bitterness. "I do not belittle my love. I know that I loved him with all
my heart and soul, and that I gave him more than most women would have
done, because love means infinitely more to me than it does to them. I
knew all the time that I loved him more than he loved me, but I did not
care, for I believed, blind as I was, that we loved each other all we were
capable of doing, and if I had more love to give it was only because I was
richer than he, and I meant to make him the greater by my treasure. Now I
feel that both I and my love have been wasted. Oh, it was a cruel thing,
Ruth. I feel so poor, so poor."
"Louise, you think, but you do not think rightly. _Are_ you poorer for
having loved him? What is his unworth compared with your worth? Isn't your
love sweeter and truer for having grown and expanded? No love was ever
wasted. It enriches the giver involuntarily. You are a sweeter, better
woman than before you loved, unless you made the mistake of small natures
and let it embitter you. You have no right to feel that it has been
wasted."
"Do you think so?" she said doubtfully. "That is an uplifting thought."
Then she added in a low voice, "There is one thing more. It is very
unworthy, I am afraid, but it is a canker that is eating my heart out. And
that is the mortification of it. Can you picture the thing to yourself?
Can you form any idea of how I felt? It grows worse the more I think of
it."
"I know, I know. But, dear child, there is where I am powerless to help
you. If I were in your place I think I should feel just as you do. It was
a cruel thing. I wonder that you bore it as well as you did."
"What! Should _you_ feel that way? Then you do not blame me?"
"Why mention blame in connection with yourself? You are singularly free
from it. But did you ever consider what an honor the love of such a man
as your husband is? Do you know how he is admired by great men? Do you
realize how he must love you, and what magnificent faith he must have to
wish to marry a young girl like you who admits that she does not love him?
If you never do anything else in this world except to deserve the faith he
has in you, you will live a worthy life."
We were standing still now, and Louise was looking at her husband at a
distance with a look in her eyes which was good to see.
"You never can love him as you loved the other one. A first love never
comes again. Would you want it to? When you love your husband, as he and
I both know that you will do some time--perhaps not soon, but he is very
patient--still, I say, when you love him you will love him in a gentler,
truer way."
"Can you tell me why such a bitter experience should have been sent to me
so early in life?"
"To save you pain later and to make of you what you were planned to be."
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she bent to kiss me, for the last mail
had been put aboard and we had only a moment more.
What she whispered in my ear I shall never tell to any one, but it will
sweeten my whole life.
As we went towards Mr. Whitehouse Louise involuntarily quickened her pace
a little and held out her hand to him with a smile. It was good to see his
face change color and to view the quiet delight with which he received
her.
Then there were good-byes and hurried steps and a great deal of shouting
and hauling of ropes, and there were waving of hands and a tossing of
roses from the decks above and a few furtive tears and many heart-aches,
and then--the great steamer had sailed.
XII
IN WHICH I WILLINGLY TURN MY FACE WESTWARD
"Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, nor be afraid.'"
The years cannot go on without destroying the old landmarks, and I am so
old-fashioned that change of any kind saddens me. People move away,
strangers take their houses, the girls marry, children grow up, and
everything is so mutable that sometimes my cheerfulness has a haze to it.
I am in a mood of retrospection to-night. I am living over the past and
knitting up the ravelled ends.
Dear Rachel! I am thankful that she and Percival continue so happy. It is
wonderful how every one recognizes and speaks of the completeness of
these two. They do not parade their affection. They seem rather to try to
hide it even from me, as if it were almost too sacred for even my kindly
eyes. It is in the atmosphere, and, though they go their separate ways,
they are more thoroughly together than any other married people I know.
Both Percival and Rachel are becoming very generally recognized now.
People are discovering how wonderfully clever their work is, and they
share themselves with the public, although it is a sacrifice every time
they do so. Rachel's rather turbulent cleverness has softened down. She
says it is because it is "billowed in another greater and gentler sort."
She looks at me rather wistfully sometimes. I know what she thinks, but
she does not bore me with questions. I wonder if she thinks I regret
anything. Unless I consider that the Percivals have redeemed the record I
am keeping, there is nothing especially tempting in the marriages I am
watching. I cannot think that they are any happier than I am.
