THE BOTTOMLESS POOL.
She came to herself in the gray dawn. She was cold as ice--cold to the
very heart, but she did not feel the cold: there was nothing in her to
compare it against; her very being was frozen. The man who had given her
life had thrown her from him. He cared less for her than for the
tortured dog. She was an outcast, defiled and miserable. Alas! alas!
this was what came of speaking the truth--of making confession! The
cruel scripture had wrought its own fulfillment, made a mock of her, and
ruined her husband's peace. She knew poor Paul would never be himself
again! She had carried the snake so long harmless in her bosom only to
let it at last creep from her lips into her husband's ear, sting the
vital core of her universe, and blast it forever! How foolish she had
been!--What was left her to do? What would her husband have her to do?
Oh misery! he cared no more what she did or did not do. She was
alone--utterly alone! But she need not live.
Dimly, vaguely, the vapor of such thoughts as these passed through her
despairing soul, as she lifted herself from the floor and tottered back
to her room. Yet even then, in the very midst of her freezing misery,
there was, although she had not yet begun to recognize it, a nascent
comfort in that she had spoken and confessed. She would not really have
taken back her confession. And although the torture was greater, yet was
it more endurable than that she had been suffering before. She had told
him who had a right to know.--But, alas! what a deception was that dream
of the trumpet and the voice! A poor trick to entrap a helpless sinner!
Slowly, with benumbed fingers and trembling hands, she dressed herself:
that bed she would lie in no more, for she had wronged her husband.
Whether before or after he was her husband, mattered nothing. To have
ever called him husband was the wrong. She had seemed that she was not,
else he would never have loved or sought her; she had outraged his
dignity, defiled him; he had cast her off, and she could not, would not
blame him. Happily for her endurance of her misery, she did not turn
upon her idol and cast him from his pedestal; she did not fix her gaze
upon his failure instead of her own; she did not espy the contemptible
in his conduct, and revolt from her allegiance.
But was such a man then altogether the ideal of a woman's soul? Was he a
fit champion of humanity who would aid only within the limits of his
pride? who, when a despairing creature cried in soul-agony for help,
thought first and only of his own honor? The notion men call their honor
is the shadow of righteousness, the shape that is where the light is
not, the devil that dresses as nearly in angel-fashion as he can, but is
none the less for that a sneak and a coward.
She put on her cloak and bonnet: the house was his, not hers. He and she
had never been one: she must go and meet her fate. There was one power,
at least, the key to the great door of liberty, which the weakest as
well as the strongest possessed: she could die. Ah, how welcome would
Death be now! Did he ever know or heed the right time to come, without
being sent for--without being compelled? In the meantime her only
anxiety was to get out of the house: away from Paul she would understand
more precisely what she had to do. With the feeling of his angry
presence, she could not think. Yet how she loved him--strong in his
virtue and indignation! She had not yet begun to pity herself, or to
allow to her heart that he was hard upon her.
She was leaving the room when a glitter on her hand caught her eye: the
old diamond disk, which he had bought of her in her trouble, and
restored to her on her wedding-day, was answering the herald of the
sunrise. She drew it off: he must have it again. With it she drew off
also her wedding-ring. Together she laid them on the dressing table,
turned again, and with noiseless foot and desert heart went through the
house, opened the door, and stole into the street. A thin mist was
waiting for her. A lean cat, gray as the mist, stood on the steps of the
door opposite. No other living thing was to be seen. The air was chill.
The autumn rains were at hand. But her heart was the only desolation.
Already she knew where she was going. In the street she turned to the
left.
Shortly before, she had gone with Dorothy, for the first time, to see
the Old House, and there had had rather a narrow escape. Walking down
the garden they came to the pond or small lake, so well known to the
children of Glaston as bottomless. Two stone steps led from the end of
the principal walk down to the water, which was, at the time, nearly
level with the top of the second. On the upper step Juliet was standing,
not without fear, gazing into the gulf, which was yet far deeper than
she imagined, when, without the smallest preindication, the lower step
suddenly sank. Juliet sprung back to the walk, but turned instantly to
look again. She saw the stone sinking, and her eyes opened wider and
wider, as it swelled and thinned to a great, dull, wavering mass, grew
dimmer and dimmer, then melted away and vanished utterly. With "stricken
look," and fright-filled eyes, she turned to Dorothy, who was a little
behind her, and said,
"How will you be able to sleep at night? I should be always fancying
myself sliding down into it through the darkness."
