* * * * *
Dear Peter:
I am continuing the letter I wrote you sometime ago. Of course, I am
sending you these as a compilation. They are not in series; for if I
should do that you would lose the trend. Probably you would become bored
and when these letters came from time to time, you might throw them in
the waste basket. It is impossible for me to judge your frame of mind
from this distance after all these years. I cannot judge into what you
have developed.
However, the first part is finished and the second part is also done
with. This is the third part. The drawing of the thing to a conclusion—a
finishing of it all. And after this is done, I shall sit down by my
window and look out upon the passing world and wonder how long I shall
live. How soon I shall have peace—a thing I have never had, or ever
known.
I remember the day I left. It was cruel. You recollect the sky. The sun
did not shine. The flowers in the garden as I went seemed to tuck their
heads down under their leaves as if seeking protection from the cold. It
was not cold. It was raining. It was warm.
I entered the car. I closed the door by myself. It appeared to me as if
some one was closing me in some place, just as if I were being penned in
a great prison, from which I should never come out. I shivered, Peter.
The last face I saw was that of Tizzia who stood at one of the windows.
The tears were running down her face. Frantically she waved her hand to
me, and then she was gone. It was all gone—the house, you and my
happiness.
I wonder if Tizzia told you of my last conversation with her—the threats
I made of the things I should do. I often think of that conversation and
the stress I was under at the time. Funny as it may appear to you I did
those things. I went forth from you—from all the things I thought were
right and good.
You should have seen the man. I met him a short time after I left. His
name was Bill—Slippery Bill, he was called. A vicious man. A drunkard of
the most horrible kind. His mind was a morass of immorality. His sense
of humor was beating a woman. He had killed one person, and when he was
drunk he bragged to me and described how his victim had moaned and
begged. He loved to tell me of the thing he killed. Of course, it was a
woman. He was just a man—a coward.
Bill was a thief—a second-story man. One who lies in wait until a house
is empty and then goes in safely. When he would steal he would come to
me in the hovel we lived in and throw the things he had got on the
table, and gloat on them, and brag about the ease with which he did this
sort of thing. After that he would get drunk. For days and weeks he was
in this condition. He amused me. He was so futile. His operations so
foolish. With half the effort he could have made a good living.
Bill hated work. He wanted to live in what he called ease. Poor foolish
Bill! He feared everything. The crack of a twig, the sound of the wind,
a strange footstep. It was always the law coming for him. The police! He
even feared me and sometimes in his frenzy of fear he would beat me. He
thought I might betray him. It amused me. His fear was queer. I laughed
at it when he was gone on one of his missions.
I met this creature not long after I had gone from you. I went down into
the depths of shame and poverty. I lived in one tiny room. Around me was
a host of queer furtive people who lived from day to day—seeking always
something that might keep them until the morrow. It was sad, but it was
interesting. I went to their haunts. I soon became known to them. I even
acquired their furtive habits. I appeared to be seeking like they, the
things that would keep me until the next day. Sometimes even in their
extreme poverty they laughed. I would pretend that I had a good night.
That I had seen some man who gave me part of what he had and I would
give to them. A dollar now and then. Once I gave a poor old man, who had
lived in his horrors for years, a five-dollar bill. You should have seen
him. He became my shadow. There was no thankfulness in his manner. He
thought he could get more. I found him in my room, going through my
things. He found nothing. I took care of that. I cursed him for his
temerity. He shrank out of the place, but he came back, for he hoped.
I came across Bill only four weeks after I left you. It was a short time
after I took the miserable room in this quarter of this city. What city
doesn’t make any difference. But it was not so far from you that I
couldn’t watch you and what you did.
You should have seen the dive—dirt, ill-smelling, horrible. A ragged
crew came and went. I entered, and I was poorly dressed—that is I had on
the kind of finery of the people of the class I tried to identify myself
with. I looked the part. I sat at one of the broken-down tables—filthy
with stale beer and smeared with old pieces of cheese. Oh, how it smelt!
Bill was standing at the bar. He was partially drunk. He turned, as I sat
down, and he saw me. A curious light went over his face, and I knew here
was the man! The man who should teach me whether men loved women from
their pound value or from love.
Drunkenly he walked over to the table and leaned his great bony knuckles
upon it. He didn’t take off his hat. He looked at me. Even though I was
dressed so badly, I was beautiful.
He spoke to me, I nodded my head. He ordered a glass of beer for me. He
drank a concoction which he called whiskey. He was terribly dirty. Then
he sat down. I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a repulsive
creature as he was. A great head covered with long shaggy hair, that
curled in a mass. His eyes were blue—a deep blue. In them one could see
the depths of depravity he had sunk to. His mouth was weak and sloppy,
but his chin, covered with a few days’ beard, was strong. He looked
brutal. And, Peter, he was brutal.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” I replied. I drank a little of the beer. He swallowed the
drink he had before him at a gulp. He appeared to throw it down his
throat. I noticed that none of the muscles either contracted or expanded
with the effort.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“No one,” I replied.
“Where do you live?” he persisted.
I turned from him and arose from the table and left him staring after
me. I knew he would follow. He did. We went out of the place together.
“My wife is dead,” he said.
“Well?” I answered.
“I want another.”
We stood outside of the door upon the pavement. In the light that came
through the dirty windows. I moved away from him.
That was the beginning of the life I led with him. It was a curious sort
of thing. He began to love me. He sought me out everywhere I went. There
were many others. But Bill interested me more than any other man I met.
You should have heard him the night we walked together down one of the
poorest streets in the city. He turned every few moments and looked
back. He always walked near the walls of the buildings, for he told me
that he was afraid. He knew he was suspected for all kinds of crimes.
He called me Magdalen. Bill had a slice of poetry in his make-up, and he
reasoned well. He told me he loved me. He would even go straight for me.
He would never drink again. He got drunk that night. I wouldn’t go with
him. Bill was a liar like most men.
A long time went by. We met every night—in all kinds of places. All of
them as dirty as the first. It ended by my going with him.
It happened one night we walked to the park. It was late. All the grog
shops had closed. It was long after one o’clock. We sat upon a bench
together. Bill was sober. He had washed. It was dreadfully dark. It was
curious the feeling of disgust I had for the man; yet for some
unaccountable reason I was attracted to him. I listened to him as he
spoke. I compared his protestations with yours. His were stronger. Bill
was only the offspring of the gutter. After a while as he went on he
thrilled me. When he unbended his crooked figure and shook the mass of
hair on his head, I wondered at the man. Women, Peter, are curious—even
more curious than men. Underneath they love the cave man. They like
strength and brutality. In this part of my life when I see with what
insane cruelty this class of people beat and bruise their women, I
wonder at them. But they do not leave—they weep, but they stay.
You should have heard him as he stood before me and looked at me the
best he could in the dark. I could see his eyes flash.
I remember each word he spoke, as if it were yesterday. Yet Bill has
been dead years and years, and he died in jail.
“You are different, Magdalen. I don’t understand you. I don’t care about
that. I only know you came into my life. You are here. The first night I
saw you, although I was drunk, I knew you were my woman. I don’t care
where you came from, nor who you are. I love you, Magdalen. I would do
anything for you. How long it has been since you came into this part of
the world, makes no difference to me. I don’t know if you have ever
loved before. I suppose you have. All women love at sometime. You don’t
know what real love means. I love you—I want you. I am going to have
you. It is funny, I never spoke to any women as I do to you. You seem to
make me different. I’ve lost my strength; it has died in me. If you were
like the rest I should take you. I would not ask. I would make you do as
I want. But I cannot. That is the thing I don’t understand. I am afraid
of you. Why?”