How One Woman Kept Her Husband
WHY my sister married John Gray, I never could understand. I was twenty-two and she was eighteen when the marriage took place. They had known each other just one year. He had been passionately in love with her from the first day of their meeting. She had come more slowly to loving him: but love him she did, with a love of such depth and fervor as are rarely seen. He was her equal in nothing except position and wealth. He had a singular mixture of faults of opposite temperaments. He had the reticent, dreamy, procrastinating inertia of the bilious melancholic man, side by side with the impressionable sensuousness, the sensitiveness and sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd, vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness. She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity, so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of religion than to its obligations. My sister would have gone to the stake rather than tell a lie. He would tell a lie unhesitatingly, rather than give anybody pain. My sister lived earnestly, fully, actively, in each moment of the present. It never seemed quite clear whether he were thinking of to-day, yesterday, or to-morrow. She was upright because she could not help it. He was upright,—when he was upright,—because of custom, taste, and the fitness of things. What fatal discrepancies! what hopeless lack of real moral strength, enduring purpose, or principle in such a nature as John Gray's! When I said these things to my sister, she answered always, with a quiet smile, "I love him." She neither admitted nor denied my accusations. The strongest expression she ever used, the one which came nearest to being an indignant repelling of what I had said, was one day, when I exclaimed:—
"Ellen, I would die before I'd risk my happiness in the keeping of such a man."
"My happiness is already in his keeping," said she in a steady voice, "and I believe his is in mine. He is to be my husband and not yours, dear; you do not know him as I do. You do not understand him."
But it is not to give an analysis of her character or of his, nor to give a narrative of their family history, that I write this tale. It is only one episode of their life that I shall try to reproduce here, and I do it because I believe that its lesson is of priceless worth to women.
Ellen had been married fourteen years, and was the mother of five children, when my story begins. The years had gone in the main peacefully and pleasantly. The children, three girls and two boys, were fair and strong. Their life had been a very quiet one, for our village was far removed from excitements of all kinds. It was one of the suburban villages of , and most of the families living there were the families of merchants or lawyers doing business in the town, going in early in the morning, and returning late at night. There is usually in such communities a strange lack of social intercourse; whether it be that the daily departure and return of the head of the family keeps up a perpetual succession of small crises of interest to the exclusion of others, or that the night finds all the fathers and brothers too tired to enjoy anything but slippers and cigars, I know not; but certain it is that all such suburban villages are unspeakably dull and lifeless. There is barely feeling enough of good neighborhood to keep up the ordinary interchange of the commonest civilities.
Except for long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the brightest points in John Gray's character and life.
Such monotony was not good for either of them. He grew more and more dreamy and inert. She insensibly but continually narrowed and hardened, and, without dreaming of such a thing, really came to be less and less a part of her husband's inner life. Faithful, busy, absorbed herself in the cares of each day, she never observed that he was living more and more in his children and his reveries, and withdrawing more and more from her. She did not need constant play and interchange of sentiment as he did. Affectionate, loyal, devoted as she was, there was a side of husband's nature which she did not see nor satisfy, perhaps, never could. But neither of them knew it.
At this time Mr. Gray was offered a position of importance in the city, and it became necessary for them to move there to live. How I rejoiced in the change. How bitterly I regretted it before two years had passed.
Their city home was a beautiful one, and their connections and associations were such as to surround them at once with the most desirable companionships. At first it was hard for Ellen to readjust her system of living and to accustom herself to the demands of even a moderately social life. But she was by nature very fond of all such pleasures, and her house soon became one of the pleasantest centres, in a quiet way, of the comparatively quiet city. John Gray expanded and brightened in the new atmosphere; he had always been a man of influence among men. All his friends,—even his acquaintances,—loved him, and asked his advice. It was a strange thing that a man so inert and procrastinating in his own affairs, should be so shrewd and practical and influential in the affairs of others, or in public affairs. This, however, was no stranger than many other puzzling incongruities in John Gray's character. Since his college days he had never mingled at all in general society until this winter, after their removal to town; and it was with delight that I watched his enjoyment of people, and their evident liking and admiration for him. His manners were singularly simple and direct; his face, which was not wholly pleasing in repose, was superbly handsome when animated in conversation; its inscrutable reticence which baffled the keenest observation when he was silent, all disappeared and melted in the glow of cordial good-fellowship which lighted every feature when he talked. I grew very proud of my brother as I watched him in his new sphere and surroundings; and I also enjoyed most keenly seeing Ellen in a wider and more appreciative circle. I spent a large part of the first winter in their house, and shared all their social pleasures, and looked forward to ever increasing delight, as my nieces should grow old enough to enter into society.
Early in the spring I went to the West and passed the entire summer with relatives; I heard from my sister every week; her letters were always cheerful and natural, and I returned to her in the autumn, full of anticipations of another gay and pleasant winter.
They met me in New York, and I remembered afterwards, though in the excitement of the moment I gave it no second thought, that when John Gray's eyes first met mine, there was in them a singular and indefinable expression, which roused in me an instant sense of distrust and antagonism. He had never thoroughly liked me. He had always had an undercurrent of fear of me. He knew I thought him weak: he felt that I had never put full confidence in him. That I really and truly loved him was small offset for this. Would it not be so to all of us?
