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 hall. 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.