Not Pretty, but Precious | Page 5

have long accorded me a
contemptuous pity for being an old maid. I laughed their pity to scorn
while I had Esther Hooper. What more did I need? We could enact over
again the sweet old life of the Ladies of Llangollen.
We had planned our lives a thousand times. Poor we both were, yet we
would put something away every year for our old age, and work
cheerily on until we could work no more, then creep to our nest like a
couple of old kittens, and cuddle down by our warm, pleasant
fire--together, and therefore content. Well, you see it was not to be: she
had grown affrighted, I suppose, at the thought of all that weary life

with only me, and has married a man who outrages all her delicate
instincts and traditions of an accordant husband. But why speak of him?
He supports her, and she has escaped the obloquy of old-maidism. She
has married a maintenance. She says she loves him, so of course she
does.
For myself, my health, which has always been very rugged, has failed
me utterly this last year; but as my bread depends upon my ability to
endure daily and constant fatigue, I have forced myself to endeavor to
get up the amount of strength required for my winter's work by the
present expedition, planned for me by a friend. Bah! what do I talk of
friendship for? An old lady who was once a teacher in the school from
which my father had married my mother, and who, I think, had cared
with more than friendship for him, has in these last few years fallen
heir to a small property--not a very great deal, but enough to enable her
to live in comfort, and exercise her kindly heart in deeds of charity
occasionally. She has chosen for years to occupy rooms beneath my
own, and has always been a sort of mother to me. Most of the pretty
things that have fallen into my life, and most of its pleasures, have
come to me through her. She has many troublesome faults, as we all
have, but she is old, and I have always had Esther to talk them over and
laugh them off with, so have borne them easily. This year, because she
saw I was dying, she took me with her to the mountains of Vermont,
and I have got a new lease of life, and new capacities for suffering as
well.
On our way back she was suddenly attacked with the illness which
detained us at this Boston hotel. Here your accident laid you up, and
the rest came as I have told.
You have married me to rid yourself of a union with a woman you
detest, being utterly indifferent to me. I have married you because I
cannot bring myself to go back to that old teaching-life, now so cold
and gray. I think I can earn my board in taking care of your belongings,
and the having saved you from a dreadful fate must compensate to you
for the little of my presence you will for the future be compelled to
endure. It need not be much or long continued if we start with a fair

comprehension of each other.
This brings me to the reason of all this long history. I have always
looked upon marriage without love as nothing more or less than
legalized vice. I think you, who are so intrinsically a man of the world,
will have imbibed the (so-called) sensible and popular views upon such
subjects, and will at once coincide with me that in such a union as
ours--a literal mariage de convenance on both sides--my ideas are not
unwise. Since upon you will henceforth depend my maintenance (as I
of course understand that a wife who worked for her own support
would be a disgrace to you: indeed, I doubt whether the having married
a girl who has already done so is not a cause of shame), I ask that now,
when Mrs. Keller is about to leave me, and my arrangements as your
wife must be finally made--when, in fact, her giving up her room
necessitates my coming to yours, her leaving compelling me either to
go with her, or come, as of course I must, to you--we may have a
definite understanding as to our future relations.
You have been kind enough to approve of the little I have been able to
do for you since our marriage--to say to Mrs. Keller you did not know
what it was to be taken care of in sickness; and to myself you have
more than once laughingly spoken of a wife as a good institution,
adding, that had you known how comfortable it was to have some one
about