The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 4, October 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 4, October 1837
Various
Periodicals
'I have already told you, that in my opinion she never had a thought
of any love for the man she had married; it is not to be wondered at,
then, that one who at least professed to be all that a husband should
be, found no great difficulty or delay in gaining her affections
and confidence in return. In short, her young heart, that had never
before known the feeling, was now fixed upon this man with all the
fondness and devotion of a first love. It was no hard matter for him,
therefore, to persuade her to whatever he liked; and the first advice
he gave her for her good was, to take a house in the neighborhood
of one of the parks, which he made his home; eating, drinking, and
riding about at her expense. For twelve or fourteen months, this was
a life of uninterrupted happiness for our poor Harri. She had quiet
or company, as she liked, and the society of one whom she loved to
madness. She didn't trouble herself about what folks called the
meanness of a man in a profession being clothed and kept by a woman;
so long as there was the money, what mattered which had it, or which
laid it out? This was the argument of a doating girl; and the best
proof that it was a sufficient one is, that she was content. The
first sign of an interruption to the joys that alas! are always too
dearly bought at the sacrifice she had made, was the news of the
arrival in England of her husband; and within two days after that,
his appearance at her house. Here was a fine to do indeed! She was
alone in her drawing-room, and no one else in the house but the two
maid servants. In vain did she resist, and entreat him. By main
force he carried her out of the house, put her into a hackney-coach,
without bonnet or shawl, and drove away with her to the house of his
mother. That man was born to be her torment and ruin. He had left
her when he ought most to have been in her company, and he returned
when his desertion had driven her, in misery and despair, to seek
for happiness in the expectation of which with him he had deceived
her; to disturb the comfort his heartlessness had neglected to afford
her. Don't fancy that he loved her, Sir; 'twas no such thing, as I
shall soon make clear to you. However, not six hours after she had
been taken away, the dear child was home again, and in the arms of
the man for whom she would have risked her life. Here was devotion,
Sir. She got out of a one pair of stairs' window, by letting herself
down with the bed clothes, as far as they would reach, and by jumping
the rest; and just as she had been taken from her home, without a bit
of out-door covering, off she set, in the cold and wet of a December
night, and had to walk for full a mile and a half, before she got the
coach that carried her home. Did her husband love her, Sir? Day after
day he rode or walked past the house, and sent letters to her; but
never once offered to seek out the man who kept his wife from him.
Can he have loved her, Sir, to leave her in the quiet possession of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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