Part 1

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A WIFE'S DUTY.

A WIFE'S DUTY, A Tale

by Mrs. Opie

"There is no killing like that which kills the heart." SHAKSPEARE.

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY GROVE AND SON, TRINITY STREET, SOUTHWARK. 1847.

A WIFE'S DUTY,

BEING A CONTINUATION OF A "WOMAN'S LOVE."

PART THE SECOND.

I am only too painfully aware, my dear friend, that in my history of a "Woman's Love," I have related none but very common occurrences and situations, and entered into minute, nay, perhaps, uninteresting details. Still, however common an event may be, it is susceptible of variety in description, because endlessly various is the manner in which the same event affects different persons. Perhaps no occurrence ever affected two human beings exactly in the same manner; but as the rays of light call forth different hues and gradations of colour, according to the peculiar surfaces of the objects on which they fall, so common circumstances vary in their results and their effects, according to the different natures and minds of those to whom they occur.

My trials have been, and will no doubt continue to be, the trials of thousands of my sex; but the manner in which I acted under them, and their effect on my feelings and my character, must be peculiar to myself. And on these alone I can presume to found my expectation of affording to you, while you read, the variety which keeps attention alive, and the interest which repays it.

In the same week which made me a bride Ferdinand De Walden left England, unable to remain near the spot which had witnessed the birth of his dearest hopes, and would now witness the destruction of them.

I could have soothed in a degree the "pangs of despised love," by assuring him that I was convinced nothing but a prior attachment could have prevented my heart from returning his love. I could have told him that I seemed to myself to have two hearts; the one glowing with passionate tenderness for the object of its first feelings, the other conscious of a deep-rooted and well-founded esteem for him. But it was my duty to conceal this truth from him, as such an avowal would have strengthened my hold on his remembrance, and it was now become his duty to forget.

My mother not very long after my marriage wounded my feelings in a manner which I could not soon recover. I was speaking of De Walden with that warmth of regard which I really felt for him, and lamenting that I should probably now see him no more, when, with a look of agony for which I was not prepared, she begged me never to mention the name of De Walden to her again; for that her only chance of being able to reconcile herself to the marriage which I had made, was her learning to forget the one which she had so ardently desired.

Eagerly indeed did I pledge my word to her, that I would in future never name De Walden.

The first twelve months of my wedded life were halcyon days; and the first months of marriage are not often such,--perhaps they never are, except where the wedded couple are so young that they are not trammelled in habits which are likely to interfere with a spirit of accommodation; nor even then, probably, unless the temper is good and yielding on both sides. It usually takes some time for the husband and wife to know each other's humours and habits, and to find out what surrender of their own they can make with the least reluctance for their mutual good. But we had youth, and (I speak it not as a boast) we had good temper also. Seymour, you know, was proverbially good-natured; and I, though an only child, had not had my naturally happy temper ruined by injudicious indulgence.

You know that Seymour and I went to Paris, and thence to Marseilles, not very long after we were married, and returned in six months, to complete the alterations which we had ordered to be made to our house, under the superintendence of my mother.

We found our alterations really deserving the name of improvements, and Seymour enthusiastically exclaimed, "O Helen! never, never will we leave this enchanting place. Here let us live, my beloved, and be the world to each other!"

My heart readily assented to this delightful proposition, but even then my judgement revolted at it.

I felt, I knew that Pendarves loved and was formed for society. I was sure that by beginning our wedded life with total seclusion, we should only prepare the way for utter distaste to it; and concealing my own inclinations, I told him I must stipulate for three months of London every spring. My husband started with surprise and mortification at this un-romantic reply to his sentimental proposal, nor could he at all accede to it; but he complained of my passion for London to my mother, while the country with me for his companion was quite sufficient for his happiness.

"These are early times yet," replied my mother coldly; and Seymour was not satisfied with the mother or the daughter.

"Seymour," said I one day, "since you have declared against keeping any more terms, and will therefore not read much law till you become a justice of the peace, pray, tell me how you mean to employ yourself?"

"Why, in the first place," said he, "I shall read or write. But my first employment shall be to teach you Spanish. I cannot endure to think that De Walden taught you Italian, Helen."

"But you taught me to love, you know, therefore you ought to forgive it."

"No, I cannot rest till I also have helped to complete your education."

"Well, but I cannot be learning Spanish all day."

"No; so perhaps I shall set about writing a great work."

"The very thing that I was going to propose, though not exactly a great work. What think you of a life of poor Chatterton, with critical remarks on his poems?"

"Excellent! I will do it."