This part of my story is best told in few words. I had not been at home one week before I found that rumor had been for some months coupling John Gray's name with the name of Mrs. Emma Long, a widow who had but just returned to , after twelve years of married life in Cuba. John had known her in her girlhood, but there had never been any intimacy or even friendship between them. My sister, however, had known her well, had corresponded with her during all her life at the South, and had invited her to her house immediately upon her return to . Emma Long was a singularly fascinating woman. Plain and sharp and self-asserting at twenty-two, she had become at thirty-five magnetic and winning, full of tact, and almost beautiful. We see such surprising developments continually: it seems as if nature did her best to give every woman one period of triumph and conquest; perhaps only they know its full sweetness to whom it comes late. In early youth it is accepted unthinkingly, as is the sunshine,—enjoyed without deliberation, and only weighed at its fullness when it is over. But a woman who begins at thirty to feel for the first time what it is to have power over men, must be more or less than woman not to find the knowledge and the consciousness dangerously sweet.
I never knew—I do not know to-day, whether Emma Long could be justly called a coquette. That she keenly enjoyed the admiration of men, there was no doubt. Whether she ever were conscious of even a possible harm to them from their relation to her, there was always doubt, even in the minds of her bitterest enemies. I myself have never doubted that in the affair between her and John Gray she was the one who suffered most; she was the one who had a true, deep sentiment, and not only never meant a wrong, but would have shrunk, for his sake, if not for her own, from the dangers which she did not foresee, but which were inevitable in their intimacy. I think that her whole life afterward proved this. I think that even my sister believed it.
Mrs. Long had spent six weeks in my sister's house, and had then established herself in a very beautiful furnished house on the same street. Almost every day Mrs. Long's carriage was at my sister's door, to take my sister or the children to drive. Almost every evening Mrs. Long came with the easy familiarity of an habituated guest in the house, to sit in my sister's parlor, or sent with the easy familiarity of an old friend for my sister and her husband to come to her, or to go with her to the theatre or to the opera.
What could be more natural?—what could be more delightful, had the relation been one which centred around my sister instead of around my sister's husband? What could be done, what offense could be taken, what obstacle interposed, so long as the relation appeared to be one which included the whole family? Yet no human being could see John Gray five minutes in Emma Long's presence without observing that his eyes, his words, his consciousness were hers. And no one could observe her in his presence without seeing that she was kindled, stimulated, as she was in no other companionship.
All this the city had been seeing and gossiping over for four months. All this, with weary detail, was poured into my ears by kind friends.
My sister said no word. For the first time in my life there was a barrier between us I dared not pass. Her every allusion to Mrs. Long was in the kindest and most unembarrassed manner. She fell heartily and graciously into every plan which brought them together: she not only did this, she also fully reciprocated all entertainments and invitations; it was as often by Ellen's arrangement as by Mrs. Long's that an evening or a day was spent by the two families together. Her manner to Mrs. Long was absolutely unaltered. Her manner to John was absolutely unaltered. When during an entire evening he sat almost motionless and often quite speechless, listening to Mrs. Long's conversation with others, Ellen's face never changed. She could not have seemed more unconscious if she had been blind. There were many bonds of sympathy between John Gray and Emma Long, which had never existed between him and his wife. They were both passionately fond of art, and had studied it. Ellen's taste was undeveloped, and her instinctive likings those of a child. But she listened with apparent satisfaction and pleasure to long hours of conversation, about statues, pictures, principles of art, of which she was as unable to speak as one of her own babies would have been. Mrs. Long was also a woman who understood affairs; and one of her great charms to men of mind was the clear, logical, and yet picturesque and piquant way in which she talked of men and events. Ellen listened and laughed as heartily as any member of the circle at her repartee, her brilliant characterization, her off-hand description.
To John Gray all this was a new revelation. He had never known this sort of woman. That a woman could be clever as men are clever, and also be graceful, adorned, and tender with womanliness, he had not supposed.
Ah, poor Emma Long! not all my loyalty to my sister ever quite stifled in my heart the question whether there was not in Mrs. Long's nature something which John Gray really needed—something which Ellen, affectionate, wise, upright, womanly woman as she was, could never give to any man.
The winter wore on. Idle and malicious tongues grew busier and busier. Nothing except the constant presence of my sister wherever her husband and Mrs. Long were seen together, prevented the scandal from taking the most offensive shape. But Ellen was so wise, so watchful, that not even the most malignant gossip-monger, could point to anything like a clandestine intercourse between the two.
In fact, they met so constantly either in Mrs. Long's house or my sister's, that there was small opportunity for them to meet elsewhere. I alone knew that on many occasions when Mrs. Long was spending the evening at our house, Ellen availed herself of one excuse and another to leave them alone for a great part of the time. But she did this so naturally, that is, with such perfect art, that not until long afterward did I know that it had been intentional. This was one great reason of my silence during all these months. In her apparent ignorance and unsuspiciousness of the whole thing, she seemed so gay, so happy, so sweet and loving, how could I give her a pain? And if she did not see it now, she might never see it. It could never surely become any more apparent. No man could give, so far as simple manner was concerned, more unmistakable proof of being absorbed in passionate love for a woman, than John Gray gave in Emma Long's presence. I began to do Ellen injustice in my thoughts. I said, "After all, she has not much heart; no woman who loved a man passionately could look on unmoved and see him so absorbed in another."
How little I knew! Towards spring Ellen suddenly began to look ill. She lost color and strength, and a slight cough which she had had all winter became very severe. Her husband was alarmed. We all were distressed. Our old family physician, Dr. Willis, changed color when he felt Ellen's pulse, and said, involuntarily,—
"My dear child, how long have you had such fever as this?"
