary whispered softly as he bent his head to hers.

"They will never again be remembered," was the reply; "and I have also much to ask your forgiveness for, Mary, for I have thought much and deeply, to-day, dearest, and I find that I have been very deficient in many of the most essential qualities of a husband. But let us sit down together in this old chair, which with me is so strongly a.s.sociated with the memory of my dear mother, that it seems as if her spirit must be near to bless us; and we will review the past year a little, and you will let me peep into your heart, and give me a clearer insight into its feelings and wants."

A long and free conversation followed, in which the husband and wife gained more real knowledge of each other's characters than they had obtained in the whole of their previous acquaintance. All coldness and doubt was dispelled, and they felt that they loved more tenderly and truly than ever before.

"And now, dearest, we will sum up the lesson which we are to remember," said Arthur, playfully, as the lateness of the hour reminded them that the evening had pa.s.sed unheeded away. "_I_ am to think _more_ of trifles, and you are--"

"To think _less_" added Mary, smilingly. "Let us see who will remember their lesson the best."

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

THERE are certain pairs of old-fas.h.i.+oned-looking pictures, in black frames generally, and most commonly glazed with greenish and crooked crown gla.s.s, to be occasionally met with in brokers' shops, or more often, perhaps, on cottage walls, and sometimes in the dingy, smoky parlour of a village tavern or ale-house, which said pictures contain and exhibit a lively and impressive moral. Some of our readers, doubtless, have seen and been edified by these ancient engravings; and, for the benefit of those who have not, we will describe them.

The first picture of the pair represents a blooming and blus.h.i.+ng damsel, well bedecked in frock of pure white muslin, if memory serves us faithfully, very scanty and very short-waisted, as was the fas.h.i.+on fifty years ago, and may again be the fas.h.i.+on in less than fifty years hence, for aught we can tell. Over this frock is worn a gay spencer, trimmed with lace and ornamented with an unexceptionable frill, while the damsel's auburn curls are surmounted with a hat of straw fluttering with broad, true blue ribbons, which fasten it in a true love-knot, under the dimpled chin.

Her companion (for she has a companion) is a young countryman in glossy boots, tight buckskins, gay flapped waistcoat, blue or brown long-waisted and broad-skirted coat, frilled s.h.i.+rt, and white kerchief, innocent of starch, who smiles most lovingly, as with fond devotion [here, gentle reader, is the moral of the picture], he bends lowlily, and chivalrously places at the disposal of the fair lady, hand, arm, and manly strength, as she pauses before a high-backed stile which crosses the path, leading, if we mistake not, to the village church. Beneath this picture, reader, in Roman capitals, are the words:--"BEFORE MARRIAGE."

We turn to the second picture; and there may be seen the same high-backed stile, the same path, and the same pa.s.sengers. Painfully and awkwardly is the lady represented as endeavouring, unaided, to climb the rails, while beyond her is the companion of her former walk--her companion still, but not her helper--slowly sauntering on, and looking back with an ominous frown, as though chiding the delay.

Beneath this picture are the significant words:--"AFTER MARRIAGE."

One could wish these pictures were only pictures; but, in sober earnest, they are allegories, and too truthfully portray what pa.s.ses continually before our eyes: the difference, to wit, between the two states there presented. Truly, indeed, has it been said, "Time and possession too frequently lessen our attachment to objects that were once most valued, to enjoy which no difficulties were thought insurmountable, no trials too great, and no pain too severe. Such, also, is the tenure by which we hold all terrestrial happiness, and such the instability of all human estimation! And though the ties of conjugal affection are calculated to promote, as well as to secure permanent felicity, yet many, it is to be feared, have just reason to exclaim,

"'Once to prevent my wishes Philo flew; But time, that alters all, has altered you.'

"It is, perhaps, not to be expected that a man can retain through life that a.s.siduity by which he pleases for a day or a month. Care, however, should be taken that he do not so far relax his vigilance as to induce a belief that his affection is diminished. Few disquietudes occur in domestic life which might not have been prevented; and those so frequently witnessed, generally arise from a want of attention to those mutual endearments which all have in their power to perform, and which, as they are essential to the preservation of happiness, should never be intentionally omitted."

This witness, dear reader, is true. The neglect of those little attentions which every married couple have it in their power to show to each other, daily, hourly, is a sure method of undermining domestic happiness. Let every married reader bear this in mind, and reflect upon it; for it is an undeniable truth.

