you, I who took her place, that our doors must be shut against her? We
will go to-morrow and bring her home, and I will do what I can to make
her last days happy.”
John Marshall breathed a sigh of relief as if a weight were lifted
from his mind. He looked at his wife approvingly.
“You are a good woman, Mary,” he said.
Many a man addressing such words to his wife would have followed them
with a caress, but John Marshall turned away and went about his evening
tasks while Mary passed slowly and wearily into the house. A coat
belonging to her husband hung in the hall. She caught the sleeve in her
hand and kissed it. A girl or a gay young matron might have been thus
childishly demonstrative without suspicion of any deeper feeling than
an impulsive outburst of affection toward the owner of the garment.
Discerning eyes like those of Father Allen, grown keen with a half
century’s study of human weaknesses, would have seen in the act of this
middle-aged woman the betrayal of a heart’s hunger.
Mechanically she went about her household duties and preparations for
the guest, the dread of whose possible coming had hung over her like
a shadow for fifteen years. No detail was overlooked in arranging for
the comfort of “John’s wife,” as Mary caught herself calling in her
thoughts the woman who had dropped out of conscious existence so long
ago. She had come back to life as from the dead. If a wrong had been
done to her in her helpless state those who had committed it must, as
they hoped for mercy hereafter, do what they could to save her from its
consequences; there was no other way. They, the wrong-doers, she and
John, must suffer in the performance of their duty; but they had no
right to complain. It was Rose, little Rose, whom they had loved and
who had trusted them so completely, who was coming back, and she must
find the doors open.
Like a dream that day and the next seemed to her afterwards. The
journey to the city, the meeting with the one so miraculously restored
to them, the return home, were events that fixed themselves but dimly
on her memory. The central fact that the companion of her girlhood, the
wife of John’s youth, was with them again absorbed her faculties to
the exclusion of lesser matters. It was not until Rose was installed
in the sunny upper room and the domestic routine had adjusted itself
to the change in affairs that the second wife realized the nature of
the task she had set herself to do--that had been imposed upon her she
whispered in bitter protest sometimes.
Her married life had been haunted by the fear that Rose might regain
her reason, but the picture formed in her fancy had been of a wan
and haggard creature heaping reproaches on the husband who had been
unfaithful in her absence, and on the woman who had promised a dying
father to care for her and had then usurped her place. Never had she,
in her wildest dreams, contemplated anything like the reality which she
now faced.
It was no pallid, wild-eyed woman who sat in the upper chamber, but
a smiling guest whose every wish was honored. Strangely enough, the
change that had been wrought in Rose’s mental condition had its
counterpart in a physical transformation. The deathly paleness, the
hollow cheek, the look of age which had characterized the insane woman
had given way to a color rivaling the peachy bloom of twenty years
before; the blue eyes, dull for so long, shone with all their old
vivid brilliancy beneath the long lashes; the face was rounded out,
and its youthful outlines were emphasized by the babyish rings of fair
hair that lay about the white forehead. The weakness and languor
that accompanied this change and did not pass away only added to her
attractiveness. As she leaned back upon the cushions of the chair that
she seldom left it was difficult to believe that the face was that of
one who had lived past her girlhood. To the lookers-on it seemed that
nature had endeavored to compensate for the lost years by a veritable
renewal of youth and beauty.
It was not the difficult task that had been feared to guard her against
injurious shocks. She quietly assumed, without question, that the
relations of her loved ones were as they had been of old; indeed she
seemed not to realize the time that had passed since she left them.
John was her husband; Mary, the dear sister who had kept his house and
awaited her recovery and return. Rose asked for her son but showed
little emotion when told with hesitant caution--this was one of the
things that could not be concealed or denied--that he had been a feeble
child who, after five years of baby life, had left them and gone to
heaven. The infant had not formed a part of the life she remembered,
and knowledge of his death did not move her deeply. In telling the
story of the little one whom she had loved like her own, Mary thought,
with almost a guilty feeling, of the sturdy boy who called her mother
and whose existence must be so carefully hidden. The presence of a boy
in the house might be easily enough accounted for, but he must not come
where “Aunt Rose” was lest she ask fatal questions.
“It is enough that you and I must deceive her, but my boy shall not
be taught to lie or to deny his birthright,” said Mary, with fierce
decision, and John had agreed.