Ellen changed color too, under his steady look, and replied,—
"I think, doctor, I have had a little fever for some weeks. I have not felt really well since the autumn, and I have been meaning for some time to have a long consultation with you. But we will not have it now," she added playfully, "I have a great deal to tell you which these good people are not to hear. We will talk it over some other time," and she looked at him so meaningly that he understood the subject must be dropped.
That night she told me that she wished me to propose to John to go over with me and spend the evening at Mrs. Long's; that she had sent for Dr. Willis, and she wished to have a long talk with him without John's knowing it.
"Dear," said I hastily, "I will not go to Mrs. Long's with John. I hate Mrs. Long."
"Why, Sally, what do you mean! I never heard you so unjust. Emma is one of the very sweetest women I ever saw in my life. How can you say such a thing! Everybody loves and admires her. Don't go if you feel so. I never dreamed that you disliked her. But I thought John would be less likely to suspect me of any desire to have him away, if you proposed going there; and I must have him out of the house. I cannot talk with the doctor if he is under the roof." She said these last words with an excited emphasis so unlike her usual manner, that it frightened me. But I thought only of her physical state; I feared that she suspected the existence of some terrible disease.
I went with John to Mrs. Long's almost immediately after tea. He accepted the proposal with unconcealed delight; and I wondered if Ellen observed the very nonchalant way in which he replied when she said she did not feel well enough to go. He already liked better to see Mrs. Long without his wife's presence, cordial and unembarrassed as her manner always was. His secret consciousness was always disturbed by it.
When we reached Mrs. Long's house, we learned that she had gone out to dinner. John's face became black with the sudden disappointment, and quite forgetting himself, he exclaimed: "Why, what does that mean? She did not tell me she was going."
The servant stared, but made no reply. I was confused and indignant; but John went on: "We will come in and wait. I am sure it is some very informal dinner, and Mrs. Long will soon be at home."
I made no remonstrance, knowing that it might annoy and disturb Ellen to have us return. John threw himself into a chair in front of the fire, and looked moodily into the coals, making no attempt at conversation. I took up a book. Very soon John rose, sauntered abstractedly about the room, took up Mrs. Long's work-basket, and examined every article in it, and at last sat down before her little writing-desk, which stood open. Presently I saw that he was writing. More than an hour passed. I pretended to read; but I watched my brother-in-law's face. I could not mistake its language. Suddenly there came a low cry of delight from the door, "Why, John!"
Mrs. Long had entered the house by a side door, and having met no servant before reaching the drawing-room, was unprepared for finding any one there. From the door she could see John, but could not see me, except in the long mirror, to which she did not raise her eyes, but in which I saw her swift movement, her outstretched hands, her look of unspeakable gladness. In less than a second, however, she had seen me, and with no perceptible change of manner had come rapidly towards me, holding out her left hand familiarly to him, as she passed him. Emma Long was not a hypocrite at heart, but she had an almost superhuman power of acting. It was all lost upon me, however, on that occasion. I observed the quick motion with which John thrust into a compartment of the desk, the sheet on which he had been writing; I observed the clasp of their hands as she glided by him; I observed her face; I observed his; and I knew as I had never fully known before how intensely they loved each other.
My resolution was taken. Cost what it might, come what might, I would speak fully and frankly to my sister the next day. I would not longer stand by and see this thing go on. At that moment I hated both John Gray and Emma Long. No possible pain to Ellen seemed to me to weigh for a moment against my impulse to part them.
I could not talk. I availed myself of the freedom warranted by the intimacy between the families, and continued to seem absorbed in my book. But I lost no word, no look, which passed between the two who sat opposite me. I never saw Emma Long look so nearly beautiful as she did that night. She wore a black velvet dress, with fine white lace ruffles at the throat and wrists. Her hair was fair, and her complexion of that soft pale tint, with a slight undertone of brown in it, which is at once fair and warm, and which can kindle in moments of excitement into a brilliance far outshining any brunette skin. She talked rapidly with much gesture. She was giving John an account of the stupidity of the people with whom she had been dining. Her imitative faculty amounted almost to genius. No smallest peculiarity of manner or speech escaped her, and she could become a dozen different persons in a minute. John laughed as he listened, but not so heartily as he was wont to laugh at her humorous sayings. He had been too deeply stirred in the long interval of solitude before she returned. His cheeks were flushed and his voice unsteady. She soon felt the effect of his manner, and her gayety died away; before long they were sitting in silence, each looking at the fire. I knew I ought to make the proposition to go home, but I seemed under a spell; I was conscious of a morbid desire to watch and wait. At length Mrs. Long rose, saying,—
"If it will not disturb Sally's reading, I will play for you a lovely little thing I learned yesterday."
"Oh, no," said I. "But we must go as soon as I finish this chapter."
She passed into the music-room and looked back for John to follow her; but he threw himself at full length on the sofa, and said,—
"No, I will listen here."
My quickened instinct saw that he dared not go; also that he had laid his cheek in an abandonment of ecstasy on the arm of the sofa on which her hand had been resting. Even in that moment I had a sharp pang of pity for him, and the same old misgiving of question, whether my good and sweet and almost faultless Ellen could be loved just in the same way in which Emma Long would be!
As soon as she had finished the nocturne, a sad, low sweet strain, she came back to the parlor. Not even for the pleasure of giving John the delight of the music he loved would she stay where she could not see his face.
