Percival Keene | Page 5

he could have aspired to her.
He was, therefore, submissive to her in everything, consenting to every
proposal that was made by her, and guided by her opinion. When,
therefore, on her arrival at Chatham, she pointed out how impossible it
would be for one brought up as she had been to associate with the
women in the barracks, and that she considered it advisable that she

should set up some business by which she might gain a respectable
livelihood, Ben, although he felt that this would be a virtual separation
a mensa et thoro, named no objections. Having thus obtained the
consent of her husband, who considered her so much his superior as to
be infallible, my mother, after much cogitation, resolved that she would
embark her capital in a circulating library and stationer's shop; for she
argued that selling paper, pens, and sealing-wax was a commerce
which would secure to her customers of the better class. Accordingly,
she hired a house close to the barracks, with a very good-sized shop
below, painting and papering it very smartly; there was much taste in
all her arrangements, and although the expenses of the outlay and the
first year's rent had swallowed up a considerable portion of the money
she had laid by, it soon proved that she had calculated well, and her
shop became a sort of lounge for the officers, who amused themselves
with her smartness and vivacity, the more so as she had a talent for
repartee, which men like to find in a very pretty woman.
In a short time my mother became quite the rage, and it was a mystery
how so pretty and elegant a person could have become the wife of a
private marine. It was however, ascribed to her having been captivated
with the very handsome person and figure of her husband, and having
yielded to her feelings in a moment of infatuation. The ladies
patronised her circulating library; the officers and gentlemen purchased
her stationery. My mother then added gloves, perfumery, canes, and
lastly cigars, to her previous assortment and before she had been a year
in business, found that she was making money very fast, and increasing
her customers every day. My mother had a great deal of tact; with the
other sex she was full of merriment and fond of joking, consequently a
great favourite; towards her own sex her conduct was quite the reverse;
she assumed a respectful, prudish air, blended with a familiarity which
was never offensive; she was, therefore, equally popular with her own
sex, and prospered in every sense of the word. Had her husband been
the least inclined to have asserted his rights, the position which she had
gained was sufficient to her reducing him to a state of subjection. She
had raised herself, unaided, far above him; he saw her continually
chatting and laughing with his own officers, to whom he was
compelled to make a respectful salute whenever they passed by him; he

could not venture to address her, or even to come into the shop, when
his officers were there, or it would have been considered disrespectful
towards them; and as he could not sleep out of barracks, all his
intercourse with her was to occasionally slink down by the area, to find
something better to eat than he could have in his own mess, or obtain
from her an occasional shilling to spend in beer. Ben, the marine, found
at last that somehow or another, his wife had slipped out of his hands;
that he was nothing more than a pensioner on her bounty a slave to her
wishes, and a fetcher and carrier at her command, and he resigned
himself quietly to his fate, as better men have done before.
CHAPTER THREE.
I think that the reader will agree with me that my mother showed in her
conduct great strength of character. She had been compelled to marry a
man whom she despised, and to whom she felt herself superior in every
respect; she had done so to save her reputation. That she had been in
error is true but situation and opportunity had conspired against her;
and when she found out the pride and selfishness of the man to whom
she was devoted, and for whom she had sacrificed so much,--when her
ears were wounded by proposals from his lips that she should take such
a step to avoid the scandal arising from their intimacy--when at the
moment that he made such a proposition, and the veil fell down and
revealed the heart of man in its selfishness, it is not to be wondered that,
with bitter tears, arising from wounded love, anger, and despair at her
hopeless position, she consented. After having lost all she valued, what
did she care