It was a full quarter of a century ago that the writer first saw the pair of engravings which he has described. They were hanging over the fire-place of a newly-married cottager. "There," said she, laughing, as she pointed to the second picture; "you see what I have to expect."

She did not expect it, though! Such an attentive, kind, and self-denying lover, as her "old man," as she called him in sport, had been, would never change into a morose brute, who could suffer his wife to climb over an awkward stile without help, and scold her for her clumsiness.

Reader, not many months since we saw poor Mary, prematurely gray and time-stricken. For years she has been living apart from her husband, her children scattered abroad in the world, and she is sad and solitary. And thus it was:--_He_, the trusted one, tired of being the fond lover of the picture, soon began to show himself the husband. _She_, the confiding one, stunned by some instances of neglect, reproached and taunted. He resented these reproaches as unjust, and to prove them so, redoubled his inattentiveness to her, absented himself from home, and bestowed his attentions elsewhere.

_She_ copied his example, and by way of punishment in kind, lavished her smiles and kindnesses in other quarters. _He_--but why go on?

Years--sad years of crimination and recrimination, of provocation, and bitter reproaches, and suspicion, and mutual jealousy, and dislike, and hatred, wore away. At length they parted. What became of the pair of pictures, we often wonder.

"For about two years after I was married," says Cobbett, in his Advice to a Husband, "I retained some of my military manners, and used to romp most famously with the girls that came in my way; till one day, at Philadelphia, my wife said to me, in a very gentle manner 'Don't do that, _I do not like it._' That was quite enough; I had never thought on the subject before; one hair of _her_ head was more dear to me than all the other women in the world, and this I knew that she knew; but I now saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me; I saw that she had the further claim upon me that I should abstain from everything that might induce others to believe that there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection."

"I beseech young married men," continues he, "to bear this in mind; for, on some trifle of this sort the happiness or misery of a long life frequently turns. If the mind of a wife be disturbed on this score, every possible means ought to be used to restore it to peace; and though her suspicions be perfectly groundless--though they be wild as the dreams of madmen--though they may present a mixture of the furious and the ridiculous, still the are to be treated with the greatest lenity and tenderness; and if, after all, you fail, the frailty is to be lamented as a misfortune, and not punished as a fault, seeing that it must have its foundation in a feeling towards you, which it would be the basest of ingrat.i.tude, and the most ferocious of cruelty, to repay by harshness of any description."

"The truth is," adds the same writer, "that the greatest security of all against jealousy in a wife is to show, to _prove_ by your acts, by your words also, but more especially by your _acts_, that you prefer her to all the world; and I know of no act that is, in this respect, equal to spending in her company every moment of your leisure time. Everybody knows, and young wives better than anybody else, that people, who can choose, will be where they like best to be, and that they will be along with those whose company they like best. The matter is very plain; and I do beseech you to bear it in mind. Nor do I see the use, or sense, of keeping a great deal of company as it is called. What company can a man and woman want more than their two selves, and their children, if they have any? If here be not company enough, it is but a sad affair. This hankering after company proves, clearly proves, that you want something beyond the society of your wife; and _that_ she is sure to feel most acutely; the bare fact contains an imputation against her, and it is pretty sure to lay the foundation of jealousy, or of something still worse."

Addressed, as these sentiments are, to the husband, they are equally applicable to the wife; and on the part of domestic happiness, we urge upon our readers, all, to prove their constancy of attachment, by mutual kind offices and delicate attentions, in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow; by abstinence from all that may wound; and by an honest preference of _home_ enjoyments above all other enjoyments.

But to keep alive this honest preference, there must be,--in addition to other good qualifications which have heretofore pa.s.sed under review,

1. _Constant cheerfulness and good humour._ A wife and mother who is perpetually fretful and peevish; who has nothing to utter to her husband when he returns from his daily occupation, whatever it may be, or to her children when they are a.s.sembled around her, but complaints of her hard lot and miserable destiny; who is always brooding over past sorrows, or antic.i.p.ating future evils; does all she can, unconsciously it may be, to make her hearth desolate, and to mar for ever domestic happiness. And the husband and father who brings to that hearth a morose frown, or a gloomy brow; who silences the prattling tongue of infancy by a stern command; who suffers the annoyances and cares of life to cut into his heart's core, and refuses to be comforted or charmed by the thousand endearments of her whom he has sworn to love and cherish; such a one does not deserve domestic happiness.

