FullReads

Briefly let us now sketch a scene that passed twenty years from this period. Twenty years! That is a long time. Yes–but it is a period that tests the truth or falsity of the leading principles with which we set out in life. Twenty years! Ah! how many, even long before that time elapses, prove the fallaciousness of their hopes! discover the sandy foundation upon which they have built!

Let us introduce Mrs. Barker. Her husband has realized even more than he had hoped for, in the item of wealth. He is worth a million.

Rather a small sum in his eye, it is true, now that he possesses it. And from this very fact, its smallness, he is not happy–for is not Mr. T–worth three millions of dollars? Mr. T–, who is no better, if as good as he is? But what of Mrs. Barker? Ah, yes. Let us see how time has passed with her. Let us see if the hours have danced along with her to measures of glad music, or in cadence with a pensive strain. Has hers indeed been a good match? We shall see.

Is that sedate-looking woman, with such a cold expression upon her face, who sits in that elaborately furnished saloon, or parlour, dreamily looking into the glowing grate, Mrs. Barker? Yes, that is the woman who made a good match. Can this indeed be so? I see, in imagination, a gentle, loving creature, whose eyes and ears are open to all things beautiful in creation, and whose heart is moved by all that is good and true. Impelled by the very nature into which she has been born–woman’s nature–her spirit yearns for high, holy, interior companionship. She enters into that highest, holiest, most interior relationship–marriage. She must be purely happy. Is this so? Can the woman we have introduced at the end of twenty years be the same being with this gentle girl? Alas! that we should have it to say that it is so. There has been no affliction to produce this change–no misfortune. The children she has borne are all about her, and wealth has been poured liberally into her lap. No external wish has been ungratified. Why, then, should her face wear habitually so strange an expression as it does?

She had been seated for more than half an hour in an abstract mood, when some one came in. She knew the step. It was that of her husband. But she did not turn to him, nor seem conscious of his presence. He merely glanced toward his wife, and then sat down at some distance from her, and took up a newspaper. Thus they remained until a bell announced the evening meal, when both arose and passed in silence to the tea-room. There they were joined by their four children, the eldest at that lovely age when the girl has blushed into young womanhood. All arranged themselves about the table, the younger children conversing together in an under tone, but the father, and mother, and Florence, the oldest child, remaining silent, abstracted, and evidently unhappy from some cause.

The mother and daughter eat but little, and that compulsorily. After the meal was finished, the latter retired to her own apartment, the other children remained with their books in the family sitting-room, and Mr. and Mrs. Barker returned to the parlour.

“I am really out of all patience with you and Florence!” the former said, angrily, as he seated himself beside his wife, in front of the grate. “One would think some terrible calamity were about to happen.”

Mrs. Barker made no reply to this. In a moment or two her husband went on, in a dogmatical tone.

“It’s the very best match the city affords. Show me another in any way comparable. Is not Lorimer worth at least two millions?–and is not Harman his only son and heir? Surely you and the girl must both be beside yourselves to think of objecting for a single moment.”