A LETTER FROM JO.
My DEAR OLD FRIEND,--I am much alarmed when I realize that I am becoming
a thinking man, like your father, and that my trouble will some time
become so great that I shall disgrace myself and everyone connected with
me. Since you were here last I have done little else than think, and I
have been very lonely, for I have no companion now. I have not spoken to
Mateel since you went away, except when it was necessary, and that has
not been a frequent circumstance. This adds to my wretchedness, for I
feel contemptible that I am not able to be to all appearance what I
always was. I have tried to be, but to no purpose, so I have given it
up. I cannot say that I wish I could forget, for then I should feel that
I was the man she described in the letter. I am a shrinking, dejected
coward, which I never was before, and I think it is because I am not
treating Mateel as I should, though I solemnly assert that I cannot do
differently.
A man who mistreats a woman becomes a coward as I am, and I accept the
ignominy as my punishment. I was bold as a lion when we were happy
together, and could look any man in the face; but I cannot now, for I
think that everyone who looks at me is an accuser that I am worrying and
fretting a helpless woman, which I believe to be the meanest crime of
which a man can be guilty. I cannot but acknowledge the accusation,
though it is not intentional. I am low and despicable in spite of all I
can do, and I can think of no remedy for it.
I continue to make new discoveries which add to my wretchedness. A long
while before we were married, Mateel gave me a book full of pretty love
stories, and I valued it highly, because many of the passages were
underscored, with notes on the margin indorsing the sentiment. The
stories were very pretty, and I read them a great deal, but I have
discovered that the book was originally given to Bragg; that it was
returned when he tired of her, and that the pretty passages were marked
for him. It was given to me, no doubt, because it happened to be
convenient, and no one else wanted it. Mateel, with the candor which I
have come to dread, admitted it, though reluctantly, on being
questioned.
One of the romances to which I refer tells of a lady who had quarrelled
with her lover, and in a pique married a cold, heartless man, who had no
other good quality than that he was kind, and successful, and the story
is her reverie. After seven or eight years she accidentally meets her
old lover, and confesses that she loves him yet, and has loved him all
the while, though she is kind enough to refer to her husband as a dear,
good soul. This was particularly full of pencil marks, as though it
aptly stated her case, and I think that after she knew a separation with
Bragg was imminent, she was anxious to let him know that her future
would be something like that.
Another one tells of an eccentric bachelor who meets a pale but
strikingly beautiful girl on the street on a cold winter’s night. He
once loved a face like that, and interested himself in the girl. In
course of time it developed that the bachelor had been engaged to the
girl’s mother, and that they were separated by some sort of an
unfortunate mistake, and she married a man who was willing to support
her in her grief, but who unfortunately died, and could no longer feed
her while she mourned. Humiliated and broken, she refused to return to
her old friends, but lived with her only daughter in poverty, talking a
great deal of her lover, but not a word of the poor fellow who had been
her husband. When she finds death approaching she writes a letter to her
lover, consigning the girl to his care, and the letter of course falls
into his hands, which affects him so much that he surprised his friends
by marrying the daughter. I suppose the inference is that Mateel,
acknowledging her own weakness, desired Bragg to understand that she
would only consent to marry another man with the hope of rearing a
daughter good enough for him.
There have been a few sweet chords of music in my life (a very, very
few, and simple in construction), but while never complete in my
boyhood, I have listened to them in my lonely hours with a great deal of
pleasure. They were the whisperings of hope; of happiness which I had
never known, but now the familiar air scarcely begins until it is lost
in the yells of demons and the harsh laughter of devils. I do not know
whether I read it, or dreamed it, but there was once a deep cave said to
be haunted. The people who went there without lights, and did not speak
for a long while, heard the beginning of the most delicious symphony, as
sweet and perfect as the music of the choirs in heaven, but suddenly it
was all lost in coarse uproar and laughter, as if the Devil and his imps
were flushed with wine at a banquet, and were telling each other of the
follies of men, to laugh at them. This dreadful tumult continued until
the music was quite forgotten, and no one could remember the strain,
although they all said it was very tender and beautiful. Sometimes the
people who went there would hear neither the music nor the tumult which
always broke into it, but this always happened when the night was fine,
and the visitors noisy and in good spirits. But every dark and
threatening night, when the wind came hurrying down from the north to be
present at the destruction threatened, those who went into the cave
always heard the music, and it was notably tender and touching on such
occasions, but the devils broke into it more quickly, and were hoarser
and louder in their laughing and jeering.