Sallie Cox seems contented most of the time. She has a magnificent
establishment, handsomer than all the rest of the girls' put together. Her
husband "doesn't bother" her, she says, and the Osbornes are very popular.
"I'm glad I'm shallow," she said to me once. "Shallow hearts do not ache
long. If I had a deep nature I should go mad or turn into a saint. As it
is, I wear the scars."
Once, when I went with her to Rachel's, she sat and looked around the
simple, inexpensive house, with the walls all lined with books and no room
too good to live in every day, and she said,
"This is the prettiest home I ever was in in my life, and there is not a
lace curtain in the house!"
We laughed--everybody laughs at Sallie--and Rachel said gently,
"We don't need them."
Sallie looked up quickly and took in the full significance of the words,
as she answered in the same tone,
"No, you do not, but I do." And each woman had told her heart history.
Now, Rachel must know almost as much about Sallie as I do; but she never
will know all.
Sallie said she went home and hated every room in her house separately and
specifically; then she had a good cry over "the perfectness of the
Percivals," and issued invitations to a masked ball.
"That ball was full of significance, Ruth," she told me afterwards with
her most whimsically knowing look. "It was bristling with it. But nobody
thought of it except a certain little goose I know named Sara Cox
Osborne."
Jack Whitehouse and Pet Winterbotham are married. They had the most
beautiful wedding I ever saw; but it was like watching the babes in the
wood, for they are _such_ a young-looking pair.
I understand better now what Pet meant when she talked about Jack's
appearance so much. I think he expressed to her the idea of perpetual
youth and eternal spring-time. To me, too, it seems as if he ought always
to be yachting in blue and white, or lying at full length on the grass at
some girl's feet. And Pet herself makes an admirable companion-piece.
When I see her in a misty white ball-dress, with one man bringing her an
ice and another holding her flowers and a third bearing her filmy wraps, I
feel that things are quite as they should be. Some people seem to be born
for fair weather and smooth sailing.
It is too soon to judge them finally. Norris Whitehouse's nephew will
outgrow the ball-room, and Pet will find in Louise an incentive to grow
womanly.
The Asburys have built a fine house since Alice's father died, and go
about a great deal, but seldom together. Asbury lives at the club, and
Alice has her mother with her. Alice has embraced Theosophy and spells her
name "Alys." She always is interested in something new and advanced, and
whenever I meet her I am prepared to go into ecstasies over a plan to save
men's souls by electricity, or something equally speedy in the moral line.
She is daft on spiritual rapid transit.
She does these things because she is a disappointed, clever, ambitious
woman, who would have made a noble character if she had been surrounded
by right influences.
What would have been the result if Alice had taken as her creed: "The
situation that has not its duty, its ideals, was never yet occupied by
man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual,
wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out
therefrom, and working, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself; thy
condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of; what
matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give
it be heroic, be poetic? Oh, thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the
Actual and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and
create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee,
'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see"?
Ah, well, she could not. She still is crying to the gods and spelling her
name "Alys." Her cleverness must have an outlet, and, with worse than no
husband to lavish it upon, she scatters it to the four winds of heaven
and gets herself talked about as "queer."
May Brandt has bitten into her apples of Sodom, and the taste of ashes is
bitter indeed to her. She knows now that Brandt never loved her, and did
love Alice. I do not know whether she thinks he still cares for Alice or
not. May never had much beauty to lose, but she looks worn and unhappy,
and watches Alice with a degree of feeling which would appear vulgar to me
if I did not know just how miserable she is. She is hopelessly plain now,
and Alice is still like a tall, stately lily. Brandt devours her with his
eyes, but Alice makes him keep his distance.
Sallie Cox has been diplomatic and harmless enough to make Alice forgive
her, and they are quite good friends; but Alice is magnificent in her
scorn of Brandt's wife, who almost cowers in her presence.
Poor May! I wish I could take that look of suffering from her little
pinched, three-cornered face for just one hour. But how could I? How could
anybody who knew all about it?