A negro and his wife who had followed John from “ole Kaintuck” to find
a home in the North, and who had been faithful servants ever since,
formed the rest of the household. Visitors were few. A prairie road
after November rains is not a thoroughfare sought by any except those
on journeys of necessity. The few old friends or curious neighbors
drawn thither by the news of Rose’s return were quietly cautioned not
to touch on personal matters in their conversation with the invalid.
This caution and the chance allusions Rose made to her “husband” led
the visitors, ignorant of the kindly deceit being practiced upon her,
and doubtful, as the most intelligent people often are, of the entire
recovery of those once insane, to believe that her mind was not yet
sound. So it came about that the little drama being enacted in that
prairie farm-house had few spectators.
Rose expressed little curiosity concerning events that had happened
during her absence, and showed no interest in affairs outside their own
little circle. She was content to live like a child, taking up life
where she had left it, and thinking nothing of the morrow. One thing
only she demanded as her right, and that the hardest of all for one
member of the household to grant. “Her John’s” society she claimed in
all of his leisure moments, and as a farmer in the position of this man
is an independent being who orders his own goings-in and comings-out,
the result was that John, “my dear John,” as Rose called him, was at
her side many hours in the day. Mary might be there, too; Rose wanted
Mary also at hand, or within call, but without John she fretted and was
restless.
At first Mary quieted her misgivings with a sense of shame at their
existence. John, she said, was, like herself, trying to do his duty.
She could serve the invalid in other ways; he could only bear her
company. But the days went on, and that upper room became a place of
torture for the lawful wife so steadfastly doing that which seemed best.
John was good; he was a good man, she said over and over. Not to
himself would the loyal soul willingly utter a complaint of the one she
loved, but at last she could no longer close her eyes to the truth. In
an agony which could find no expression, Mary acknowledged to herself
that her husband sought the presence of that transfigured woman who
had been the bride of his youth, because in that presence he found
pleasure and delight. All through the fifteen years of her life with
him she had been conscious of a lack of responsiveness to the cravings
of her affection; but she had stilled the aching of her heart with the
thought, not that he mourned the loss of Rose, but that a sentiment of
self-reproach for having set her aside in her misfortune had raised a
barrier in his nature between himself and the companion in the wrong
which he could not overcome. And now she knew that this coldness was
because he loved this other as he had not loved her.
During those long years she had never been quite happy because of the
invisible barrier; sometimes she had fancied herself wretched. Looking
back to that time now, she felt, in the sharpness of her suffering,
that she had lived in paradise. Then, it was a vague, unsubstantial
thing that held them apart; now, it was a beautiful woman who thought
herself his wife.
That room had a fascination for Mrs. Marshall; she suffered when there,
but after leaving it she hastened back. Neither occupant seemed to
mind her presence. Rose did not;--conscious of no wrong, why should
she? John did not, being apparently unaware, as he sat near, and often
with Rose’s pretty hand in his, that he was exceeding the part of a
courteous host.
One day, to Mary, going quietly about some task in an outer room,
floated a voice in soft reproach:
“John, do you love me?”
“Why Rose, my dear Rose, don’t you know we all love you?”
“‘We!’ I am not talking of ‘we,’ but of you. Do you know, John, that
you have never kissed me since the day I came home? Is that the way a
man behaves who loves his wife?”
And Mary, her heart faint with pain and shame and outraged love, saw
the man succumb to the pleading eyes and outstretched arms. A kiss
like that, she knew, had never been given her. Alive with the quick
instinct to possess her own she started forward, but in a moment turned
and crept away like a wounded creature, even then excusing the one who
had pierced her soul.
“Could any man do differently? Only a saint could resist that
loveliness for the sake of a woman such as I, worn with care and
on-coming years.”
She could not breathe under that roof. Out into the chill November day
she hastened, not caring whither. Heavy gusts of rain swept across the
sky, shrouding the prairie in a gray mist through which the scattered
trees loomed dimly, their bare boughs tossing like the spars of a
ship in a laboring sea. Conscious of little but her own thoughts, she
hurried on until her footsteps were checked by the surprised voice of
Father Allen hastening from the performance of some errand of mercy to
gain shelter from the wintry storm.
“Are you crazy, daughter?”
“It would be better if I were; it would save trouble. If John could
have left me at the asylum when he brought Rose away how much better
it would have been. But this life is killing me--I shall die, I shall
die and be out of their way. Rose will get well--do you hear me, Father
Allen? When I married John I prayed that Rose, my little cousin Rose,
might never recover her mind. I founded my happiness on her misfortune.