And now having given him a pursuit, I ventured to indulge some reasonable hopes that home and the country might prove to him as delightful as he fancied that they would be; and what with studying Spanish, with building a green-house, with occasional writing, with study, with getting together materials for this life, and writing the preface, time fled on very rapid pinions; and after we had been married two years, and May arrived a second time, Seymour triumphantly exclaimed, "There, Helen! I believe that you distrusted my love for the country; but have I once expressed or felt a wish to go to London?"

"The ides of March are come, but not gone," I replied; "and surely if I wish to go, you will not deny me."

"No, Helen, certainly not," said he in a tone of mortification; "if I am no longer all-sufficient for your happiness."

Alas! in the ingenuousness of my nature, I gave way when he said this to the tenderness of my heart, and assured him that my happiness depended wholly on the enjoyment of his society; and I fear it is too true that men soon learn to slight what they are sure of possessing. Had I been an artful woman, and could I have condescended to make him doubtful of the extent of my love, by a few woman's subterfuges; could I have feigned a desire to return to the world, instead of owning, as I did, that all my enjoyment was comprised in home and him; I do think that I might have been for a much longer period the happiest of wives; but then I should have been, in my own eyes, despicable as a woman, and I was always tenacious of my own esteem.

May was come, but not gone--when I found my husband was continually reading to me, after having previously read to himself, the accounts in the papers of the gaieties of London.

"What a tempting account this is, Helen, of the Exhibition at Somerset House!--I should like to see it. Seeing pictures is an elegant rational amusement. And here are soon to be a ball and supper at Ranelagh. A fine place Ranelagh for such an entertainment."

Here he read a list of routs and cotillion balls at different places; but one day he read, with infinite mortification, that our uncle, Mr. Pendarves, had given a ball on the return of his son-in-law to Parliament.

"How abominable," cried Seymour, "for my uncle to give a ball, and not invite us to go up to it!"

"You forget," replied I, "that, knowing our passion for the country, and that we had abjured the world, he did not like to ask us, because he knew he should be refused."

"I am not so sure he would have been refused, Helen; or, as to having abjured the world--No, no; we are not such fools as to do that--are we, my dearest girl?"

"We are bound by no vows, certainly; and, as soon as retirement is become irksome to you, we can go to London."

"Did I say that retirement was grown irksome? Oh, fie! such an idea never entered my thoughts: besides, as this fine ball is over, what should we go to London for?"

"There may be other fine balls, and fine parties, you know."

"True; but really, Helen, I begin to believe you wish to go to London."

"If you do, I do certainly."

"I!--Not I indeed. Ah, Helen! I suspect you are not ingenuous with me; and you do wish to go."

I only smiled: but I soon found that the book did not get forward, that the newspapers were anxiously expected, and that my Spanish master sometimes forgot his task in the indulgence of reverie; and I debated within myself, whether it would not be for our interest and our domestic comfort, to propose to go to London, in order to conceal from him as long as I could that I was not sufficient for his happiness; and that he would live and die a man of the world. I was the more ready to do this, because I wished that my mother should not see my empire was on the decline. Why did I so wish? I hoped it was because I was desirous to spare her any anxiety for my peace; but I fear it also was because I did not like that she should have cause to suspect her choice for me was likely to have proved a better one than my own. (I believe I have observed before, how strong my conviction is, that there is scarcely such a thing in nature as a single motive of action.)

I therefore, in the presence of my mother, hinted a wish to go to London for six weeks. She started, and looked suspiciously at Pendarves; while he, with an odd mixture of surprise, joy, and mortification in his countenance, exclaimed--

"Do I hear right, Helen? Are you, after all you have declared, desirous of going to London?"

"I am: 'Variety is charming,' says the proverb; and here you know it is _toujours perdrix_!"

"Well, there, madam," said Pendarves, turning to my mother, "you will now, I hope, believe what I assured you of some time ago, that Helen had a passion for London?"

"_C'est selon_," replied my mother, "to use a French phrase, in answer to Helen's," and darting, as she spoke, a penetrating glance at me.

"I assure you," replied I, "that my wish to go to London originates with myself, as I believe that this journey to the metropolis is the wisest, as well as the most agreeable thing I could desire."

My mother sighed; and a "Well, my child, I have no reason to doubt your word," broke languidly from her lips, while she suddenly rose and left the room.

"And are you really in earnest, Helen?" said Pendarves.

"Never more so; and unless my proposal is very distasteful to you, I beg you will write directly, and engage lodgings."

"Distasteful! oh, no! quite the contrary. I shall be proud to exhibit my lovely wife in London, where, no doubt, she will be as much admired as she was abroad.--Do you think," he affectionately added, "that I have forgotten the exquisite pleasure I experienced at seeing you the object of general attraction wherever you moved?"