Young reader, and expectant of future domestic bliss take a word of advice: Be good-tempered. You have not much to try your patience now; by-and-by your trials will come on. Now, then, is the time to practise good-temper in the little vexations of life, so as to prepare you for future days. No doubt there are many little rubs and jars to fret and shake even you; many small things, not over and above agreeable to put up with. Bear them you must; but do try and bear them without losing your temper. If a man have a stubborn Or skittish horse to manage, he knows that the best way to deal with it is by gentle, good-humoured coaxing. Just so it is in other things: kindness, gentleness, and downright good-humour will do what all the bl.u.s.tering and anger in the world can not accomplish. If a wagon wheel creaks and works stiff, or if it skids instead of turning round, you know well enough that it wants oiling. Well, always carry a good supply of the oil of good temper about with you, and use it well on every needful occasion; no fear then of creaking wheels as you move along the great highway of life.

Then, on the part, still, of domestic happiness, would we earnestly advise a decent, nay, _a strict regard to personal habits,_ so far, at least, as the feelings of others are concerned. "It is seldom."

writes a traveller, "that I find a.s.sociates in inns who come up to my ideas of what is right and proper in personal habits. The most of them indulge, more or less, in devil's tattooing, in snapping of fingers, in puffing and blowing, and other noises, anomalous and indescribable, often apparently merely to let the other people in the room know that they are there, and not thinking of anything in particular. Few seem to be under any sense of the propriety of subduing as much as possible all sounds connected with the animal functions, though even breathing might, and ought to be managed in perfect silence." Now, if it were only in inns that disagreeable personal habits are practised, it would not much interfere with the happiness of nine-tenths of the people in the world; but the misfortune is that _home_ is the place where they are to be noticed in full swing--to use a common expression. Indeed, perhaps there are few persons who do not, in a degree at least, mar domestic happiness by persisting in personal peculiarities which they know are unpleasant to those around them. Harmless these habits maybe in themselves, perhaps; but inasmuch as they are teasing, annoying, and irritating to others, they are not harmless. Nay, they are criminal, because they are accompanied by a most unamiable disregard to the feelings of others.

To make home truly happy, _the mind must be cultivated._ It is all very well to say that a man and his wife, and their children, if they have any, ought to be company enough for each other, without seeking society elsewhere; and it is quite right that it should be so: but what if they have nothing to say to each other, as reasonable and thinking beings?--nothing to communicate beyond the veriest common-places--nothing to learn from each other?--nothing but mere animal enjoyments in common? Imagine such a case, reader, where father, mother, and children are sunk in grossest ignorance, without knowledge, without intellectual resources, or even intellectual powers, without books, or any acquaintance with books, or any desire for such acquaintance! What domestic happiness can there be in such a case? As well might we talk of the domestic happiness of a Dog-kennel or sheep-pen, a stable or a pig-stye. And just in proportion as ignorance predominates, so are the chances of domestic happiness diminished. Where there is great ignorance, and contentment with ignorance, there is vice; and vice is not happiness--it cannot be. Therefore, all other things equal, that family will have the greatest chance of the greatest share of domestic happiness where each member of it has the mind to take in, and the heart to give out, a constant succession of fresh ideas, gained from observation, experience, and books. Reader, think of these things.

A SYLVAN MORALITY; OR, A WORD TO WIVES.

"These summer wings Have borne me in my days of idle pleasure; I do discard them."

"And, Bened.i.c.k, love on; I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand."

WE have a young relative, about whom we are going to relate a little anecdote connected with insect history, which requires, however, a few prefatory words.

At the age of seventeen Emily S. "came out," gilt and lettered, from the Minerva Press of a fas.h.i.+onable boarding-school, and was two years afterwards bound (in white satin) as a bride. In the short period intervening between these two important epochs, she had had a prodigious run of admiration. Sonnets had been penned on her pencilled brow, and the brows of rival beauties had contracted at the homage paid to hers. All this Emily had liked well enough--perhaps a little better than she ought; but where was the wonder? for besides excuses general (such as early youth and early training) for loving the world and the world's vanities, she had an excuse of her own, in the fact that she had nothing else to love--no mother, no sister, no home--no home at least in its largest and loving sense. She was the orphan but not wealthy ward of a fas.h.i.+onable aunt, in whom the selfish regrets of age had entirely frozen the few sympathies left open by the selfish enjoyments of youth.

When Emily married, and for a few months previous, it was of course to be presumed that she _had_ found something better than the world whereon to fix the affection of her warm young heart. At all events, she had found a somebody to love _her_, and one who was worthy to be loved in return. Indeed, a better fellow than our friend F-- does not live; but though fairly good-looking, and the perfect gentleman, he was not perhaps exactly the _description_ of gentleman to excite any rapid growth of romantic attachment in the bosom of an admired girl of nineteen.