But I had already put down my book, and was ready to go. Our good-nights were short and more formal than usual. All three were conscious of an undefined constraint in the air. Mrs. Long glanced up uneasily in John's face as we left the room. Her eyes were unutterably tender and childlike when a look of grieved perplexity shadowed them. Again my heart ached for her and for him. This was no idle caprice, no mere entanglement of senses between two unemployed and unprincipled hearts. It was a subtle harmony, organic, spiritual, intellectual, between two susceptible and intense natures. The bond was as natural and inevitable as any other fact of nature. And in this very fact lay the terrible danger.
We walked home in silence. A few steps from our house we met Dr. Willis walking very rapidly. He did not recognize us at first. When he did, he half stopped as if about to speak, then suddenly changed his mind, and merely bowing, passed on. A bright light was burning in Ellen's room.
"Why, Ellen has not gone to bed!" exclaimed John.
"Perhaps some one called," said I, guiltily.
"Oh, I dare say," replied he; "perhaps the doctor has been there. But it is half-past twelve," added he, pulling out his watch as we entered the hall. "He could not have stayed until this time."
I went to my own room immediately. In a few moments I heard John come up, say a few words to Ellen, and then go down-stairs, calling back, as he left her room,—
"Don't keep awake for me, wifie, I have a huge batch of letters to answer. I shall not get through before three o'clock."
I crept noiselessly to Ellen's room. It was dark. She had extinguished the gas as soon as she had heard us enter the house! I knew by the first sound of her voice that she had been weeping violently and long. I said,—
"Ellen, I must come in and have a talk with you."
"Not to-night, dear. To-morrow I will talk over everything. All is settled. Good-night. Don't urge me to-night, Sally. I can't bear any more."
It is strange—it is marvellous what power there is in words to mean more than words. I knew as soon as Ellen had said, "Not to-night, dear," that she divined all I wanted to say, that she knew all I knew, and that the final moment, the crisis, had come. Whatever she might have to tell me in the morning, I should not be surprised. I did not sleep. All night I tossed wearily, trying to conjecture what Ellen would do, trying to imagine what I should do in her place.
At breakfast Ellen seemed better than she had seemed for weeks. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks pink; but there was an ineffable, almost solemn tenderness in her manner to John, which was pathetic. Again the suspicion crossed my mind that she knew that she must die. He too was disturbed by it; he looked at her constantly with a lingering gaze as if trying to read her face; and when he bade us good-by to go to the office, he kissed her over and over as I had not seen him kiss her for months. The tears came into her eyes, and she threw both arms around his neck for a second,—a very rare thing for her to do in the presence of others.
"Why, wifie," he said, "you musn't make it too hard for a fellow to get off!—Doesn't she look well this morning, Sally?" turning to me. "I was thinking last night that I must take her to the mountains as soon as it was warm enough. But such cheeks as these don't need it." And he took her face in his two hands with a caress full of tenderness, and sprang down the steps.
Just at this moment Mrs. Long's carriage came driving swiftly around the corner, and the driver stopped suddenly at sight of John.
"Oh, Mr. Gray, Mr. Gray!" called Emma, "I was just coming to take Ellen and the children for a turn, and we can leave you at the office on our way."
"Thank you," said John, "but there are several persons I must see before going to the office, and it would detain you too long. I am already much too late," and without a second look he hurried on.
I saw a slight color rise in Mrs. Long's cheek, but no observer less jealous than I would have detected it; and there was not a shade less warmth than usual in her manner to Ellen.
Ellen told her that she could not go herself, but she would be very glad to have some of the children go; and then she stood for some moments, leaning on the carriage-door and talking most animatedly. I looked from one woman to the other. Ellen at that moment was more beautiful than Mrs. Long. The strong, serene, upright look which was her most distinguishing and characteristic expression, actually shone on her face. I wished that John Gray had stopped to see the two faces side by side. Emma Long might be the woman to stir and thrill and entrance the soul; to give stimulus to the intellectual nature; to rouse passionate emotion; but Ellen was the woman on whose steadfastness he could rest,—in the light of whose sweet integrity and transparent truthfulness he was a far safer, and would be a far stronger man than with any other woman in the world.
As the carriage drove away with all three of the little girls laughing and shouting and clinging around Mrs. Long, a strange pang seized me. I looked at Ellen. She stood watching them with a smile which had something heavenly in it. Turning suddenly to me, she said: "Sally, if I were dying, it would make me very happy to know that Emma Long would be the mother of my children."
I was about to reply with a passionate ejaculation, but she interrupted me.
"Hush, dear, hush. I am not going to die,—I have no fear of any such thing. Come to my room now, and I will tell you all."
She locked the door, stood for a moment looking at me very earnestly, then folded me in her arms and kissed me many times; then she made me sit in a large arm-chair, and drawing up a low foot-stool, sat down at my feet, rested both arms on my lap, and began to speak. I shall try to tell in her own words what she said.
"Sally, I want to tell you in the beginning how I thank you for your silence. All winter I have known that you were seeing all I saw, feeling all I felt, and keeping silent for my sake. I never can tell you how much I thank you; it was the one thing which supported me. It was an unspeakable comfort to know that you sympathized with me at every point; but to have had the sympathy expressed even by a look would have made it impossible for me to bear up. As long as I live, darling, I shall be grateful to you. And, moreover, it makes it possible for me to trust you unreservedly now. I had always done you injustice, Sally. I did not think you had so much self-control."
