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The Daughter-In-Law
by
It was long before a smile lighted the countenance of the young bride. In silence she upbraided herself for having been the cause of estranging from each other mother and son.
“It was wrong,” she said, in a sad tone, when, after the passage of a month, the subject was conversed about between them with more than usual calmness. “You should, first of all, have written to your mother, and asked her consent.”
“But I knew she would not give it. I knew her peculiar prejudices too well. My only hope was the impression your dear face would make upon her. I was sure that for her to see you would be to love you. But I was mistaken.”
“Alas! too sadly mistaken. We have made her unhappy through life. Oh! how that thought distresses me.”
“She deserves all the unhappiness she may feel. For me, I do not pity her.” Charles Linden said this with a good deal of bitterness.
“Oh! Charles–do not speak so–do not feel so. She is your mother, and you acted against what you knew to be one of her strongest prejudices,” Ellen said earnestly. “I do not feel angry with her. When I think of her, it is with grief, that she is unhappy. The time may yet come–pray heaven it come quickly!–when she will feel differently toward one whose heart she does not know–when she will love me as a mother.”
“She does not deserve the love of one like you,” was the bitterly spoken reply.
“Ah, Charles! why will you speak so? It is not right.”
“I can no more help it than I can help feeling and thinking, Ellen. I am indignant, and I must express my feelings. What a poor substitute is birth, or family connexion, or standing in society for a mother to offer to her son, in the place of a pure heart that can love fervently. If I had yielded to dictation on this subject, I would long ago have been the unhappy husband of a vain, selfish, proud creature, whom I never could have loved. No–no–Ellen. I cannot help being angry, if I may so speak, at the thought of such unjust, such unwise assumption of the prerogative in a parent. It is God who joins together in orderly marriage–not man; and when man attempts to assume the place of God in this matter, his work is evil. I would give my child, were I a parent, all the light, all the intelligence in my power to give him, and then let him choose for himself. To do more, would be, in my opinion, a sin against God, and, as such, I would shun it with horror.”
In time, the deep affliction of mind which Ellen had experienced subsided. She felt the injustice of Mrs. Linden’s conduct, and, though she had no indignant nor unkind feeling toward her, she thought of her without an emotion of filial regard. Year after year went by, and, as no notice whatever was taken of Charles and his wife by Mrs. Linden, they did not again venture near her, nor take any pains to conciliate her favour. Her treatment of Ellen had so outraged her son, that he tried to forget that he had a mother; for he could not think of her without a bitterness which he did not wish to feel. The only means of knowing what took place at home was through his sister, between whom and himself had always existed a warm affection. She wrote to him frequently, and he as well as his wife wrote to her often. Their letters to her were, at her request, sent under cover to a friend, to prevent the unpleasant consequences that would ensue, should the proud, overbearing mother become aware of the correspondence.
From his sister, who had something of his own independence of feeling, Charles learned, that his brother William, at his mother’s instance, was about to marry Antoinette Billings. And, also, that an application had been made to the legislature to have his name changed to Beauchamp, his mother’s family name. As an inducement for him to gratify her pride in this thing, Mrs. Linden had promised William, that, on the very day that the legislature granted the petition, she should transfer to him the whole amount of her property, with the exception of about twenty thousand dollars. Subsequently, Charles learned that the name of his brother had been changed; that the marriage had taken place; and that his mother had relinquished all her property, with a small reservation, into the hands of her son. All this took place within three years after his marriage.