ONCE more Jessie found herself alone in the little chamber where her
gentle girlish life, had strengthened towards womanhood. Many times
had she visited this chamber since her marriage, going to it as to
some pilgrim-shrine, but never with the feelings that now crowded
upon her heart. She had returned as a dove, to the ark from the wild
waste of waters, wing-weary, faint, frightened--fluttering into this
holy place, conscious of safety. She was not to go out again.
Blessed thought! How it warmed the life-blood in her heart, and sent
the currents in more genial streams through every vein.
But alas! memory could not die. Lethe was only a fable of the olden
times. A place of safety is not always a place of freedom from pain.
It could not be so in this instance. Yet, for a time, like the
exhausted prisoner borne back from torture to his cell, the crushed
members reposed in delicious insensibility. The hard pallet was a
heaven of ease to the iron rack on which the quivering flesh had
been torn, and the joints wrenched, until nature cried out in agony.
Dear little room! Though its walls were narrow, and its furniture
simple even to meagreness, it was a palace in her regard to the
luxurious chambers she had left. It was all her own. She need not
veil her heart there. No semblances were required. No intrusion
feared. It seemed to her, for a time, as if she had been so lifted
out of the world, as to be no longer a part of it. The hum and shock
of men were far below her. She had neither part nor lot in common
humanity.
But this could not last. She had formed relations with that world
not to be cast off lightly. She was a wife, violently separated from
her husband; and setting at defiance the laws which had bound them
together.
On the third day Mrs. Dexter received a communication from her
husband. It was imperative, reading thus:
"MRS. DEXTER--I have twice sought to gain an interview, and twice
been repelled with insult. I now write to ask when and where you
will see me. We must meet, Jessie. This rash step, I fear, is going
to involve consequences far more disastrous than you have imagined.
It is no light thing for a woman to throw herself beyond the pale of
her husband's protection.--Something is owed to the world--something
to reputation--something to your good name; and much to your
husband. I may have been hasty, but I was sincere. There are some
things that looked wrong; _they look wrong still_, and will _always
look wrong_ if your present attitude is maintained. I wish to see
you, that we may, together, review these unhappy questions, and out
of a tangled skein bring even threads, if possible. Let me hear from
you immediately.
"YOUR HUSBAND."
Twice Mrs. Dexter read this letter, hurriedly at first, but very
slowly the second time; weighing each word and sentence carefully.
She then laid it aside, and almost crouching down in her chair, fell
into such deep thought that she seemed more like one sleeping than
awake. She did not attempt an answer until the next day. Then she
penned the following:
"To LEON DEXTER--In leaving your house and your protection, I was
not governed by caprice or impulse. For some time I have seen that,
sooner or later, it must come to this; that the cord uniting us was
too severely strained, and must snap. I did not suppose the time so
near at hand--that you would drag upon it now with such a sudden
force. But the deed is done, and we are apart forever. I cannot live
with you again--your presence would suffocate me. There was a mutual
wrong in our marriage; but I was most to blame; for I knew that I
did not and never could love you as I believed a husband should be
loved. But you had extorted from me a promise of marriage, and I
believed it to be my duty to fulfill that promise. Young,
inexperienced, blind to the future, I took up the burdens you laid
at my feet, and believed myself strong enough to carry them all the
days of my life. It was a fatal error. How painfully I have
struggled on--how prayerfully, how patiently, how self-denyingly,
you can never know. Yet, without avail. I have fallen by the way,
and there is not strength enough in me to lift the burdens again. I
know this, and One besides; and I am content to rest the case with
Him. The world will blame--the church censure--the law condemn. Let
it be so. All that is light to the sufferings I have endured, and
from which I have fled.
"I cannot see you, Mr. Dexter--_I will not see you_. Our ways in
this world have parted, and forever. The act was not mine, but
yours. You flung me off with a force that overcame all scruple--all
question of right--all effort to cling to you as my husband. I was
trying, in my feeble way--for not much power remained--to be a
dutiful wife, when you extinguished all hope of success by a charge
as false as the evil spirit who whispered in your too willing ears a
suspicion of infidelity against one who had never permitted a
thought of wrong towards her husband to enter even the outermost
portal of her mind. I had not seen the person to whom you allude
since my accidental meeting with him at Newport, so basely construed
into design; and his passing my window at the moment you returned
home, was as unexpected to me as to you.
"I had hoped that my previous solemn assurances were sufficient to
give you confidence in my integrity. But this was an error. You had
no faith in me; and assailed me with violence when my thoughts were
as true to honor as ever were yours. Did you imagine that I could
lie passive at your feet, so trampled down and degraded? No, sir!
God gave me a higher consciousness--a purer spirit--a nobler
individuality! You should have mated one of a different stamp from
me!
"And yet I pity you, Leon Dexter! This web of trouble, which your
own hands have woven around your life, will fetter and gall you at
every step in your future journey. I have not left you in a spirit
of retaliation; but simply because the natural strain of repulsion
was stronger than all the attractive forces that held us together. I
only obeyed a law against which weak nature strove in vain. Were it
in my power, I would make all your future bright with the warmest
sunshine. But over your future I have no control--yet, sadly enough,
are our destinies linked, and the existence of each will be a thorn
in the other's heart.
"I have not much strength left. The contest has nearly extinguished
my life. This is the last struggle I shall have with you. My first
weak thought was to return your letter without a word in reply. But
that would have been a wrong to both; and so I have made you this
communication, and you must regard it as final. Farewell, unhappy
Leon Dexter! I would have saved you from this calamity, but you
would not let me! May He who has permitted you thus to drag down the
temple of domestic happiness, and bury yourself amid the ruins, give
you, in this direful calamity, a higher than human power of
endurance. May the fierce flames of this great ordeal, find gold in
your character beyond the reach of fire. Farewell, forever! and may
God bless and keep you! The prayer is from a heart yet free from
guile, and the lips that breathe it upward are as pure as when you
laid upon them the marriage kiss! God keep them as guileless and as
pure! Amen!
"JESSIE."
Dexter accepted the decision of his wife as final. What else was
left for him? He would have been the dullest of men not to have seen
the spirit of this answer, shining everywhere through the letter.
Something more than feebly dawned the conviction in his mind, that
he had foully wronged his wife, and that the fearful calamity which
had overtaken him in the morning of his days, was of his own
creating. He did not again attempt to see her; made no further
remonstrance; offered no kind of annoyance. A profound respect for
the suffering woman who had abandoned him, took the place of
indignation against her. In silence he sat down amid his crushed
hopes and broken idols, and waited for light to guide him and
strength to walk onward. Like thousands of other men, he had
discovered that a human soul was not a plaything, nor a piece of
machinery to wind up and set in motion at will; and like thousands
of other men, he had made this discovery too late.