Here she hesitated an instant. It was not easy for her to mention John's name; but it was only for a second that she hesitated. With an impetuous eagerness unlike herself, she went on.
"Sally, you must not blame John. He has struggled as constantly and nobly as a man ever struggled. Neither must you blame Emma. They have neither of them done wrong. I have watched them both hour by hour. I know my husband's nature so thoroughly that I know his very thoughts almost as soon as he knows them himself. I know his emotions before he knows them himself. I saw the first moment in which his eyes rested on Emma's face as they used to rest on mine. From that day to this I have known every phase, every step, every change of his feeling towards her; and I tell you, Sally, that I pity John from the bottom of my heart. I understand it all far better than you can, far better than he does. He loves her at once far more and far less than you believe, and he loves me far more than you believe! You will say, in the absolute idealization of your inexperienced heart, that this is impossible. I know that it is not, and I wish I could make you believe it, for without believing it you cannot be just to John. He loves me to-day, in spite of all this, with a sort of clinging tenderness born of this very struggle. He would far rather love me with all his nature if he could, but just now he cannot. I see very clearly where Emma gives him what he needs, and has never had in me. I have learned many things from Emma Long this winter. I can never be like her. But I need not have been so unlike her as I was. She has armed me with weapons when she least suspected it. But she is not after all, on the whole, so nearly what John needs as I am. If I really believed that he would be a better man, or even a happier one with her as his wife, I should have but one desire, and that would be to die. But I think that it is not so. I believe that it is in my power to do for him, and to be to him, what she never could. I do not wonder that you look pityingly and incredulously. You will see. But in order to do this, I must leave him."
I sprang to my feet. "Leave him! Are you mad?"
"No, dear, not at all; very sane and very determined. I have been for six months coming to this resolve. I began to think of it in a very few hours after I first saw him look at Emma as if he loved her. I have thought of it day and night since, and I know I am right. If I stay, I shall lose his love. If I go, I shall keep it, regain it, compel it." She spoke here more hurriedly. "I have borne now all I can bear without betraying my pain to him. I am jealous of Emma. It almost kills me to see him look at her, speak to her."
"My poor, poor darling!" I exclaimed; "and I have been thinking you did not feel it!"
She smiled sadly, and tossed back the sleeve of her wrapper so as to show her arm to the shoulder. I started. It was almost emaciated. I had again and again in the course of the winter asked her why she did not wear her usual style of evening dress, and she had replied that it was on account of her cough.
"It is well that my face does not show loss of flesh as quickly as the rest of my body does," she said quietly. "I have lost thirty-five pounds of flesh in four months, and nobody observed it! Yes, dear," she went on, "I have felt it. More than that, I have felt it increasingly every hour, and I can bear no more. Up to this time I have never by look or tone shown to John that I knew it. He wonders every hour what it means that I do not. I have never by so much as the slightest act watched him. I have seen notes in Emma's handwriting lying on his desk, and I have left the house lest I might be tempted to read them! I know that he has as yet done no clandestine thing, but at any moment I should have led them both into it by showing one symptom of jealousy. And I should have roused in his heart a feeling of irritation and impatience with me, which would have done in one hour more to intensify his love for her, and to change its nature from a pure, involuntary sentiment into an acknowledged and guilty one, than years and years of free intercourse could do. But I have reached the limit of my physical endurance. My nerves are giving away. I am really very ill, but nothing is out of order in my body aside from the effects of this anguish. A month more of this would make me a hopelessly broken-down woman. A month's absence from the sight of it will almost make me well."
I could not refrain from interrupting her.
"Ellen, you are mad! you are mad! You mean to go away and leave him to see her constantly alone, unrestrained by your presence? It has almost killed you to see it. How can you bear imagining it, knowing it?"
"Better than I can bear seeing it, far better. Because I have still undiminished confidence in the real lastingness of the bond between John and me. Emma Long would have been no doubt a good, a very good wife for him. But I am the mother of his children, and just so surely as right is right, and wrong is wrong, he will return to me and to them. All wrong things are like diseases, self-limited. It is wrong for a man to love any woman better than he loves his wife; I don't deny that, dear," she said, half smiling through her tears at my indignant face; "but a man may seem to do it when he is really very far from it. He may really do it for days, for months—for years, perhaps; but if he be a true man, and his wife a true wife, he will return. John is a true husband and a still truer father: that I am the mother of his five children, he can never forget. If I had had no children, it would be different. If I had ever been for one moment an unloving wife, it would be different; but I am his; I believe that he is mine; and that I shall live to remind you of all these things, Sally, after time has proved them true."
I was almost dumb with surprise. I was astounded. To me it seemed that her plan was simply suicidal. I told her in the strongest words I could use of the scene of the night before.
"I could tell you of still more trying scenes than that, Sally. I know far more than you. But if I knew ten times as much, I should still believe that my plan is the only one. Of course I may fail. It is all in God's hands. We none of us know how much discipline we need. But I know one thing: if I do not regain John in this way, I cannot in any. If I stay I shall annoy, vex, disturb, torture him! Once the barriers of my silence and concealment are broken down, I shall do just what all other jealous women have done since the world began. There are no torments on earth like those which a jealous woman inflicts, except those which she bears! I will die sooner than inflict them on John. Even if the result proves me mistaken, I shall never regret my course, for I know that the worst is certain if I remain. But I have absolute faith,"—and her face was transfigured with it as she spoke,—"John is mine. If I could stay by his side through it all and preserve the same relation with him which I have all winter, all would sooner or later be well. I wish I were strong enough. My heart is, but my body is not, and I must go."
