A HASTY MARRIAGE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "DORA'S COLD."
I.
Ar seventeen I left school, ignorant and undisciplined, willful, impatient, and reckless. In Madame Dejazet’s elegant establishment we were taught many external, but few inward graces; and when she had done all that lay in her art to improve us, some of the hardest lessons of life were yet to learn.
I was to have remained longer, but suddenly my bankers failed, and remittances stopped. Years before, my father, a wealthy sea-captain, had died, leaving my fortune invested with his old employers, now no longer shipping merchants only, but bankers also. The letter, announcing the calamity, offered to relieve Madame Dejazet of me. This letter was from my father’s half-brother, to whom his beautiful villa had been lent at my mother’s death, and who now, probably, sought to pay the debt of years by offering me, in my destitution, a home there—a home, alas! how different from the one I so well remembered.
My uncle’s wife was a shrewd managing ! woman, as she had need to be with her small means, and her seven children. No longer the pretty parlors of the pretty house were thrown open for the enjoyment of the dwellers within, but closed and locked aguinst dust and decay, except on grand occasions; while all the other rooms, with their furniture, bore marks of hard usage and careless occupation. The green- houses were closed, the lawn was turned into a vegetable garden. Ah! bitter was the change.
As soon as the first heart-sick rebellion of feeling had died away, I sought to be useful in my new position. Curbing my impatient disposition, I tried to teach the stupid children, and bore heroically with their blunders and impertinence for a time, till their mother’s eager jealousy, and my own superficially-concealed ignorance, released me from the distasteful task.
Then came domestic drudgery, harder to execute, not less hard to endure. Last of all were wild revolt and utter rebellion against destiny, and it was in this mood that Mrs. Samuel Morris bade me leave her house forever, and I obeyed her.
I had stayed there six long months, and was worn-out body and mind. The manifold insults and annoyances of an ill-bred and ill-governed woman would have been of themselves enough; but when to these was added the constant and urgent struggle of my own undisciplined nature, and my haughty temper and strong will, what wonder that life grew unendurable!
I had begun, too, by this time to find contrasts to my own fate in the children of my father’s old neighbors—my own former play-mates and companions, who had found me out and flocked about me with welcomes, attentions, and invitations. Glad to escape from the tedious miseries of home, I left it frequently to accept these kindnesses, and found my vanity soothed, and my heart comforted by these warm and faithful friends. I plunged into the gayeties they offered me with reckless and thoughtless eagerness, mindful only of the enjoyment of the present, and the pleasure of being again beloved and admired. Of these attentions, and of my wardrobe, which was still handsome and complete, Mrs. Morris had long been jedlous. Her wrath at last reached its climax. A sleighing- party was projected, or rather a series of sleighing-parties, that would lead the gay revelers, who joined it, visiting from house to house for a week or more. Walter Drummond and his sisters were to core for me! Walter Drummond was my knight, my champion, my rescuer on a hundred such occasions—so kind, so handsome, so good to me, that I almost loved him. I had dressed in the gayest spirits, and in my prettiest ornaments and garments suitable to the occasion. Mrs. Morris came in while I was placing others, for all emergencies, in a trunk, which a man below, provided by Walter, was waiting to remove. Sternly she bade me pack all I owned, and if I insulted her by leaving her house at all with people who were not her associates, to leave it forever. I answered hotly. My blood was boiling, and my nerves were tingling with bitterness and anger. Pride, self-will, haughty recklessness and temper would not let me yield. ‘You shall be obeyed,” I said, and packed two trunks instead of one. My anger and determination did not leave me till I had left her house forever, till I had told Walter and the girls, tili I had heard their pitying sympathy and warm assurances that their home should be mine.