Everything conspires against me now; even Mateel’s religion torments me.
I can think of nothing that cannot in some way be construed into misery.
Mateel’s hope of heaven is a hope of torment for me. She knows my
unbelief, and must be convinced that, if she is right, the years of her
happiness in the future can only be measured by the years of my
suffering, but she has no other comfort to offer than the hope that I
shall be “saved.” How natural it is to disguise fear with hope! I would
not regard it as a kindness in a man who saw me drowning to stand
peacefully on the bank, and hope I would take hold of a straw, and save
myself, but I should admire him if he jumped in, and pulled me out. Hope
is often nothing more than an excuse for incapacity and for mistakes, as
we hope, in case of an accident caused by carelessness, that nothing
serious will result, or as we hope, when we do not do our duty, that
everything will turn out fortunately anyway.
If my love for Mateel had never been interrupted, and I had her faith,
and she my doubts, I should go mad from thinking of her future. I would
make my interest in her impending fate so great that she would become
alarmed, and be rescued; or, failing in that, I would be lost with her.
I would not own a faith which would not save one I loved, and whom I
knew to be honest and pure-minded. I have no particular fears for
myself, but, knowing Mateel’s belief as I do, I am hurt at her
indifference. I am always thinking--really, I cannot help it, much as I
try--that she offers up her prayers for Bragg, and that to be reunited
with him I must be burned up, for I am certain that I could not exist
with him comfortably anywhere.
I take a kind of delight in finding out how unfortunate I am, and once I
wrung a confession from her that she thought it extremely probable that
I would be lost, but that all knowledge of it would be blotted out of
her memory, and forget in her happiness that I had ever lived. If
Mateel’s religion turns out to be true, I think it will be a part of my
punishment to be permitted to look into heaven, and see her happy,
without a care or thought of me. I don’t think it would be possible to
save such a man, but it may become necessary to properly punish my
wickedness to place Bragg by her side, in Paradise, that I may
contemplate them walking lovingly together.
The skeleton which has found its way into my closet is very noisy now. I
think some one, out of consideration for me, has been trying to chain
him up, but he has broken loose, and drags his fetters about in the most
dismal manner. Either that, or he has company, and I am honored with two
skeletons. If other people have but one, I think I shall eventually have
two, if I have not now, and be compelled to enlarge my closet. I have
occasionally courageously unlocked my skeleton, and tried to look him
out of countenance, but he is so indifferent, and I am so unhappy, that
I have never succeeded. He is the most impudent skeleton that ever took
up an abode in a man’s house against his will, and its grinning,
malicious face I cannot lock up, for it follows me about the mill at my
work, and walks before me into the dark cellar, and into the lonely
loft. Once I thought I saw his tracks in the flour dust, but I found it
was only where my unmanly tears had fallen. After I have attacked him,
he is more noisy than ever at night, and rattles about so much that I
acknowledge his power by thinking my disgrace all over, and admitting
that there is no hope.
The affairs of men are so small that I wonder they can be serious about
them. I wonder about this every time I meet a grave and thoughtful man,
and then I remember that I am grave and thoughtful. I have no doubt
that, if I were told of a case similar to my own, I should say the man
ought to dismiss it without a curse, and never think of it again, but
somehow I cannot do it, though I have tried earnestly and honestly. I
had so little peace and content as a boy, and expected so much from my
marriage, that I cannot resign myself to a life without hope and without
happiness. I suppose the people would laugh at my troubles if they knew
them, and I call their affairs trivial, so that altogether we have a
very contemptuous opinion of each other. Many of those who come to the
mill look at me curiously already, and I suppose it is being said that I
am queer, or that I am subject to fits of despondency, which is the
first symptom of a crazy man. Next to the original difficulty, I dread
most to be called queer, for I never heard it said of a man I respected.
But this will probably be added to my other troubles, for when once a
man becomes involved in trouble’s web, everything goes against him.
I am only unhappy because I expected the home I built with so much care
to be pleasant, but it is not. I expected no more than this, and I would
have been a willing slave to insure that result, but there is not the
slightest prospect of it now.
JO ERRING.