THE Loveless Marriage.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 119, 9 June 1871, Page 6

THE Loveless Marriage.

(Concluded from our last.) Chapteb IV. G-eeatly to our astonishment, after my father's death we found that there were demands upon him that, were ; eyattended to, would greatly reduce the means which had been hitherto ample. My mother acted more than a woman's part in investigating the claims, and found, to her chagrin, thatfthey were all just, and called for a just settlement.

Good, kind old man that my father was, he had become security for an old friend, little thinking that the simple act which he had thought a mere form might one day reduce his wife and child to dependence.

There was no help for it—he had left little personal property—and Grlenbender must be sold.

Here was a blow my mother had little expected, and she grumbled day and night at the dear <-old] man's foolishness, till I felt I would rather beg than listen to her. In the first place, as she always acted from "duty, she sent me back to school, thinking that was the best place for me. Next she negotiated for selling the property, and succeeded in doing so advantageously, to a gentleman of the name of Cheetham.

When I heard of this I thought for one moment of the marriage I had seen of a gentleman of that name, and then paid no more attention to it. For two year's more I remained at school, once joining my mother during the holidays at a wateringplace, and spending a more pleasant time with her than I had anticipated. At the end of two years she took me home to a little villa she had rented a few miles from the dear old home, and then dressed me up, gave parties on my account, praised my virtues, &c, &c, and all for the abominable purpose, as I afterwards learned, of giving me to the highest bidder.

For a whole season I was in utter ignorance of her management, and laughed, chatted, and flirted with all the eligibles she brought within my reach, and especially with Mr. Cheetham, owner of Glenbender, who turned out to be the same man whose marriage I had seen. His wife had only lived about a year after her marriage, and had left a lovely little girl behind, whom everybody loved and commiserated because she was deaf and dumb. When I met him at first I laughed with and bantered him as much as anyone, but when I learned his great affliction I could not do it any more, and even tried to be grave and sensible always in his presence. In the middle of all this gaiety, who should turn up but Charlie—not the Charlie of yore, but a handsome imperious youth, who seemed to demand, admiration from everyone. He chid me for my flirting ways, and said if I did not think it worth while to keep true to him, then we had better have done with each other. Dearly did I love him all the while, but, with so many admirers as I had, I was not prepared to listen to conditions, so I said something angry—was answered by something cutting about men being all ready enough to laugh and flirt with a girl though they did not mean to marry her—flewintoaviolentpassion,and told him to go to India and win the position he had offered me for some one who would thank him more for it. Chaptee V. I was married—bat not to Charlie. In a whirl of angry passions on the night

of my quarrel with my youthful lover I was unfortunately thrown into the company of kind and sympathising Mr. Cheetham,.

He was a pleasant man, a man of stern and tried principles, a favorite with everyone, and, what was best of all in my mother's eyes, the possessor of the fine estate for which in girlhood she had sold hsrself. I think she might have recollected that, and the judgment that had come upon her, ere she urged me to pursue the same course.

Carefully she had planned meeting after meeting; watchfully she had fostered the growing interest of Mr. Cheetham in myself; artfully she had primed Charlie for the quarrel, and with consummate skill she had put the finishing stroke by throwing me, in the heat of offended dignity, upon the sympathy of my rich suitor.

I did not repel his advances that night; and partly because I thought his ways more tender and pleasing, and more like my dead father's men's, partly to get quit of my mother's urgings, and principally to spite Charlie, I accepted his offers, and in a few months afterwards stood with him beside the altar as I had seen a beautiful girl do six years before. A strange awe overcame me as I stood there taking the vows upon me, and at the thought that she, the mother of the little mute child, might be hovering above me reading my heart. I would have drawn back, but it was too late. My husband, dear, kind soul, suffered well with me, though I am afraid he was terribly disappointed at the round of heartless gaieties I kept up after my marriage, in order to hush the appeals of conscience. It was cruel of me to disturb a good man's life with such noisy festivities, but I ran on in a headless career, although one night rushing through the rooms to get him to join in some foolish dance, I discovered him descending quietly from the nursery, where he had been seeing his little deaf and dumb child put to bed. I had committed a great sin in marrying a man I did not love ; but instead of repenting, and striving for the right, I only grew more selfish and careless of my duties. The only time when I gave way to any feeling at all was in my own room at night, to which I used to retire early, while my husband sat reading in the library. At those times I used to lock my door and indulge Jn the guilty luxury of perusing Charlie's old letters. I had an old dressing-case filled with them, and the trinkets, &c, that he had given—and many, many lonely tears did I shed over these relics of happier days. Chapter VI. It was about three months after my marriage, and despite all my husband's kindness and indulgence, I was as discontented and unhappy as ever* Bitterly did I rue the step I had taken—but it was past and there was no help for it, so I resolved to burn the old love-letters that ever kept torturing the sore, and to set myself to making my. husband's life a little happier than my mother bad made her husband's in the same place. For several nights I had gone to my TDom with this resolution, but had always failed— l could not do it. Like a foolish woman as I "was, I always wanted just to read them once again before committing them to the flames.

One blowy night when I ought to have been in bed, but was sitting, as was my habit, enjoying a last meditation over my beloved treasures, and feeling even a little more secure J ,han usual, on account of my husband. being absent at a late dinner party, I was startled by a strange sound

as of crackling wood, and at the same time became conscious of a strong smell of smoke in the apartment. With a feeling of terror upon me that this was some Spirit of Fire that had come to devour me and my guilty letters together, I sat rooted to the spot, watching the door for its entrance.

