THE INVITATION.
When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband
to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter--of
pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show
her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to
behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go
anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed
of her, and she dared not think what might come of it!
But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed. Letty
was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little anxious with
herself how Tom would take it.
The first matter, however, was Letty's dress. She had no money, and
seemed afraid to ask for any. The distance between her and her husband
had been widening.
Their council of ways and means lasted a good while, including many
digressions. At last, though unwillingly, Letty accepted Mary's
proposal that a certain dress, her best indeed, though she did not say
so, which she had scarcely worn, and was not likely to miss, should be
made to fit Letty. It was a lovely black silk, the best her father had
been able to choose for her the last time he was in London. A little
pang did shoot through her heart at the thought of parting with it, but
she had too much of that father in her not to know that the greatest
honor that can be shown any _thing_, is to make it serve a _person_;
that the dearest gift of love, withheld from human necessity, is handed
over to the moth and the rust. But little idea had Letty, much as she
appreciated her kindness, what a sacrifice Mary was making for her that
she might look her own sweet self, and worthy of her renowned Tom!
When Tom came home that night, however, the look of the world and all
that is in it changed speedily for Letty, and terribly. He arrived in
great good humor--somebody had been praising his verses, and the joy of
the praise overflowed on his wife. But when, pleased as any little girl
with the prospect of a party and a new frock, she told him, with
gleeful gratitude, of the invitation and the heavenly kindness which
had rendered it possible for her to accept it, the countenance of the
great man changed. He rejected the idea of her going with him to any
gathering of his grand friends--objected most of all to her going to
Mrs. Redmain's. Alas! he had begun to allow to himself that he had
married in too great haste--and beneath him. Wherever he went, his wife
could be no credit to him, and her presence would take from him all
sense of liberty! Not choosing, however, to acknowledge either of these
objections, and not willing, besides, to appear selfish in the eyes of
the woman who had given herself to him, he was only too glad to put all
upon another, to him equally genuine ground. Controlling his irritation
for the moment, he set forth with lordly kindness the absolute
impossibility of accepting such an offer as Mary's. Could she for a
moment imagine, he said, that he would degrade himself by taking his
wife out in a dress that was not her own?
Here Letty interrupted him.
"Mary has given me the dress," she sobbed, "--for my very own."
"A second-hand dress! A dress that has been worn!" cried Tom. "How
could you dream of insulting me so? The thing is absolutely impossible.
Why, Letty, just think!--There should I be, going about as if the house
were my own, and there would be my wife in the next room, or perhaps at
my elbow, dressed in the finery of the lady's-maid of the house! It
won't bear thinking of! I declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie
here, that I feel my face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason
about such a thing--with my own wife, too!"
"It's not finery," sobbed Letty, laying hold of the one fact within her
reach; "it's a beautiful black silk."
"It matters not a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug to
cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham!--A live dishonesty! A
jackdaw in peacock's feathers!--I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of
truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act
such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a fine fib--yourself would be
but a walking fib. I have been taking too much for granted with you: I
must bring you no more novels. A volume or two of Carlyle is what _you_
want."
This was too much. To lose her novels and her new dress together, and
be threatened with nasty moral medicine--for she had never read a word
of Carlyle beyond his translation of that dream of Richter's, and
imagined him dry as a sand-pit--was bad enough, but to be so reproved
by her husband was more than she could bear. If she was a silly and
ignorant creature, she had the heart of a woman-child; and that
precious thing in the sight of God, wounded and bruised by the husband
in whom lay all her pride, went on beating laboriously for him only.
She did not blame him. Anything was better than that. The dear, simple
soul had a horror of rebuke. It would break hedges and climb stone
walls to get out of the path of judgment--ten times more eagerly if her
husband were the judge. She wept and wailed like a sick child, until at
length the hard heart of selfish Tom was touched, and he sought, after
the fashion of a foolish mother, to read the inconsolable a lesson of
wisdom. But the truer a heart, the harder it is to console with the
false. By and by, however, sleep, the truest of things, did for her
what even the blandishments of her husband could not.