Now, I can see no happiness while we both live. I am like a murderer,
Father Allen! But my punishment has come. The Lord does not wait until
the hereafter.”
The burst of passion ended in tears and sobs, and the old man,
dismounting from his horse, led her unresistingly home and delivered
her into the hands of the faithful black ’Liza, whose ire had long
since been excited by what she described to her spouse, Tom, as the
“scan’lous goings on ob dat crazy woman with Mistah John.”
“I will remonstrate with Brother Marshall,” thought the ministerial
visitor. “It is a peculiar case, and he means no harm, I am sure; but,
really, it is a very trying position for Sister Marshall, and he should
be more considerate.”
Mr. Allen was old; the woes of women did not impress him as they might
have done a younger man, or as they would have impressed him even now,
perhaps, had not the many sorrowful tales poured into his ears during
the forty years of his ministry somewhat dulled his sensibilities. So
it happened that he was not stern and severe in his remonstrance with
Mr. Marshall when he drew him aside that night after supper, at which
Mary presided, pale but self-possessed once more.
“If Mary wishes to tell Rose the truth and kill her, she may do so, or
you may do it; I will not,” said John. “While she is here I shall treat
her kindly, whatever others may do. Come up and see her.”
The old minister followed his host. In that radiant presence he, too,
forgot the aching heart below and thought only of Rose and the wife of
his youth whose likeness he fancied he saw in the face before him.
That night Rose moaned in her sleep, and Mary, rising from her couch
near by, found the white hands clasped over the heart and wondered if
the pangs of actual disease could equal her own pain.
Next day the wild storm continued and the minister, who had remained
over night, prolonged his stay. Mary wandered restlessly over the
house, now in the kitchen with ’Liza, now talking lightly with Father
Allen in the pleasant parlor, but never long absent from the spot
upstairs where all interest centered.
“You look pale--are you not well?” said Rose once. “John, you must not
let Mary work too hard for me. Dear Mary! How should we do without her?”
Mary’s answer was short and brusque as she hurried away, thinking
bitterly that John had no thought to spare for any illness of hers.
Repenting, presently, of her ungracious response to a kind inquiry, and
returning, she saw repeated the loving scene of the day before. John
was on his knees by Rose’s side, her arms about his neck.
“I dreamed of our baby last night, John. When I am well--I think I
shall be well soon--I want you to take me down to see where you have
laid him. If I should die I want my--there, there--hush! I know you
love me; I know you do, and I won’t talk again of leaving you. Poor
John; he has had no one to pet and care for him, and he wants his
little Rose.”
Half an hour later ’Liza, intent on some household service, found
Mrs. Marshall lying prostrate on the floor of an unused room. She was
not unconscious--women out of books do not faint when their hearts
break--but nature had reached a limit, and after the storm of tears
and strong crying had come a dullness of feeling that was almost
insensibility.
’Liza stooped to raise her, but suddenly changed her plan. “This is
Mistah John’s business, an’ I’ll be boun’ he ’tends to it.”
No delicately conscientious scruples troubled her mind.
“Mistah John’s a mighty good man; nevah had nothin’ to say ’gainst him
befo’, but it do look mighty cur’ous to see him hangin’ roun’ a crazy
woman that he divorced hisself from, an’ thinkin’ no mo’ o’ this hyer
po’ lamb than if the ole elder hadn’t done married ’em fas’ an’ tight.
’Taint gwine on no mo’, nohow, if this chile kin stop it. Bettah be the
crazy woman than Mis’ Mary if somebody gwine die fo’ it.”
And ’Liza, muttering ominously, marched to the front room. There even
she paused.
“Ole ’Liza’s a mighty mean niggah when the blessed Lawd’s grace done
loose its hold on her, but the devil aint nevah gwine make her huht
Mis’ Rose, who looks like a angel o’ the ’pocalypse, crazy or no crazy.”
And so, very quietly, she called Mr. Marshall out of the charmed
presence. Father Allen, on his way upstairs, was summoned also. Once in
that distant room over the half conscious “Mis’ Mary,” ’Liza’s wrath
broke forth.