A wild cry from a distant part of tha house added to my terrors, but roused me from my stupor. 1 rushed to the door, and tried in vain to draw it open—l was imprisoned. Was it all a horrible dream ? No, no. I myself had locked tho door; but for what ? Again the panorama of my evil conduct dismayed me, and I would have sunk upon the floor, but a series of cries, as if some one in fearful agony, again reached my ear, and stung me to fresh efforts. I turned the key, opened the door, and saw a sight that has seared itself into my brain for ever.

The beautiful staircase where I had danced up and down in my happy childhood, up which I had crept to see my father die, and down which I had seen him carried—the beautiful oak paneled staircase which had been so often gaily lighted up for the glittering festivals, and up and down which so many fairy forms had flitted—was now lighted up by the ghastly glare of devastating flames, that seemed like so many evil spirits dancing familiarly up and down the home that had been the scene of such wicked, loveless marriages.

All these thoughts passed through my brain while I, like a spirit myself, was leaping from step to step among the leaping flames, and tracing the corridors in the direction whence the sounds proceeded. Wherever I went there was fire, fire. The whole house, except the part containing my own room, seemed to be flaming ; and, oh! loneliest and most terrible thing of all, there seemed to be not a soul in the house but myself and that screaming child; for I knew it must be the child' though there sounded something in her cries like papa! papa ! and when I reached the foot of the flight of steps leading to the nursery, sure enough there she was rushing wildly about in her little white nightgown. The binding chords of speech had snapped in her terror, and she was screaming like a maniac the only word her lips had ever been taught to form —Papa!

papa! It was a fearful moment —if I could reach her all might yet be well, as my woollen garments were shielding me from the flames; but a gulf of crashing embers lay between us, to step among which would have been certain destruction. Would she hear if I called ? I would try. I opened my mouth, but no words came. Good God! was my speech taken from me while her's had been restored ? I tried again ; I cried " Come, darling," and she heard me, for she turned, and in her joy gave one wild spring, cleared the abyss, landed in my outstretched arms, and clutched my neck like a vice.

No more screaming now. The poor innocent seemed to trust to me, who had never shown any real motherly tenderness towards her before.

Hurriedly retracing my steps, I reached the room I had so lately quitted, when, between the volumes of smoke and the child clinging to my neck, I sank nearly suffocated to the floor. Just as I entered by the door my husband entered by the window ; having been apprised of the disaster by the terror-stricken servants, who had rushed off without an attempt to warn their master's wife or child of their danger.

I know not how I was swung over the window, or how I was conveyed from the scene. When I recovered consciousness I was sitting, supported by pillows, on a

chair in one of the bedchambers of my mother's house.

There was nobody but my husband beside me when I awoke, and he was bending tenderly over me, bathing my forehead with fragrant waters.

I must have turned upon him a very feeble, supplicating look, because he took the hand he had just been chafing, and holding it in his, told me that he knew it all. He said no sooner had he married me than he saw I did not love him ; but he blamed himself for the sin as I was too young to know my own mind well. It had been a heavy burden, he said, and had been sorely repented of when he sat alone at nights by his library fire. He told me the terrible anguish he had endured while riding at full gallop to the scene of the disaster ; the sudden chill he felt when on first mounting the ladder to my bedroom window Ife found the room empty, and the giddy rush of joy that overcame him as he leapt into the room in time to see his two best-loved treasures safe.

He thanked me in a flood of tears for the great risk I had undergone to save his child, and paused.

I saw he had something more to say, and I bent my head, like a criminal as I

was, to hear. He began again with a great effort—- " After you were both safely away from the scene of disaster I thought I might attempt to save something, and of course the first valuables I remembered were my mother's diamonds."

I knew what he was going to say. Why take such a time to say it ? "Vyhy no fc overwhelm me at once, instead of torturing me by letting the fearful words fall drop by drop ig)on my strained ear. "The diamonds, I knew, lay in your dressing-case," he said again, with a slowness that pained me. His voice was growing hoarse, and looking up I saw it was with the greatest reluctance he was approaching the subject.

I helped kim out'with it. I murmured in a weak, low, guilty voice, "And, in stead, you saw the letters.". " Yes," lie said, " Katie, I saw the letters, the little portrait and all, but I am not angry ; 'twas I who led you into temptation —God forgive me !"

" No, no, no, I cried, starting up and flinging my arms round his neck in an ecsiacy of admiration for his generous conduct, "lam to blame, and I alone. I sinned not in ignorance, for each night that I sat over them I resolved should be be the last, and I was in the very act of gathering them together to throw them into the fire when the crackling of the flames that were ravaging the house made me forget all about them."

While I was making this confession my poor George was weeping for joy, and, clasping me fondly to his breast, said, " Tlien, my darling, they will never tempt you more, as I gave them to the flames, and stood by till I saw them consumed. Once I thought of saving them for you and perishing myself in the names, but it was the suggestion of a demon, and, uttering in the Saviour's own words, ' Get thee hence, Satan,' I found myself, as it were, immediately surrounded by angels."

Long I wept on the bosom of this good man, and told how I blessed God that we had thus been brought together.

"Yes, Katie," he said, "I was a sorely afflicted man. God had given me iirst a little voiceless child, then a wile who did not love me, and along with her the burden of a great sin, the sin of separating two fond hearts; lastly, he burned my very home to the ground, but in this final aiiiiction he gave to my chastened heart the three best boons of earth—the peace of mind which is so precious, the tender love of a wife, and the sweet prattle of an infant tongue."

Again and again he said, while our tears rained down together, " To-night she has fallen asleep murmuring 'papa;' to-mor-row I will reach her the kindred name lor you, and henceforward it will be our delight to guide her luile lips to say wilh our own, ' Our Father which art in Heaven.' "