When she woke in the morning, he was gone: he had thought of an
emendation in a poem that had been set up the day before, and made
haste to the office, lest it should be printed without the precious
betterment.
Mary came before noon, and found sadness where she had left joy. When
she had heard as much as Letty thought proper to tell her, she was
filled with indignation, and her first thought was to compass the
tyrant's own exclusion from the paradise whose gates he closed against
his wife. But second thoughts are sometimes best, and she saw the next
moment not only that punishment did not belong to her, but that the
weight of such would fall on Letty. The sole thing she could think of
to comfort her was, to ask her to spend the same evening with her in
her room. The proposal brightened Letty up at once: some time or other
in the course of the evening she would, she fancied, see, or at least
catch a glimpse of Tom in his glory!
The evening came, and with beating heart Letty went up the back stairs
to Mary's room. She was dressing her mistress, but did not keep her
waiting long. She had provided tea beforehand, and, when Mrs. Redmain
had gone down, the two friends had a pleasant while together. Mary took
Letty to Mrs. Redmain's room while she put away her things, and there
showed her many splendors, which, moving no envy in her simple heart,
yet made her sad, thinking of Tom. As she passed to the drawing-room,
Sepia looked in, and saw them together.
But, as the company kept arriving, Letty grew very restless. She could
not talk of anything for two minutes together, but kept creeping out of
the room and half-way down the stair, to look over the banister-rail,
and have a bird's-eye peep of a portion of the great landing, where
indeed she caught many a glimpse of beauty and state, but never a
glimpse of her Tom. Alas! she could not even imagine herself near him.
What she saw made her feel as if her idol were miles away, and she
could never draw nigh him again. How should the familiar associate of
such splendid creatures care a pin's point for his humdrum wife?
Worn out at last, and thoroughly disappointed, she wanted to go home.
It was then past midnight. Mary went with her, and saw her safe in bed
before she left her.
As she went up to her room on her return, she saw, through the door by
which the gardener entered the conservatory, Sepia standing there, and
Tom, with flushed face, talking to her eagerly.
Letty cried herself to sleep, and dreamed that Tom had disowned her
before a great company of grand ladies, who mocked her from their sight.
Tom came home while she slept, and in the morning was cross and
miserable--in part, because he had been so abominably selfish to her.
But the moment that, half frightened, half hopeful, she told him where
she was the night before, he broke into the worst anger he had ever yet
shown her. His shameful pride could not brook the idea that, where he
was a guest, his wife was entertained by one of the domestics!
"How dare you be guilty of such a disgraceful thing!" he cried.
"Oh, don't, Tom--dear Tom!" pleaded Letty in terror. "It was you I
wanted to see--not the great people, Tom! I don't care if I never see
one of them again."
"Why should you ever see one of them again, I should like to know! What
are they to you, or you to them?"
"But you know I was asked to go, Tom!"
"You're not such a fool as to fancy they cared about you! Everybody
knows they are the most heartless set of people in the world!"
"Then why do you go, Tom?" said Letty, innocently.
"That's quite another thing! A man has to cultivate connections his
wife need not know anything about. It is one of the necessities laid on
my position."
Letty supposed it all truer than it was either intelligible or
pleasant, and said no more, but let poor, self-abused, fine-fellow Tom
scold and argue and reason away till he was tired. She was not sullen,
but bewildered and worn out. He got up, and left her without a word.
Even at the risk of hurt to his dignity, of which there was no danger
from the presence of his sweet, modest little wife in the best of
company, it had been well for Tom to have allowed Letty the pleasure
within her reach; for that night Sepia's artillery played on him
ruthlessly. It may have been merely for her amusement--time, you see,
moves so slowly with such as have no necessities they must themselves
supply, and recognize no duties they must perform: without those two
main pillars of life, necessity and duty, how shall the temple stand,
when the huge, weary Samson comes tugging at it? The wonder is, there
is not a great deal more wickedness in the world. For listlessness and
boredness and nothing-to-do-ness are the best of soils for the breeding
of the worms that never stop gnawing. Anyhow, Sepia had flashed on Tom,
the tinder of Tom's heart had responded, and, any day when Sepia chose,
she might blow up a wicked as well as foolish flame; nor, if it should
suit her purpose, was Sepia one to hesitate in the use of the fire-fan.