When she told me the details of her plan, I was more astounded than ever. She had taken Dr. Willis into her full confidence. (He had been to us father and physician both ever since our father's death.) He entirely approved of her course. He was to say—which indeed he could do conscientiously—that her health imperatively required an entire change of climate, and that he had advised her to spend at least one year abroad. It had always been one of John's and Ellen's air-castles to take all the children to England and to Germany for some years of study. She proposed to take the youngest four, leaving the eldest girl, who was her father's especial pet and companion, to stay with him. A maiden aunt of ours was to come and keep the house, and I was to stay with the family. This was the hardest of all.
"Ellen, I cannot!" I exclaimed. "Do not—oh, do not trust me. I shall never have strength. I shall betray all some day and ruin all your hopes."
"You cannot, you dare not, Sally, when I tell you that my life's whole happiness lies in your silence. John is unobservant and also unsuspicious. He has never had an intimate relation with you. You will have no difficulty. But you must be here,—because, dear, there is another reason," and here her voice grew very unsteady, and tears ran down her cheeks.
"In spite of all my faith, I do not disguise from myself the possibility of the worst. I cannot believe my husband would ever do a dishonorable thing. I do not believe that Emma Long would. And yet, when I remember what ruin, has overtaken many men and women whom we believed upright, I dare not be wholly sure. And I must know that some one is here who would see and understand if a time were approaching at which it would be needful for me to make one last effort with and for my husband face to face with him. Unless that comes, I do not wish you to allude to the subject in your letters. I think I know just how all things will go. I believe that in one year, or less, all will be well. But if the worst is to come, you with your instincts will foresee it, and I must be told. I should return then at once. I should have power, even at the last moment, I believe, to save John from disgrace. But I should lose his love irrecoverably; it is to save that that I go."
I could say but few words. I was lifted up and borne out of myself, as it were, by my sister's exaltation. She seemed more like some angel-wife than like a mortal woman. Before I left her room at noon, I believed almost as fully as she did in the wisdom and the success of her plan.
There was no time to be lost. Every day between the announcement of her purpose and the carrying of it out, would be a fearful strain on Ellen's nerves. Dr. Willis had a long talk with John in his office while Ellen was talking with me. John came home to dinner looking like a man who had received a mortal blow. Dr. Willis had purposely given him to understand that Ellen's life was in great danger. So it was, but not from the cough! At first John's vehement purpose was to go with them. But she was prepared for this. His business and official relations were such that it was next to impossible for him to do it, and it would at best involve a great pecuniary sacrifice. She overruled and remonstrated, and was so firm in her objections to every suggestion of his of accompanying or following her, that finally, in spite of all his anxiety, John seemed almost piqued at her preference for going alone. In every conversation on the subject I saw more and more clearly that Ellen was right. He did love her—love her warmly, devotedly.
Two weeks from the day of my conversation with her they sailed for Liverpool. The summer was to be spent in England, and the winter in Nice or Mentone.
Alice, the eldest daughter, a loving, sunshiny girl of twelve, was installed in her mother's room. This was Ellen's especial wish. She knew that in this way John would be drawn to the room constantly. All her own little belongings were given to Alice.
"Only think, Auntie," said she, "mamma has given me, all for my own, her lovely toilette set, and all the Bohemian glass on the bureau, and her ivory brushes! She says when she comes home she shall refurnish her room and papa's too!"
Oh, my wise Ellen. Could Emma Long have done more subtly!
Early on the first evening after John returned from New York, having seen them off, I missed him. I said bitterly to myself, "At Mrs. Long's, I suppose," and went up-stairs to find Alice. As I drew near her room I heard his voice, reading aloud. I went in. He and Alice were lying together on a broad chintz-covered lounge, as I had so often seen him and Ellen.
"Oh, Auntie, come here," said Alice, "hear mamma's letter to me! She gave it to papa in New York. She says it is like the sealed orders they give to captains sometimes, not to be opened till they are out at sea. It is all about how I am to fill her place to papa. And there are ever so many little notes inside, more orders, which even papa himself is not to see! only I suppose he'll recognize the things when I do them!"
At that moment, as I watched John Gray's face, with Alice's nestled close, and his arms clasped tight around her, while they read Ellen's letter, a great load rolled off my heart. I went through many dark days afterward, but I never could quite despair when I remembered the fatherhood and the husbandhood which were in his eyes and his voice that night
The story of the next twelve months could be told in few words, so far as its external incidents are concerned. It could not be told in a thousand volumes, if I attempted to reproduce the subtle undercurrents of John Gray's life and mine. Each of us was living a double life; he more or less unconsciously; I with such sharpened senses, such overwrought emotions, that I only wonder that my health did not give way. I endured vicariously all the suspense and torment of the deepest jealousy, with a sense of more than vicarious responsibility added, which was almost more than human nature could bear. Ellen little knew how heavy would be the burden she laid upon me. Her most express and explicit direction was that the familiar intimacy between our family and Mrs. Long's was to be preserved unaltered. This it would have been impossible for me to do if Mrs. Long had not herself recognized the necessity of it, for her own full enjoyment of John's society. But it was a hard thing; my aunt, the ostensible head of our house, was a quiet woman who had nothing whatever to do with society, and who felt in the outset a great shrinking from the brilliant Mrs. Long. I had never been on intimate terms with her, so that John and Alice were really the only members of the household who could keep up precisely the old relation. And so it gradually came about that to most of our meetings under each other's roofs, strangers were asked to fill up the vacant places, and in spite of all Emma Long's efforts and mine, there was a change in the atmosphere of our intercourse. But there was intimacy enough to produce the effect for which Ellen was most anxious, i.e., to extend the shelter of our recognition to the friendship between John and Emma, and to remove from them both all temptation to anything clandestine or secret. They still saw each other almost daily; they still shared most of each other's interests and pleasures; they still showed most undisguised delight in each other's presence. Again and again I went with them to the opera, to the theatre, and sat through the long hours, watching, with a pain which seemed to me hardly less than Ellen's would have been, their constant sympathy with each other in every point of enjoyment, their constant forgetfulness of every one else.
