December 1. I dreamed last night a dream which affected me so strongly
that I can hardly write of it without shivering. I dreamed that George
came with Mr. Saychase to remarry, as I thought, Gertrude. When we all
stood by the side of her bed, however, George seized my hand, and
announced that he had come to marry me, and was resolved to have no
other wife. Gertrude fell back on her pillow in a faint. I struggled to
pull away the hand George had taken, but I was powerless. I tried to
scream, but that horrible paralysis which sometimes affects us in dreams
left me speechless. I felt myself helpless while Mr. Saychase went on
marrying me to George before the eyes of his own wife, in spite of
anything I could do to prevent it. The determination to be free of this
bond struggled in me so strongly against the helplessness which held me
that I sprang up in bed at last, awake and bursting into hysterical
crying.
The strange thing about it all is that I seem to have broken more than
the sleep of the body. It is as if all these years I had been in a
drowse in my mind, and had suddenly sprung up throbbingly awake. I am as
aghast at myself as if I should discover I had unconsciously been
walking in the dark on the edge of a ghastly precipice,--yes, a
precipice on the edge of a valley full of writhing snakes! My very
flesh creeps at the thought that I could by any possibility be made the
wife of any man but Tom. I look back to-day over the long years I was
engaged, and understand all in a flash how completely George spoke the
truth when he used to complain I was an iceberg and did not know what it
was to be in love. He was absolutely right; and he was right to leave
me. I can only wonder that through those years when I endured his bodily
presence because I thought I loved his mental being, he could endure me
at all. He could not have borne it, I see now, if he had been really in
love with me himself. I am wise with a strange new wisdom; but whence it
comes, or why it has opened to me in a single night, from a painful
dream, is more than I can say. I understand that George never loved me
any more than I did him. He will go back to Gertrude,--indeed I do not
believe he has ever ceased to be fond of her, even when he declared he
was tired of her and wanted me to take him back. He was angry with her,
and no human being understands himself when he is angry.
Last night after I waked I could not reason about things much. I was too
panic-stricken. I lay there in the dark actually trembling from the
horror of my dream, and realized that from my very childhood Tom has
stood between me and every other man. Now at last I, who have been all
these years in a dull doze, am awake. I might almost say, without being
in the least extravagant, that I am alive who was dead; I, who have
thought of love and marriage as I might have thought about a trip
abroad, know what love means. My foolish dream has changed me like a
vision which changes a mere man into a prophet or a seer.
I cannot bear that Tom should go on suffering. I must somehow let him
know. December 2. Fortune was kind to me this morning, and Tom knows. I
had to go to take some flannel to old Peggy Cole, and as I crossed the
Foot-bridge Tom came out of Deacon Daniel's mill. He flushed a little
when he saw me, and half hesitated, as if he were almost inclined to
turn back. I did not mean to let him escape, however, and stood still,
waiting for him. We shook hands, and I at once told him I had wanted to
see him, so that if he were not in a hurry I should be glad if he would
walk on with me.
He assented, not very willingly I thought, and we went on over the
bridge together. The sun was shining until the snow-edges glistened like
live coals, and everywhere one looked the air fairly shimmered with
light. The tide was coming up in the river, and the cakes of ice,
yellowed in patches by the salt water until they were like unshorn
fleeces, were driven against the long sluice-piers, jostling and pushing
like sheep frightened into a corner. The piers themselves, and every
spar or rock that showed above the water, were as white as snow could
make them. It was one of those days when the air is a tonic, so that
every breath is a joy; and as Tom and I walked on together I could have
laughed aloud just for joy of the beautiful winter day.
"How cold the water looks," Tom said, turning his face away from me and
toward the Rim. "It is fairly black with cold."
"Even the ice-cakes seem to be trying to climb out of it," I returned,
laughing from nothing but pure delight. "I suppose that is the way you
feel about me, Tom. You haven't been near Tomine or me for ten days, and
you know you wanted to get away from me this morning."