“We are quite even then.” The pretty lip of the bride curled.
“Esther!” said Huntley, assuming a calm but cold exterior, and speaking in a firm voice. “I have bought tickets for the opera to-night, thinking that to go would give you pleasure, and now my wish is that you accompany me.”
“A wish that you will certainly not have gratified. I believe I am your wife, not your slave to command.”
There was something so cutting in the way this was said, that Huntley could not bear it. Without a word he arose, and, taking his hat, left the house. In a fever of excitement he walked the street for an hour and a half, and then, scarcely reflecting upon what he did, went to the opera. But the music was discord in his ears, and he left before the performance was half over.
The moment Esther heard the street-door close upon her husband, she arose and went from the room where she was sitting with her aunt, moving erect and with a firm step. Mrs. Carlisle did not see her for two hours. The tea bell rang, but she did not come down from her chamber, where, as the aunt supposed, she was bitterly repenting what she had done. In this, however, she was mistaken, as was proved, when, on joining her in her room for the purpose of striving to console her, the conversation with which our story opens took place.
When the fit of weeping with which Esther received the reproof her aunt felt called upon to give, had subsided, Mrs. Carlisle said, in a most solemn and impressive manner,
“What has occurred this evening may prove the saddest event of your whole life. There is no calculating the result. No matter whose the fault, the consequences that follow may be alike disastrous to the happiness of both. Are you prepared, thus early, for a sundering of the sacred bonds that have united you? And yet, even this may follow. It has followed with others, and may follow with you. Oh! the consequences of a first quarrel! Who can anticipate them?”
The voice of Mrs. Carlisle trembled, and then sank almost into a sob. Her manner more than her words startled Esther.
“What do you mean, aunt?” said she.
But her aunt was too much disturbed to speak for some minutes.
“Esther,” she at length said, speaking in a voice that still trembled, “I knew a girl, who, at your age, married an excellent, but proud-spirited young man. Like Edward, the lover yielded too much when, as the husband, he began to be a little less considerate, and to act as if he had a will of his own, his wife set herself against him just as you set yourself against Edward. This chafed him, although he strove to conceal his feelings. But, in an unguarded moment, when his young wife was unusually self-willed, a quarrel of no more serious character than the one that has occurred this evening, between you and Edward, took place. They parted in anger as you parted, and—”
The aunt was unable for some time to control her voice sufficiently to finish the sentence—
“And never met again,” she at length said, with such visible emotion as betrayed more than she had wished to reveal.
“Never met again!” ejaculated Esther, a sudden fear trembling through her heart, and causing her cheeks to grow pale.
“Never!” was the solemn response.
“Why, dear aunt? Why?” eagerly inquired Esther.
“Pride caused him,” said Mrs. Carlisle, recovering her self-possession, “after a breach had been made, to leave not only his home, but the city in which he lived. Repenting of her ungenerous contact, his bride waited anxiously for his return at evening, but waited it vain. Sadly enough passed the lonely hours of that dreadful night, and morning found her a sleepless watcher. Days passed, but no word came from the unhappy wanderer from home and love. A week, and still all was silence and mystery. At the end of that time a letter was received from a neighbouring city, which brought intelligence to his friends that he was there, and lying dangerously ill. By the next conveyance his almost frantic wife started for the purpose of joining him. Alas! she was too late. When she stood beside the bed upon which he lay, she looked only upon the inanimate form of her husband. Death had been there before her. Esther! thirty years have passed since then, but the anguish I felt when I stood and looked upon the cold, dead, face of my husband, in that terrible hour, time has not altogether obliterated!”
Esther had risen to her feet, and now stood with her pale lips parted, and her cheeks blanched to an ashy whiteness.
“Dear aunt is all this true?” she asked huskily, while she grasped the arm of her relative.
“Heaven knows it is too true, my child! It was the first and, the last quarrel I had with my husband. And now, as you value your own and Edward’s peace of mind, be warned by my sad example, and let the present unhappy difference that has occurred be quickly reconciled. Acknowledge your error the moment you see him, and make a firm resolution that you will, under no circumstances, permit the slightest misunderstanding again to take place. Yield to him, and you will find him ready as before to yield to you. What he was not ready to give under the force of a demand, love will prompt him cheerfully to render.”
“Oh! if Edward should never return!” Esther said, clasping her hands together. She had scarcely heard the last sentence of her aunt.
“You need not fear on that account, my child,” replied Mrs. Carlisle, in a voice meant to inspire confidence. “Edward will no doubt return. Few men act so rashly as to separate themselves at the first misunderstanding, although, too often, the first quarrel is but the prelude to others of a more violent kind, that end in severing the most sacred of all bonds, or rendering the life that might have been one of the purest felicity, an existence of misery. When Edward comes home to-night, forget every thing but your own error, and freely confess that. Then, all will be sunshine in a moment, although the light will fall and sparkle upon dewy tear-drops.”
“I was mad to treat him so!” was Esther’s response to this, as she paced the floor, with uneasy step. “Oh! if he should never return.”
Once possessed with the idea that he would not return, the poor wife was in an agony of fear. No suggestion made by her aunt in the least relieved her mind. One thought—one fear—absorbed every thing else. Thus passed the evening, until ten o’clock came. From that time Esther began to listen anxiously for her husband’s return, but hour after hour went by, and she was still a tearful watcher.
“I shall go mad if I sit here any longer!” murmured Huntley to himself, as the music came rushing upon his agitated soul, in a wild tempest, toward the middle of the opera, and, rising abruptly, he retired from the theatre. How still appeared the half deserted streets! Coldly the night air fell upon him, but the fever in his veins was unabated. He walked first up one street and then down another, with rapid steps, and this was continued for hours.