She does not understand Alice in all her moods and vagaries, and Alice
does not condescend to explain herself even to her friends. I do not
believe that Alice and Brandt have ever spoken on the subject which
occupies three minds whenever they two are thrown together. Yet I imagine
it would be a relief to May if she were told that. However, she is
scarcely noble enough to believe it, even if Alice herself should tell
her. But Alice never will. She never gives it a thought. Brandt, too, has
honor, though, even if he had not, Alice would have it for him and forbid
a word.
It is a fortunate thing for some people's chances for a future life that
there are a reasonable number of consciences distributed through the
world, although it would be an Old Maid's suggestion that sometimes they
be allowed to drive instead of being used as a liveried tiger--for
ornament and always behind. It is a great pity that people who are
supplied with them--and well-cultivated consciences too--have not the
courage to live up to them, but allow themselves to be gently and feebly
miserable all their lives.
Now, Charlie Hardy has periods of being the most miserable man I ever
knew. His last interview with Louise must have been as serious a thing as
he ever experienced. He has married Frankie Taliaferro, and she makes the
sweetest little kitten of a wife you ever saw. In Louise he would have
been protected by a coat of mail. In Frankie he finds it turned into a
pale-blue eider-down quilt, which suits his temperament much better.
Louise Whitehouse is coming home soon. Her year abroad has lengthened into
several years, and they have been the most beautiful of her life, she
writes. "Living with a song in one's life may be the sweetest while it
lasts and before one thinks; but to live by a psalm is to find life
infinitely more beautiful and worthier. I never can be thankful enough
that my life was taken out of my hands at the time when I clung to it most
blindly, and ordered anew by One stronger and wiser than I."
Tears come to my eyes whenever I think of this girl. I do not quite know
why, unless it is that there always is something sad in watching the
tempering of a bright young enthusiasm, even though it becomes more useful
than when so sparkling and high-strung.
I have been at great pains to have Charlie Hardy realize how happy Louise
is, but his conscience still troubles him at times. He says he knows he
did the right thing for every one concerned, but he dislikes the idea of
himself in so disagreeable a rôle; and Louise's opinion of him now, after
the one she did have, is a constant humiliation to him. Women always have
admired him, and he objects very strongly to any exception to the rule. I
think he misses the mental ozone which he found in Louise. I often wonder
if men who have loved superior women and married average ones do not have
occasional wonderings and yearnings over lost "might have beens."
The Mayos still live in the brown house, which has been enlarged and
greatly beautified recently. I have an enthusiastic friendship with the
children, who are growing into slim slips of girls and sturdy, clear-eyed
boys, and their house is still a home. Frank's admiration for soubrettes
died a sudden and violent death at the masked notoriety of his initial
escapade, and for a time he was shocked into better behavior. We hear odd
rumors floating around, however, of whose truth we never can be sure, but
which we shake our heads over, after the fashion of those whose confidence
has been caught napping once. We never knew whether Nellie discovered the
truth or not. If Frank denied it, it would not affect matters with her if
the world rang with it. Her idolatry has a certain blind stubbornness in
it which I should not care to beat against.
Bronson does not stand as straight as he did when I first knew him. Rachel
says he has "a scholarly stoop." But she knows, and I know, that something
besides law-books and parchment has taken the elasticity out of his step.
Many years have gone by since I became an Old Maid. I want to call my
Alter Ego's attention to this fact gently but firmly, because I have an
idea that she still considers herself "only thirty," and that she thinks
she has just begun to be an Old Maid. Whereas she is old and so am I. I
do not mind it at all. Neither does she; it is only that she had not
realized it. We have so much to think about more important than our stupid
ages. People have grown used to seeing us about, and we like the same
things, and keep going at about the same pace and in the same road, and I
think we have come to be an Institution.
I have no worries which I do not borrow from my married friends. I keep up
with the fashions; my clothes fit me; my fingers still come to the ends of
my gloves; I feel no leaning towards all-over cloth shoes; I have not gone
permanently into bonnets. I have tried to be a pleasant Old Maid, and my
reward is that my friends make me feel as if they liked to have me about.
I am not made to feel that I am _passé_. One's clothes and one's feelings
are all that ever make one _passé_.