This was said and felt kindly; still it did not inspire me with that confidence which it seemed likely to inspire; for I, though I was conscious of my husband's personal beauty, had no vanity to gratify in exhibiting him to the London world. I had no wish to be the most envied of women, it was sufficient for me to know that I was the happiest; and I thought that, if Pendarves loved as truly as I did, the consciousness of his happiness would have been sufficient for him. Still, I am well aware how wrong it is to judge the love of others according to our own capability of loving. As well, and as justly, might we confine beauty, or the power of pleasing, to one cast of features or complexion. All persons love after a manner of their own; and woe must befal the man or woman who expects to be loved according to their own way and their own degree of loving, without any consideration for the different character and different feelings of the beloved object.

"How absurd I am!" said I to myself, after I had shed some weak tears in the solitude of my chamber, because Pendarves did not love me, I found, as I loved him. "How absurd! True, he delights in the idea of exhibiting me, and I have no wish to exhibit him. After all, he loves more generously than I do, and my selfishness is nothing to be proud of."

Thus I reasoned with myself, and tried to fortify my mind to bear the cares and the dangers which I had, on principle, provoked.

"One word, Helen," said my mother, when she was alone with me after what had passed relative to my projected journey: "Are you sure, my dear child, that in urging your husband to go to London you have acted wisely?"

"As sure as the consciousness of my bounded vision of futurity can allow me to be. I thought it better to forestal my husband's wishes than to wait for the expression of them."

"If not better, it was less mortifying," replied my quick-sighted parent; and we said no more on the subject.

In three days' time we had lodgings procured for us near Hanover Square; and on the fourth day from that on which I made known my wishes, we set off for London. But how different were the feelings of my husband and myself on the occasion! He was all joy and pleased expectation, unmixed with any painful regret or any anxious fears. But I left, for some time, a tenderly beloved mother, and the scene of tranquil and certain enjoyment. I was going, I knew, to encounter, probably, the influence of rivals, both in men and women, in my husband's attentions, and the dangerous power of long and early associations. And how did I know but that into a renewal of intimacy with his former associates I was not bringing my husband? But I had done what I thought right; and if I had presumptuously acted on the dictates of human wisdom alone, I prayed, fervently prayed, that the divine wisdom would take pity on my weakness, and avert the courted and impending evil.

I was many miles on my journey before I could drive from my mind the recollection of my mother's countenance when we parted. It did not alone express sorrow to part with me: it indicated anxiety, foreboding of evil to happen before we met again; and it required all my husband's enlivening gaiety and fascinating powers to revive my drooping spirits. His gaiety, I must own, however, depressed rather than enlivened me at first; for I was mortified to see with what delight he anticipated our return to the great world: but, as I had no ill-tempered feelings to oppose to the influence of his buoyant hilarity and his winning charm of manner, they at length subdued my depression, and imparted to me their own pleasant cheerfulness.

"Dear, dear London!" cried Pendarves as our horses' hoofs first rattled on its pavement, "Dear London! how I love thee! for here I was first convinced how fondly Helen loved me!" So saying, he pressed me to his heart, and a feeling of revived confidence stole over mine.

We found my uncle and Mrs. Pendarves still in London; but I did not feel as rejoiced on the occasion as they and my husband did. The latter was glad because he had in them proper protectors for his wife, whenever he was obliged to leave me; and the former, because they had really an affection for us. But I knew so much of Mrs. Pendarves, by the description I had heard of her from Lady Helen and my mother, and what I had observed myself, that I dreaded being exposed to her home truths and her indiscreet communications.

It was not long before we found ourselves completely in the vortex of a London life. And as, for the most part, my husband's engagements and mine were the same, I lost the gloomy forebodings with which I left home, and even lost my fears of Mrs. Pendarves.

One day Pendarves told me he was going to dine with an old friend of his, Maurice Witred; but, as I was not going out, he hoped to be back to drink tea with me; but I expected him in vain, and he did not return till bed-time.

He told me he was sorry to have disappointed me; but his friend had prevailed on him to go to the play. This excuse was so sufficient, and his wish to accompany Mr. Witred so natural, that I should have had no misgiving whatever had I not observed a certain degree of constraint in his manner, and a consciousness as if he had not told me all. However, I was satisfied with the alleged cause of his absence, and I slept as soundly as usual. But the next morning came Mrs. Pendarves, saying she was glad to find me alone. She told me she had met my husband, and she had given him such a set to! (to use her own elegant phrase.)

"And wherefore?"

"Oh! for going to the play with Maurice Witred and his lady."

"Lady! I did not know he was married."

"He is not married; and it was very wrong, and had an ill-appearance for a young, married man to be seen in public, though it was in a private box, with a profligate man and his mistress. I thought he would not tell you; but I was resolved you should know it, that you might scold him with 'the grave rebuke of a severe youthful beauty and a grace.'"