All the way home, her eyes haunted him, and it is a more dreadful thing
than most are aware to be haunted by anything, good or bad, except the
being who is our life. And those eyes, though not good, were beautiful.
Evil, it is true, has neither part nor lot in beauty; it is absolutely
hostile to it, and will at last destroy it utterly; but the process is
a long one, so long that many imagine badness and beauty vitally
associable. Tom yielded to the haunting, and it was in part the fault
of those eyes that he used such hard words to his wife in the morning.
Wives have not seldom to suffer sorely for discomforts and wrongs in
their husbands of which they know nothing. But the thing will be set
right one day, and in a better fashion than if all the woman's-rights'
committees in the world had their will of the matter.
About this time, from the top, left-hand corner of the last page of
"The Firefly," it appeared that Twilight had given place to Night; for
the first of many verses began to show themselves, in which Twilight,
or Hesper, or Vesper, or the Evening Star, was no more once mentioned,
but only and al-ways Nox, or Hecate, or the dark Diana. _Tenebrious_
was a great word with Tom about this time. He was very fond, also, of
the word _interlunar_. I will not trouble my reader with any specimen
of the outcome of Tom's new inspiration, partly for this reason, that
the verses not unfrequently came so near being good, nay, sometimes
were really so good, that I do not choose to set them down where they
would be treated with a mockery they do not in themselves deserve. He
did not direct his wife's attention to them, nor did he compose them at
home or at the office. Mostly he wrote them between acts at the
theatre, or in any public place where something in which he was not
interested was going on.
Of all that read them, and here was a Nemesis awful in justice, there
was not one less moved by them than she who had inspired them. She saw
in them, it is true, a reflex of her own power--and that pleased, but
it did not move her. She took the devotion and pocketed it, as a greedy
boy might an orange or bull's-eye. The verses in which Tom delighted
were but the merest noise in the ears of the lady to whom of all he
would have had them acceptable. One momentary revelation as to how she
regarded them would have been enough to release him from his foolish
enthrallment. Indignation, chagrin, and mortification would have soon
been the death of such poor love as Tom's.
Mary and Sepia were on terms of politeness--of readiness to help on the
one side, and condescension upon the other. Sepia would have
condescended to the Mother Mary. The pure human was an idea beyond her,
as beyond most people. They have not enough _religion_ toward God to
know there is such a thing as religion toward their neighbor. But Sepia
never made an enemy-if she could help it. She could not afford the
luxury of hating--openly, at least. But I imagine she would have hated
Mary heartily could she have seen the way she regarded her--the look of
pitiful love, of compassionate and waiting helpfulness which her soul
would now and then cast upon her. Of all things she would have resented
pity; and she took Mary's readiness to help for servility--and
naturally, seeing in herself willingness came from nothing else, though
she called it prudence and necessity, and knew no shame because of it.
Her children justify the heavenly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom
justifies her children. Mary could not but feel how Sepia regarded her
service, but service, to be true, must be divine, that is, to the just
and the unjust, like the sun and the rain.
Between Sepia and Mr. Redmain continued a distance too great for either
difference or misunderstanding. They met with a cold good morning, and
parted without any good night. Their few words were polite, and their
demeanor was civil. At the breakfast-table, Sepia would silently pass
things to Mr. Redmain; Mr. Redmain would thank her, but never trouble
himself to do as much for her. His attentions, indeed, were seldom
wasted at home; but he was not often rude to anybody save his wife and
his man, except when he was ill.
It was a long time before he began to feel any interest in Mary. He
knew nothing of her save as a nice-looking maid his wife had
got--rather a prim-looking puss, he would have said, had he had
occasion to describe her. What Mary knew of him was merely the
reflection of him in the mind of his wife; but, the first time she saw
him, she felt she would rather not have to speak to him.