The weekly Union times. [volume] (Union C.H., South Carolina) 1871-1894, 1889-03-08
UNION c. H. SOUTH CAROLINA MARCH 8, 1889.

WIN certain ar OF contentment and
pride about his handsome house, and
was carefully mindful of his delicate
and sweet-looking young wife, whom
he took to state dinnes parties, and
introduced among the blooming, forid,
and little too conspicuously dressed
Liverpool aides, where she looked moi
unlike q lily Of the valley in the midst of a
bed Of tulips and ranunculuses.
SO they lived their lives, those two. Not
. domestic life by any means; Mr. Bower
bank had never been used to that, nor Mrs
Bowerbank neither. She had dreamed of
1t once; OF the honor and happiness of be-
ing poor mans wife; of mending his
shirts and stockings; of looking after his
dinners and making the best Of everything;
counting no economies mean that were TO
Tighten the toll of the bread-winner; no la
bors hard that were to add to his comfort.
But this was not Emily's lot. She was q
rich woman, married to a rich man; moth
ing was expected of her but elegant idle
ness. Once this might have been to her
WEAKNESS intolerable; but she had long
been passive and languid, glad to do moth
ing, and to be just whatever she fancied,
since nobody ever insisted upon her being
anything-a life that some would have
called happy, and, especially in its outside
aspect, have envied exceedingly.
She's an old mans darling" said one
or the young Liverpool ladies, comment
ing on Mrs. Bowerbank to her
neighbor and occasional, though not
very intimate, visitor, Mrs. Knowle.
It's better, anyhow, than being "a young
I'm not sure of that, half -grimly, half
comically, replied the other. II hope, ny
dear, you'll be pretty much Of q slave to
your husband (as am this day to Edward
Knowle), or you'd best not marry at ALL"
But such love-servitude was not Emily's
lot. She never trotted after John Bower
bank with his big boots in the morning, or
brushed his coat, or found him his gloves;
she never ran to open the door Of evenings
or settled his cushions for his after dinner
sleep. They had servants to do that SO
Why should she2 In truth, it never oc-
CURED to her to do it.
She dressed herself carefully and sat at
the head of her husbands table; she drove
In her husbands carriage about the coun-
or she paid few courtesy calls after the
entertainments to which, arrayed in the
most perfect of costumes, he seemed
pleased to take her. He never was cross
with her; never asked her If she was
happy; tried, doubtless, in his own way,
to make her so. for he was a kindly ma
tured man; but he was not observant, nor
he was old, and oil his youth, if he ever
had any, had been buried long ago in Hale
churchyard.
Mrs. Knowle told, not at the time, but
afterward, how, one Christmas Day, which
was one of the rare holidays at the Ex-
change-and Mr.. Bowerbank was a man
who never took a holiday illegally-she
grass Of this said u ohuroSgsrd, s 'aHersa aions,
though he bad not been married many
months, to stand by that grave, of which
the mossy headstono still remained, but
the mound had long grown level with the
turf. If his eyes could have peered be-
low, he would have found nothing of wife
Ssfw wife he now wisBtRte sRte aih SpIendlds
humble, hearth; possibly another child
might
Yes, this was what they said of him. the
ill-natured portion of his friends; how,
since the offer of the baronetcy. certain
dawning pride of race, tho truly English
wish to found u family, had come into the
head of grave John Bowerbank; that ac-
cordingly he had, in his grave and practi-
cal way, conceived the idea, however late
in life. Of marrying, and had accordingly
looked round on all his eligible young lady
acquaintances, until, in his practical eye,
he found one who, for her own sweet Sc
dateness, he thought would be n suitable
mate for an elderly man; and accordingly;
without much inquiry as to her feelings,
and having, indeed, arranged the whole
matter in the most business like fashion
with his old acquaintance, her father, he
married Emily Kendall.
But when, after a year-the baronetcy
being again offered and accepted-there
appeared no heir to these honors, un-
doubtedly Sir John was very much disap-
pointed. OF course, he did not show it; he
was too good a man for that: but the
placid mien became colder and colder; and
though they were not unhappy-it takes
certain amount of hope even to create dis
appointment-still, day by day, the hus-
band and wife went moro their own
ways; saw less and less of one another, as
is quite easy in the daily life of wealthy
people, who have, or think they have SO,
many duties owed to their position and to
society. And though Emily still smiled
her soft, languid. wistful smile-and no
body ever said an unkind word to her, and
she, dear soul, had never said an upkind
word to anybody in her life, still her
check grew paler and paler, her eyes grew
larger and larger, with a sort of far away
look, as if gazing forward into q not distant
heaven for something on earth never found
something lost or incomplete-some-
thing without which, though a man should
give the whole substance OF his house for,
it would be utterly in vain.
Marriage must be heaven or hell. Not
at first, perhaps. for time softens and
mends all things; but after time has had
its fair license and failed; and then
comes the dead blank, the hopeless en-
durance, even if the sharper pangs do not
intervene; the feeling that the last chance
in life has been taken, the last die thrown
and lost.
Probably John Bowerbank did not feel
thus; his feelings were never remarkably
keen: and he had his business, his days
occupied on Change, and his evenings de-
voted several times q week, to the long,
splendid, intensely dull and entirely re-
spectacle Liverpool dinner parties. But
his wife, left all day at home, with no du-
ties to fill up the idle, aimless, weary
hours, with no children of her own, and
too listless and inactive to adopt the sub
stitute Of other childless matrons-Mrs.
Knowle, For instanoe--and lake everybody
elses children, who needed it, under her
motherly wing-to such as poor Emily, a
marriage like hers most resembles being
slowly frozen alive in the lake OF gilded
torment, which forms the horror Of one Of
the circles of Dantes He'll.
But nobody knew it. Her father, en-
gagged in the same dining"out exist