I did not reply, even to assure her I was better pleased that she should scold my husband than that I should do it myself; for I knew she was incorrigible, and her communication had thrown me into a painful reverie; for I found that Pendarves had begun to practise disingenuousness and concealment with me, and in the most dangerous way; for he had concealed only half the truth; by which means persons make a sort of compromise with their integrity, and lay a salvo to their consciences; for they fancy they are not lying, though they are certainly deceiving; whereas, if they tell a downright lie, they, at least, KNOW they are sinning, and may be led by conscious shame into amendment. But there is no hope for those who thus delude themselves; and as _ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_, I felt that I had lost some of my confidence in my husband's sincerity. Alas! when perfect confidence between man and wife is once destroyed, there is an end to perfect happiness! But I tried to shake off my abstraction; and I listened as well as I could to my talkative companion, whose passion was to give advice, that troublesome but common propensity in weak people; and like such persons, she was always boasting of the advice she had given, that which she would give, or of the dressings and _set-tos_ which she had bestowed, or meant to bestow. At length, however, much to my relief she went away, and not long after Pendarves returned.

"So," said he, "I find Mrs. Pendarves has been with you, and suppose (blushing as he spoke) that she has been telling tales of me?"

"And of herself," I replied, smiling as unconcernedly as I could; "for she owns to the presumption of having given you a _set-to_, as she calls it."

"Yes: but I suppose she told you the cause?"

"No doubt."

"And do you think it deserved so severe a lecture?"

"I think it was not right in a respectable married man to seem to give his countenance to such a connexion as the one in question; and I suspect that you are of the same opinion."

"I am; but why do you think so?"

"From conceit; because I believe that fear of my censure made you conceal from me what you had done."

"True, most true--and my repugnance to tell you all proved to me still more how wrong that all was."

"My dearest Seymour," I replied, "believe me, that not all which you can communicate to me can ever distress me so much as my consciousness of your want of ingenuousness, and of your telling only half the truth can do. I saw by your manner something was wrong, and I shall ever bless the weak indiscretion of Mrs. Pendarves, because it led to this salutary explanation; and I trust that the next time you go with Mr. Witred and his lady to the play, you will mention both."

"But I shall _never_ go with them again," eagerly replied my husband, "as you, Helen think it improper."

"But I may be too rigid in my ideas; and I beg you to be ruled by your own judgment, rather than mine. All I ask is, to be told the whole truth."

Pleasant to my feelings then, and dear to my recollection since, is the look of tenderness and approbation which Pendarves gave me as I spoke these words; and when he left me, peace and confidence seemed restored to my mind.

The next evening was the fashionable night for Ranelagh, and my husband and I, who dined out, were to accompany a large party to that scene of gay resort.

Ranelagh was the place for tall women to appear to advantage in. Little women, however beautiful, were likely to be unnoticed in that circling crowd; but, even unattended with beauty, height and a good carriage of the person were sure to be noticed there. The pride which Pendarves took in my appearance was never so fully gratified as at Ranelagh; for while I leaned upon him, I used to feel my arm pressed gently to his side as he heard or saw the admiration which my lofty stature (to speak modestly) excited. This evening as I was quite a new face in the splendid round, I was even followed as well as gazed at; and I was not sorry when our carriage was announced, though I was flattered on my own account, and pleased on my husband's; for I was eager to escape from some particularly impertinent starers, especially as I found that Pendarves was disposed to resent the freedom with which some men of high rank thought themselves privileged to follow and to look at me. Before we separated, some of the party proposed that we should meet again at Ranelagh on the next night but one, and while I hesitated, my husband exclaimed, "No mock modesty, Helen; no declining an opportunity, which you must enjoy, of being admired. So, pray tell our friends you gladly accede to their proposal."

"I gladly accede to your proposal," cried I laughing, but blushing with conscious vanity at the same time.

"What an obedient wife!" cried one of the ladies; "public homage has not spoiled her yet, I see."

"Nor can it," replied I, "while I possess my husband's homage, which I value far more."

"While you possess it! Then, if his homage should fail you, you might perhaps be pleased with the other?"

"I humbly hope not: but if exposed to that bitter trial, I dare not assert that I should not yield to it as scores of other women do every day; for I must say, in defence of my sex, that good husbands, generally speaking, make good wives; and that most women originally value the attentions of their husbands more than those of other men. On your sex, therefore, O false and fickle man! be visited the crimes of ours!"

This grave discourse provoked some laughter from my audience, from which I was glad to escape to our carriage, which had waited for us while we alighted.

"So, Helen," said my husband as we went home, "it is your opinion,

That when weak women go astray, Their lords are more in fault than they."

"It is."

"And you said what you did as a gentle hint and a kind warning to me how I behaved myself?"