But there was, all this time, another side to John Gray's life, which I saw, and Emma Long did not see. By every steamer came packages of the most marvelous letters from Ellen: letters to us all; but for John, a diary of every hour of her life. Each night she spent two hours in writing out the record of the day. I have never seen letters which so reproduced the atmosphere of the day, the scene, the heart. They were brilliant and effective to a degree that utterly astonished me; but they were also ineffably tender and loving, and so natural in their every word, that it was like seeing Ellen face to face to read them. At first John did not show them even to me; but soon he began to say, "These are too rare to be kept to myself; I must just read you this account;" or, "Here is a page I must read," until it at last became his habit to read them aloud in the evenings to the family, and even to more intimate friends who chanced to be with us. He grew proud beyond expression of Ellen's talent for writing; and well he might. No one who listened to them but exclaimed, "There never were such letters before!" I think there never were. And I alone knew the secret of them.
But these long, brilliant letters were not all. In every mail came also packages for Alice—secret, mysterious things which nobody could see, but which proved to be sometimes small notes, to be given to papa at unexpected times and places; sometimes little fancy articles, as a pen-wiper, or a cigar-case, half worked by Ellen, to be finished by Alice, and given to papa on some especial day, the significance of which "only mamma knows;" sometimes a pressed flower, which was to be put by papa's plate at breakfast, or put in papa's button-hole as he went out in the morning. I was more and more lost in astonishment at the subtle and boundless art of love which could so contrive to reach across an ocean, and surround a man's daily life with its expression. There were also in every package, letters to John from all the children: even the baby's little hand was guided to write by every mail, "Dear papa, I love you just as much as all the rest do!" or, "Dear papa, I want you to toss me up!" More than once I saw tears roll down John's face in spite of him, as he slowly deciphered these illegible little scrawls. The older children's notes were vivid and loving like their mother's. It was evident that they were having a season of royal delight in their journey, but also evident that their thoughts and their longings were constantly reverting to papa. How much Ellen really indited of these apparently spontaneous letters I do not know; but no doubt their tone was in part created by her. They showed, even more than did her own letters, that papa was still the centre of the family life. No sight was seen without the wish—"Oh, if papa were here!" and even little Mary, aged five, was making a collection of pressed leaves for papa, from all the places they visited. Louise had already great talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again I sat alone and anxious through an entire evening, when I knew he was with Emma Long. But even after such an evening, he never failed to sit down and write pages in his journal-letter to Ellen—a practice which he began of his own accord, after receiving the first journal-letter from her.
"Ha! little Alice," he said, "we'll keep a journal too, for mamma, won't we! She shall not out-do us that way." And so, between Alice's letters and his, the whole record of our family life went every week to Ellen; and I do not believe, so utterly unaware was John Gray of any pain in his wife's heart about Emma Long, I do not believe that he ever in a single instance omitted to mention when he had been with her, where, and how long.
Emma Long wrote too, and Ellen wrote to her occasional affectionate notes; but referring her always to John's diary-letters for the details of interest. I used to study Mrs. Long's face while these letters were read to her. John's animated delight, his enthusiastic pride, must, it seemed to me, have been bitter to her. But I never saw even a shade of such a feeling in her face. There was nothing base or petty in Emma Long's nature, and, strange as it may seem, she did love Ellen. Only once did I ever see a trace of pique or resentment in her manner to John, and then I could not wonder at it. A large package had come from Ellen, just after tea one night, and we were all gathered in the library, reading our letters and looking at the photographs—(she always sent unmounted photographs of the place from which she wrote, and, if possible, of the house in which they were living, and the children often wrote above the windows, "Papa's and mamma's room," etc, etc.)—hour after hour passed. The hall clock had just struck ten, when the door-bell rang violently. "Good heavens!" exclaimed John, springing up, "that must be Mrs. Long; I totally forgot that I had promised to go with her to Mrs. Willis's party. I said I would be there at nine; tell her I am up-stairs dressing," and he was gone before the servant had had time to open the door. Mrs. Long came in, with a flushed face and anxious look. "Is Mr. Gray ill?" she said. "He promised to call for me at nine, to go to Mrs. Willis's, and I have been afraid he might be ill."
Before I could reply, the unconscious Alice exclaimed,—
"Oh, no; papa isn't ill; he is so sorry, but he forgot all about the party till he heard you ring the bell. We were so busy over mamma's letters."
"John will be down in a moment," added I. "He ran up-stairs to dress as soon as you rang."
For one second Emma Long's face was sad to see. Such astonishment, such pain, were in it, my heart ached for her. Then a look of angry resentment succeeded the pain, and merely saying, "I am very sorry; but I really cannot wait for him. It is now almost too late to go," she had left the room and closed the outer door before I could think of any words to say.