To this place of terror she was now on the road. When consciousness
returned to her as she lay on the floor of her husband's dressing-room,
it brought with it first the awful pool and the sinking stone. She
seemed to stand watching it sink, lazily settling with a swing this way
and a sway that, into the bosom of the earth, down and down, and still
down. Nor did the vision leave her as she came more to herself. Even
when her mental eyes were at length quite open to the far more frightful
verities of her condition, half of her consciousness was still watching
the ever sinking stone; until at last she seemed to understand that it
was showing her a door out of her misery, one easy to open.
She went the same way into the park that Dorothy had then taken
her--through a little door of privilege which she had shown her how to
open, and not by the lodge. The light was growing fast, but the sun was
not yet up. With feeble steps but feverous haste she hurried over the
grass. Her feet were wet through her thin shoes. Her dress was fringed
with dew. But there was no need for taking care of herself now; she felt
herself already beyond the reach of sickness. The still pond would soon
wash off the dew.
Suddenly, with a tremor of waking hope, came the thought that, when she
was gone from his sight, the heart of her husband would perhaps turn
again toward her a little. For would he not then be avenged? would not
his justice be satisfied? She had been well drilled in the theological
lie, that punishment is the satisfaction of justice.
"Oh, now I thank you, Paul!" she said, as she hastened along. "You
taught me the darkness, and made me brave to seek its refuge. Think of
me sometimes, Paul. I will come back to you if I can--but no, there is
no coming back, no greeting more, no shadows even to mingle their loves,
for in a dream there is but one that dreams. I shall be the one that
does not dream. There is nothing where I am going--not even the
darkness--nothing but nothing. Ah, would I were in it now! Let me make
haste. All will be one, for all will be none when I am there. Make you
haste too, and come into the darkness, Paul. It is soothing and soft and
cool. It will wash away the sin of the girl and leave you a----nothing."
While she was hurrying toward the awful pool, her husband sat in his
study, sunk in a cold fury of conscious disgrace--not because of his
cruelty, not because he had cast a woman into hell--but because his
honor, his self-satisfaction in his own fate, was thrown to the worms.
Did he fail thus in consequence of having rejected the common belief?
No; something far above the _common_ belief it must be, that would have
enabled him to act otherwise. But had he _known_ the Man of the gospel,
he could not have left her. He would have taken her to his sorrowful
bosom, wept with her, forgotten himself in pitiful grief over the spot
upon her whiteness; he would have washed her clean with love and
husband-power. He would have welcomed his shame as his hold of her
burden, whereby to lift it, with all its misery and loss, from her heart
forever. Had Faber done so as he was, he would have come close up to the
gate of the kingdom of Heaven, for he would have been like-minded with
Him who sought not His own. His honor, forsooth! Pride is a mighty
honor! His pride was great indeed, but it was not grand! Nothing
reflected, nothing whose object is self, has in it the poorest element
of grandeur. Our selves are ours that we may lay them on the altar of
love. Lying there, bound and bleeding and burning if need be, they are
grand indeed--for they are in their noble place, and rejoicing in their
fate. But this man was miserable, because, the possessor of a priceless
jewel, he had found it was not such as would pass for flawless in the
judgment of men--judges themselves unjust, whose very hearts were full
of bribes. He sat there an injured husband, a wronged, woman-cheated,
mocked man--he in whose eyes even a smutch on her face would have
lowered a woman--who would not have listened to an angel with a broken
wing-feather!
Let me not be supposed to make a little of Juliet's loss! What that
amounted to, let Juliet feel!--let any woman say, who loves a man, and
would be what that man thinks her! But I read, and think I understand,
the words of the perfect Purity: "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin
no more."