I am cursed with an inability to speak when I am most deeply moved,
either by anger or tenderness. This misfortune has wrecked my life.
On the verge of old age, the sorrows and the mistakes of my early
life fill my thoughts so completely that I see but one face, hear
but one voice; yet when she was living--when _she_ could see and
hear, my tongue was silent and she never knew. Aline! my Aline!
I married her when I was thirty-five and she eighteen. All the
world knows this; but what it does not know is that I loved
her--toy, plaything that she was--a body without a mind--(or, so I
considered her)--while she had but followed the wishes of her
relatives in giving her sweet youth to a cold and reticent man who
might love, indeed, but who had no power to tell that love, or even
to show it in the ways which women like, and which she liked, as I
found out when it was too late.
I could not help but love her. It was ingrained within me; a part
of the curse of my life to love this gentle, thoughtless, alluring
thing to which I had given my name. She had a smile--it did not
come often--which tore at my heart-strings as it welled up, just
stirring the dimples in her cheeks, and died away again in a
strange and moving sweetness. Though I reckoned her at her worth;
knew that her charm was all physical; that she neither did nor
could understand a passion like mine, much less return it, it was
none the less irresistible, and I have known myself to stand before
a certain book-shelf in the turn of the stairway for many minutes
together, because I knew that she would soon be coming down, and
that, when she did, some ribbon from her gown would flutter by me,
and I should feel the soft contact and go away happy to my books.
Yet, if she stopped to look back at me, I could only return her
look with one she doubtless called harsh, for she had not eyes to
see below the surface.
I tell you all this, lest you may not understand. She was not your
mother and you may begrudge me the affection I felt for her; if so,
thrust these leaves into the fire and seek not the explanation of
what has surprised you; for there is no word written here which
does not find its meaning in the intense love I bore for her, my
young girl-wife, and the tragedy which this love has brought into
my life. She was slight in body, slight in mind and of slight
feeling. I first discovered this last on the day I put my mother's
ring on her finger. She laughed as I fitted it close and kissed the
little hand. Not from embarrassment or childish impulse; I could
have understood that; but indifferently, like one who did not know
and never could. Yet I married her, and for six months lived in a
fool's paradise. Then came that ball. It was held near here, very
near; at one of our neighbor's, in fact. I remember that we walked,
and that, coming to the driveway, I lifted her and carried her
across. Not with a smile--do not think it. More likely with a
frown, though my heart was warm and happy; for when I set her down,
she shook herself, and I thought she did it to hide a shudder, and
then I could not have spoken a word had my life depended on it.
I little knew what lay back of that shudder. Even after I had seen
her dance with him, not only once, but twice, I never dreamed that
her thoughts, light though they were, were not all with me. It took
that morsel of paper and the plain words it contained to satisfy me
of this, and then--But passion is making me incoherent. What do you
know of that scrap of paper, hidden from the whole world from the
moment I first read it till this hour of full confession? It
fluttered from some one's hand during the dance. I did not see
whose. I only saw it after it had fallen at my feet, and as it lay
there open I naturally read the words. They were written by a man
to a woman, urging flight and setting the hour and place for
meeting. I was conscious of shame in reading it, and let these last
details escape me. As I put it in my pocket I remember thinking,
"Some poor devil made miserable!" for there had been hint in it of
the husband. But I had no thought--I swear it before God--of who
that husband was till I beheld her flit back through the open
doorway, with terror in her mien and searching eyes fixed on the
floor. Then hell opened before me, and I saw my happiness go down
into gulfs I had never before sounded, even in imagination.
But even at that evil hour my countenance scarcely changed--I was
opposite a mirror, and I caught a glimpse of myself as I moved. But
there must have been some change in my voice--for when I addressed
her, she started and turned her face upon me with a wild and
pathetic look which knocked so at my heart that I wished I had
never read those words, and so could return her the paper with no
misgiving as to its contents. But having read it, I could not do
this; so, beyond a petty greeting, I said nothing and let the
moment pass, and she with it; for couples were dancing and she was
soon again in the whirl. I am not a dancing man myself, and I had
leisure to think and madden myself with contemplation of my wrecked
life and questions as to what I should do to her and to him, and to
the world where such things could happen. I had forgotten the
details of time and place, or rather had put them out of my mind,
and I would not look at the words again--could not. But as the
minutes went by, the remembrance returned, startling and
convincing, that the hour was two and the place--our old pavilion.
I walked about after that like a man in whose breast the sources of
life are frozen. I chatted--I who never chatted--with women, and
with men. I even smiled--once. That was when my little white-faced
wife asked me if it were not time to go home. Even a man under
torture might find strength to smile if the inquisitor should ask
if he were not ready to be released.
And we went home.
I did not carry her this time across the driveway; but when we
parted in the library, where I always spent an hour before
retiring, I picked out a lily from a vase of flowers standing on my
desk and held it out to her. She stared at it for a moment, quite
as white as the lily, then she slowly put out her hand and took it.
I felt no mercy after that, and bade her good-night with the remark
that I should have to write far into the morning, and that she need
not worry over my light, which I should not probably put out till
she was half through with her night's rest.
For answer, she dropped the lily. I found it next morning lying
withered and brown in the hall-way.
That light did burn far into the morning; but I was not there to
trim it. Before the fatal hour had struck, I had left the house and
made my way to the pavilion. As I crossed the sward I saw the gleam
of a lantern at the masthead of a small boat riding near our own
landing-place, and I understood where he was at this hour, and by
what route he hoped to take my darling. "A route she will never
travel," thought I, striving to keep out of my mind and conscience
the vision of another route, another travel, which that sweet young
body might take if my mood held and my purpose strengthened.
There was no moon that night, and the copse in which our pavilion
stands was like a blot against the starless heavens. As I drew near
it, my dog, the invariable companion of my walks, lifted a short,
sharp bark from the stables. But I knew whose hand had fastened
him, and I went on without giving him a thought. At the door of the
pavilion I stopped. All was dark within as without, and the silence
was something to overwhelm the heart. She was not there then, nor
was he. But he would be coming soon, and up or down between the
double hedge-rows.
I went to meet him. It was a small detail, but possibly a necessary
one. In her eyes he was probably handsome and gifted with all that
I openly lacked. But he was shallow and small for a man like me to
be concerned about. I laughed inwardly and with very conceivable
scorn as I heard the faint fall of his footsteps in the darkness.
It was nearly two and he meant to be prompt.
Our coming together in that narrow path was very much what I
expected it to be. I had put out my arms and touched the hedge on
either side, so that he could not escape me. When I heard him
drawing close, I found the voice I had not had for her, and
observed very quietly and with the cold politeness of a messenger:
"My wife finds herself indisposed since the ball, and begs to be
excused from joining you in the pleasant sail you proposed to her."
That, and no more; except that when he started and almost fell into
my arms, I found strength to add:
"The wind blows fresh to-night; you will have no difficulty in
leaving this shore. The difficulty will be to return."
I had no heart to kill him; he was young and he was frightened. I
heard the sob in his throat as I dropped my arm and he went flying
down to the river.