LYDIA’S HUSBAND.
229
“My tongue has always served me very well. Excuse me, Guy, I don’t understand transcendentalism, and it is a thing you have only lately taken up. I cannot like the society into which we have been led, nor do you in your heart. Come, Guy, you are more sensible than you believe; do leave romance to school girls.”
“You always sneer at feelings which to me are beautiful and holy!” he exclaimed, bitterly. “We seem to have no sentiments in common; it is a pity you did not make the discovery before it was too late.”
“I have not made it now, Guy; I believe I can sympathize with every good and high-souled aspiration in your nature, but I have no respect for mock sentiment; to me trash is trash, how¬ ever fine a dress you put on it.”
“Are beautiful theories of life trash, Lydia? Is it nonsense to join in doctrines which will free us from the fetters that weigh us down?”
“No isms, Guy, I beg! We were happy enough in our way last summer. I never heard you talk of your inner nature’ then. Seriously, Guy, this society is bad for us! You don’t work with the spirit you did—your improvement is less rapid.”
“Why, Lydia, only tonight a dozen people told me that my last picture was wonderful.”
“Will you be blinded in this way? You know yourself bow little pleased you were with it at first. I know you have true genius—no one can appreciate it more than I—but you are not yet a great artist. Oh, my dear husband, be your own noble self, forsake this atmosphere of flat¬ tery, this influence of loose morality, for veil it under what beautiful names you will it is only that See, we are home now, let us go to those places no more!”
Guy entered the house and flung himself into an arm-chair.
“I knew this would come,” he said; “you wish to deprive me of my friends, to crush every spark of enthusiasm in my nature, to make my art a thing of dollars and cents!”
“Guy, it is not your heart that speaks now! I only ask you to forsake a circle whose influence over both of us is injurious. Bring it home; how would you feel to hear me praising immoral books, attending reform lectures, going mad over every new ism?”
“None of my friends do any of those things; we haven’t a single strong-minded woman among
“Guy, this is downright folly! Beware of infecting me with your malady; I may become transcendental yet, and find that I too have a mission and an inner nature, and an affinity for some handsome genius.”
“You seem to have none for your husband, madam,” exclaimed he, passionately, and dashed
out of the room.
Lydia wept bitter tears that night, but she could see no way of remedying the evil, and even her fortitude gave way.
From that hour a coldness sprung up between the husband and wife. Lydia strove against it in vain: Guy persisted in being wretched. She withdrew herself more and more from the society in which they moved, but her husband went without her. Several times she begged him to remain at home with her, but without effect.
“Do not grudge me an hour with congenial souls,” he would say; “will work enough to- morrow to make amends—you shall be no poorer for it.”
Lydia suffered greatly during those weeks; how much Guy never knew, for she hid it ibravely. She felt certain that he was becoming s more and more infatuated with Mrs. Warner, and she could see no way of breaking off the intimacy. Sometimes s)ie asked herself if it was s right thus patiently to submit, then she thought what Guy’s life would be if things oame to the worst and she were to leave him—he would be a ruined, lost man. No, she would bear all! Time would remedy the evil; she would be a faithful, loving wife still, perhaps kindness would keep aloof more wrong.
Guy visited Mrs. Warner almost daily, and his devotion had reached a pitch which was tiresome, for the poetess not only dreaded the opinion of the world, but she was in truth cold- hearted as a stone, owing her good reputation more to her intense selfishness than to her code of morality. She liked a flirtation, but Guy had begun to persuade himself that it was his destiny to adore her, anddie left her little time to bestow upon any one else.
He was in the habit of entering her boudoir unannounced; and one day, through the stupidity of a new servant, he was admitted into the house when the poetess least desired to see him.
The boudoir was back of the parlors, separated only by an arch, and a large mirror between the windows of the apartment showed any person in the drawing-room all that was passing in the apartment beyond.
Guy saw that which made him pause as if suddenly turned to stone. The poetess was reclining in an easy-chair, and at her feet in his