Why did she marry him? Simply because amongst her admirers she liked n.o.body better, and because her aunt, who was anxious to be relieved of her charge, liked n.o.body so well;--not because he had much to offer, but because it was little he required.

Soon after their marriage the happy pair set out for Paris.

F-- though his means were slender and tastes retired, made every effort (as far as bridegroom could so feel it) to gratify his lively young wife by a stay at the capital of pleasure. After subsequent excursion, they returned within a year to England, and settled at a pretty cottage in Berks.h.i.+re, to which we speedily received a cordial invitation. It was no less readily accepted; for we were anxious to behold the "rural felicity," of which we little doubted our friends were in full possession.

The result, however, of a week's sojourn at their quiet abode, was the reluctant opinion that, somehow or another, the marriage garments of the young couple did not sit quite easy; though to point out the defect in their make, or to discover where they girted, were matters on which it required more time to form a decided judgment.

One thing, however, was pretty obvious. With her matronly t.i.tle, Emily had not a.s.sumed an atom of that seriousness--not sad, but sober--which became her new estate; nor did she, as we shrewdly suspected, pay quite as much attention to the cares of her little _menage_ as was rendered inc.u.mbent by the limited amount of her husband's income. She seemed, in short, the same thoughtless pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking girl as ever; now that she was captured, the same volatile b.u.t.terfly as when surrounded and chased by b.u.t.terflies like herself. But her captor? asks some modern Petruchio--had he not, or could he not contrive to clip her pinions?

Poor F--! not he! he would have feared to "brush the dust" from off them; and, from something of this over-tenderness, had been feeding, with the honeyed pleasures of the French capital, those tastes which (without them) might have been reconciled already to the more spare and simple sociabilities of a retired English neighbourhood. He was only now trying the experiment which should have been made a year ago, and that with a reluctant and undecided hand.

Poor Emily! her love of gayety had now, it is true, but little scope for its display; but it was still strongly apparent, in the rapturous regret with which she referred to pleasures past, and the rapturous delight with which she greeted certain occasional breaks in the monotony of a country life. An approaching dinner-party would raise her tide of spirits, and a distant ball or bow-meeting make them swell into a flood. On one or two of such occasions, we fancied that F--, though never stern, looked grave--grave enough to have been set down as an unreasonable fellow; if not by every one, at least by that complex "everybody" who declared that his wife was "one of the prettiest and sweetest little women in the world," and, as everybody must be right, so of course it was.

Rarely, indeed, had our gentle Bened.i.c.k beheld the face of his "Young May Moon" absolutely obscured; but then it had always been his care to chase away from it every pa.s.sing or even approaching cloud; and he would certainly have liked, in return, that its very brightest rays should have shone on him direct, instead of reaching him only, as it were, reflected from what in his eyes, certainly, were very inferior objects.

We had pa.s.sed some weeks at our entertainer's cottage when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed for many a year the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington society. The son of Lord W--was about to come of age, and the event was to be celebrated by grand doings; a varied string of entertainments, to be wound up, so it was whispered, by a great parti-coloured or fancy ball. Rumours were soon silenced by certainty, and our friends were amongst those who received an invitation to meet all the world of Goslington and a fragment of the world of London, about to be brought into strange conjunction at W--Castle. What shapes! grotesque, and gay, and gorgeous--ghosts of things departed--started up before the sparkling eyes of Emily, as she put the reviving talisman into F--'s hand.

No wonder that her charmed sight failed to discover what was, however, sufficiently apparent, that her husband's delight at the honour done them by no means equalled hers. Indeed, we were pretty certain that not merely dissatisfaction, but even dissent, was to be read in his compressed lip, and, for once, forbidding eye.

Nothing was said then upon the subject; but we saw the next morning something very like coolness on the part of F-- towards his wife, which was returned on hers by something very like petulance. Ah!

thought we, it all comes of this unlucky fancy ball! We had often heard it declared by our friend that he hated every species of masquerade, and would never allow (though this as certainly before his marriage) either sister, wife, or daughter of his to attend one.

But, besides this aversion for such entertainments in general, he had reasons, as we afterwards gathered, for disliking, in particular, this fancy ball of Lord W--'s. Amongst the "London World" Emily would be sure to meet several of her quondam acquaintances, perhaps admirers; and though he was no jealous husband, he preferred, on many accounts, that such meetings should be avoided.