“Ole ’Liza’s done thought a heap o’ you, Mistah John. I nevah reckoned
I’us trailin’ out o’ ole Kaintuck aftah a man who was gwine have two
wives undah one roof. Is yo’ that stone bline an’ onfeelin’, Mistah
John, that yo’ aint see this blessed lamb dyin’ foh the love o’ yo’ on
’count o’ the way yo’ carryin’ on? What yo’ reckon the Lawd thinkin’ o’
class-leadah Mahshall ’bout now?”
She was on the floor holding Mary’s head on her ample bosom, loosening
her dress, chafing her hands.
“Yo’ an’ Eldah Allen, hyer, yo’ alls think its Mis’ Mary’s duty to
make it easy foh you uns, an’ aint a carin’ if she done make a bu’nt
offering o’ herself. Yo’ alls may be mighty good in yo’ minds, but yo’
ain’ got no kind o’ feelin’s. Ary man what wants his wife to stan’
back an’ be sweet an’ purty wiles he honeys up to a nurrer woman is
boun’ to get all broke up in he cackleations. No woman, black or white,
ain’ made thataway. Ole Mis’ Duncan, down in Kaintuck, used to ’low,
‘’Liza,’ she ’low, ‘ebery male man that was evah bohned would be a
Mohmon or a heathen Tuhk if he wasn’t ’shamed to have folks know it.’
Ole Mis’ hadn’t had good luck with her husban’s an’ was down on the
sect pow’ful ha’d, but the longah I live the mo’ I’s ’pressed with the
’pinion that a man what wants to get into the heabenly kingdom’s got to
live mighty close in this worl’, mighty close.”
John made no attempt to check this impetuous tirade, but during its
progress his eyes had become wide open to the situation. His cheeks
burned with shame. He took Mary from ’Liza’s arms and laid her upon
a bed. The sound of his voice brought her to herself. Half dazed she
struggled to her feet.
“Father Allen,” said the man, “We,--I have made a mistake. One wrong
can not be set right by another. Mary, here, is my wife. We will
have done with this deception, and will go and tell Rose, let the
consequences be what they may.”
Supporting his wife, he moved toward the room across the house,
followed by the old minister, with ’Liza, alarmed now at the result
of her temerity, bringing up the rear. Even at that moment, Mary,
beginning to recover herself, forgot her own grief and pleaded brokenly
for delay. Strong as had been John Marshall’s resolution of a moment
before, his steps faltered as they approached the door. A moment more
and all paused involuntarily--arrested by the words they heard and the
sight before them.
Standing by Rose’s side was Mary’s son, the lad of twelve. Coming into
the house he had heard the sharp alarm of Aunt Rose’s bell and, finding
no one to answer the call, had gone up and peeped bashfully in.
Rose, gasping for breath in sudden faintness, motioned for water and
air. She revived presently, the boy watching her, meanwhile, with
wondering eyes.
“I have heard you about the house,” she said faintly but with a smile;
“why have you never been to see me before?”
“I wanted to come, but they said you must not be worried,” stammered
the lad.
“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”
“Why, father and mother,” he answered in surprise.
“Well, your father and mother, whoever they may be, should have known
that boys would not trouble me; I like them. And what is your name,
child?”
The group at the door heard this and the boy’s quick answer:
“My name is Richard--Dick, for short--Richard Marshall, you know.”
Mary staggered forward as if to stop the words on the boy’s lips.
“Save her, Lord!” she whispered.
Father Allen held her arm. “Hush! it is too late. It is the will of
God.”
John stood as one paralyzed.
“Richard Marshall,” she repeated wonderingly--“the same name. And are
you related to Mr. John Marshall? He did not tell me--”
“Why, Mr. John Marshall is my father, didn’t you know? You must have
forgotten, Aunt Rose. And, of course, Mrs. Mary Marshall is my mother.”
The revelation which they had so guarded against had been made; the
shock so dreaded had been given.
Rose seemed to realize the truth slowly. Her startled eyes fell upon
the terror-stricken group at the doorway. Gradually, as comprehension
of the situation dawned upon her, a change came over the sweet face. It
grew gray and sharp; the brightness vanished. She suddenly seemed no
longer young.
“Is it true, John?”
“It is true,” he whispered.
“Why, then, when you had taken another in my place did you deceive me?
Why was I allowed to think--”
“Rose, my darling, we did it for the best. We thought you would suffer;
we had done you a wrong and were afraid--Rose, Rose, it was for your
sake. Can you not forgive?”