Nevertheless, I have turned my face resolutely towards the setting sun. I
am resting now. I have given up struggling against the inevitable. That is
a privilege and an attribute of youth. I feel as though I were only
beginning to live, now that I have passed through the period of turmoil
and come out from the rapids into gently gliding water. There is so much
in life which we could not see at the beginning, but which grows with our
growth and bears us company in the richness of evening-tide. I have
learned to love my life and to cultivate it. Who knows what is in her life
until she has tended it and made it know that she expects something from
it in return for all her aspirations and endeavors? Even my wasted efforts
are dear to me.
"'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,
And ask them what report they bore to Heaven,
And how they might have borne more welcome news."
Yet there is a sadness in looking back. I see the many lost opportunities
lifting to me their wistful faces, and dumbly pleading with me to accept
them and their promises; yet I carelessly passed them by. I see worse. I
see the rents in the hedge, where I forced my wilful way into forbidden
fields, and only regained my path after weary wandering, brier-torn, and
none the better for my folly. Lost faces come before me which I might have
gladdened oftener. Voices sound in my ear whose tones I might have made
happier if I would. Withheld sympathy rises up before me deploring its
wasted treasure. How can any one be happy in looking back? The only
pleasure in looking forward is in hope. Yet now both grief and joy are
tempered with a softness which enfolds my fretted spirit gratefully.
"Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart gently; not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp to deaden its vibrations."
And so I am looking forward to-night to an old age more peaceful, less
turbulent, than my youth has been. I reach forward gladly, too, for life
holds much that is sweet to old age, which youth can in no wise
comprehend. Possibly this is one reason why youth is so anxious to
concentrate enjoyment. But I am tired of concentration. There is a wear
and tear about it which precludes the possibility of pleasure. I want to
take the rest of my life gently, and by redoubled tenderness repay it for
rude handling in my youth--that youth which lies very far away from me
to-night and is wrapped in a rainbow mist.
THE END
LOVE-LETTERS
OF A
WORLDLY WOMAN.
By Mrs. W. K. CLIFFORD, Author of "Aunt Anne," "Mrs. Keith's Crime," etc.
16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 25.
This volume contains three brilliant love-stories well worth reading....
The letters are original and audacious, and are full of a certain
intellectual "abandon" which is sure to charm the cultivated reader....
We trust that Mrs. W. K. Clifford will give us more fiction in this
delicately humorous, subtle, and analytic vein.--_Literary World_, Boston.
Mrs. Clifford's literary style is excellent, and the love-letters always
have their special interest.--_N.Y. Times._
There is abundant cleverness in it. The situations are presented with
skill and force, and the letters are written with great dramatic propriety
and much humor.--_St. James's Gazette_, London.
In short analytical stories of this kind Mrs. Clifford has come to take a
unique position in England. In the delicate, ingenious, forcible use of
language, to express the results of an unusual range of observation, she
stands to our literature as De Maupassant and Bourget stand to the
literature of France.--_Black and White_, London.
The study of character is so acute, the analysis of motives and conduct so
skilful, and, withal, the wit and satire so keen, that the reader does not
tire.--_Christian Intelligencer_, N.Y.
* * *
_Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York._
_The above work will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price._
UNHAPPY LOVES
OF
MEN OF GENIUS.
By THOMAS HITCHCOCK. With Twelve Portraits.
16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25.
A fascinating book. So taking are its rapidly interchanging lights and
shadows that one reads it from beginning to end without any thought of
possible intrusion.--_Observer_, N.Y.
The simple and perspicuous style in which Mr. Hitchcock tells these
stories of unhappy loves is not less admirable than the learning and the
extensive reading and investigation which have enabled him to gather the
facts presented in a manner so engaging. His volume is an important
contribution to literature, and it is of universal interest.--_N.Y. Sun._
The stories are concisely and sympathetically told, and the book presents
in small compass what, in lieu of it, must be sought through many
volumes.--_Dial_, Chicago.
A very interesting little book.... The studies are carefully and aptly
made, and add something to one's sense of personal acquaintanceship with
those men and women who were before not strangers.--_Evangelist_, N.Y.
* * *
_Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York._
_The above work will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price._
End of Project Gutenberg's The Love Affairs of an Old Maid, by Lilian Bell