John Marshall had drawn near to the woman on whom the shadow of death
now plainly lay. Mary crept to the bedside and crouched there with
head bowed low. For a long time, hours it seemed to the spell-bound
watchers, the dying woman lay silent with her hands clenched over her
heart. No sound was heard save the dash of rain upon the window and the
crackling of the fire upon the hearth. At last she spoke:
“It would be better for us all if I had died long ago, or if I had
never come to myself in the asylum. I have wanted to live, but it does
not matter now. I will go to my baby; the Lord will let me have him for
my own in heaven. I thought,”--the words came slowly and more faint--“I
thought you were all mine, all mine, and you belonged to Mary. I had no
one. But John,” triumphantly--it was the last flash of the woman nature
regardless of human law for love’s sake--“John, you loved me best once;
you love me now, don’t you, John?”
The man, with his head bent upon the pillow, sobbed aloud.
“Always, my darling.”
After a pause she spoke again:
“You did not mean to hurt. I have been happy--happy. Kiss me, John.”
The face brightened with a strange light.
“Mary, don’t cry. I--am--going--to--my--baby. Do--you--see? Mary,
forgive----.”
Then the blue eyes looked on death.
A pale gleam of sunshine, the first for days, broke through the clouds
and fell upon the still face. Father Allen, with uplifted hands,
whispered softly, “Let us pray.”
* * * * *
Six months later, Father Allen and the young pastor, driving across the
prairie, stopped again at the Marshall home. Only the wife was within.
In answer to a whispered inquiry from the older man, as he departed,
she said gently, but with an unconscious touch of defiance in her
speech: “I am happy, of course. He is mine, now--all mine. One does not
fear the dead.”
It was not quite a look of peace that filled her eyes as they left her
gazing wistfully down the length of the level road.
A mile beyond, at the other side of the broad prairie farm, was the
little cottage where the dead Rose had spent the first brief months
of her married life. It had never been occupied since by strangers.
A marble shaft gleamed through the trees near by. Against the fence
surrounding this leaned John Marshall, absorbed in contemplation of
the two flower-grown mounds within. His horse, in the road at a little
distance, neighed impatiently, but the watcher gave no heed.
“It seemed to me expedient,” said Father Allen, half to himself, as
they drove, unnoticed, by; “but I may have been wrong. The Lord knows.”
THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT
There is a conviction among certain educated people that with
increased intellectual culture comes a keener susceptibility to
pleasure and pain. Is it so? Turn anywhere among the “short and
simple annals of the poor,” and we can find passion, and romance, and
tragedy. They do not call these incidents of life by such names; they
only live them. When love or suffering--and what else is life?--comes
to us, we can analyze our emotions, and label them with high-sounding
words; we can tell of them in verse, or in language compared to which
theirs is but an inarticulate cry. Are our feelings, therefore,
deeper?
“Slave! Yassum, an’ sot free by de prockelmation. Hab I lib in dis yer
house so long an’ yo’ nebah know I’se done been a slave?” And Aunty
Smith, the African dame, who represented that domestic institution
known as “our girl,” gave the fire a vigorous poke.
“Tell yo’ ’bout it? Dar ain’t nuffin’ to tell wuth the while for yo’ to
listen. An’ ole niggah ain’t got no hist’ry--dat’s for white folkses.
Didn’t I heah yo’ a readin’ ’bout de hist’ry ob Jawge Washin’ton--an’
den talkin’ to me? Sho!”
The black lips parted over broad white teeth in a quick laugh, but
no smile touched the solemn eyes given to her race by generations of
bondage.
“Time to be a-takin’ yo’ quinine, honey; bettah take it mighty reg’lah
ef yo’ specks to get dem chills bruck. ‘Trouble?’ Yas, indeedy, I’s
had heaps ob trouble, but I nebah did go roun’ talkin’ ’bout it. Makes
mattahs wuss to be forebber a-talkin’ an’ a-talkin’ ob yer trials. An’
I’s allus noticed dis yer fac’, dat mos’ people likes to tell deir
own ’sperience ’stiddy o’ hearin’ ’bout yours. Co’se I has to tell
somebody an’ I tells de Lawd, but ’pears like de Lawd’s a long way
off, sometimes. Ef I could be shore dat He allus heard a pore niggah I
couldn’t nebah grieve no mo’.”
“Has doubt seized the believers?” I thought. “If the rest of us were
sure of that one thing what burdens would be lifted!”