I ran up to John's room, and told him through the closed door. He made no reply for a moment, and then said,—
"No wonder she is vexed. It was unpardonable rudeness. Tell Robert to run at once for a carriage for me."
In a very few moments he came down dressed for the party, but with no shadow of disturbance on his face. He was still thinking of the letters. He took up his own, and putting it into an inside breast-pocket, said, as he kissed Alice, "Papa will take mamma's letter to the party, if he can't take mamma!"
I shed grateful tears that night before I went to sleep. How I longed to write to Ellen of the incident; but I had resolved not once to disregard her request that the whole subject be a sealed one. And I trusted that Alice would remember to tell it. Well I might! At breakfast Alice said,—
"Oh, papa, I told mamma that you carried her to the party in your breast-pocket; that is, you carried her letter!"
I fancied that John's cheek flushed a little as he said,—
"You might tell mamma that papa carries her everywhere in his breast-pocket, little girlie, and mamma would understand."
I think from that day I never feared for Ellen's future. I fancied, too, that from that day there was a new light in John Gray's eyes. Perhaps it might have been only the new light in my own; but I think when a man knows that he has once, for one hour, forgotten a promise to meet a woman whose presence has been dangerously dear to him, he must be aware of his dawning freedom.
The winter was nearly over. Ellen had said nothing to us about returning.
"Dr. Willis tells me that, from what Ellen writes to him of her health, he thinks it would be safer for her to remain abroad another year," said John to me one morning at breakfast.
"Oh, she never will stay another year!" exclaimed I.
"Not unless I go out to stay with her," said John, very quietly.
"Oh, John, could you?" and, "Oh, papa, will you take me?" exclaimed Alice and I in one breath.
"Yes," and "yes," said John, laughing, "and Sally too, if she will go."
He then proceeded to tell me that he had been all winter contemplating this; that he believed they would never again have so good an opportunity to travel in Europe, and that Dr. Willis's hesitancy about Ellen's health had decided the question. He had been planning and deliberating as silently and unsuspectedly as Ellen had done the year before. Never once had it crossed my mind that he desired it, or that it could be. But I found that he had for the last half of the year been arranging his affairs with a view to it, and had entered into new business connections which would make it not only easy, but profitable, for him to remain abroad two years. He urged me to go with them, but I refused. I felt that the father and the mother and the children ought to be absolutely alone in this blessed reunion, and I have never regretted my decision, although the old world is yet an unknown world to me.
John Gray was a reticent and undemonstrative man, in spite of all the tenderness and passionateness in his nature. But when he bade me good-by on the deck of the steamer, as he kissed me he whispered:—
"Sally, I shall hold my very breath till I see Ellen. I never knew how I loved her before." And the tears stood in his eyes.
I never saw Emma Long after she knew that John was to go abroad to join Ellen. I found myself suddenly without courage to look in her face. The hurry of my preparations for Alice was ample excuse for my not going to her house, and she did not come to ours. I knew that John spent several evenings with her, and came home late, with a sad and serious face, and that was all. A week before he sailed she joined a large and gay party for San Francisco and the Yosemite. In all the newspaper accounts of the excursion, Mrs. Long was spoken of as the brilliant centre of all festivities. I understood well that this was the first reaction of her proud and sensitive nature under an irremediable pain. She never returned to , but established herself in a Southern city, where she lived in great retirement for a year, doing good to all poor and suffering people, and spending the larger part of her fortune in charity. Early in the second year there was an epidemic of yellow fever: Mrs. Long refused to leave the city, and went as fearlessly as the physicians to visit and nurse the worst cases. But after the epidemic had passed by, she herself was taken ill, and died suddenly in a hospital ward, surrounded by the very patients whom she had nursed back to health. Nothing I could say in my own words would give so vivid an idea of the meeting between John Gray and his wife, as the first letter which I received from little Alice:—
"Darling Auntie,—
"It is too bad you did not come too. The voyage was horrid. Papa was so much sicker than I, that I had to take care of him all the time; but my head ached so that I kept seeing black spots if I stooped over to kiss papa; but papa said, I was just like another mamma.
"Oh, Auntie, only think, there was a mistake about the letters, and mamma never got the letter to tell her that we were coming; and she was out on the balcony of the hotel when we got out of the carriage, and first she saw me; and the lady who was with her said she turned first red and then so white the lady thought she was sick; and then the next minute she saw papa, and she just fell right down among all the people, and looked as if she was dead; and the very first thing poor papa and I saw, when we got up-stairs, was mamma being carried by two men, and papa and I both thought she was dead; and papa fell right down on his knees, and made the men put mamma down on the floor, and everybody talked out loud, and papa never spoke a word, but just looked at mamma, and nobody knew who papa was till I spoke, and I said,—
"'That's my mamma, and papa and I have just come all the way from America,"—and then a gentleman told me to kiss mamma, and I did; and then she opened her eyes; and just as soon as she saw papa, she got a great deal whiter and her head fell back again, and I was so sure she was dying, that I began to cry out loud, and I do think there were more than a hundred people all round us; but Louise says there were only ten or twelve; and then the same gentleman that told me to kiss mamma took hold of papa, and made him go away; and they carried mamma into a room, and laid her on a bed, and said we must all go out; but I wouldn't: I got right under the bed, and they didn't see me; and it seemed to me a thousand years before anybody spoke; and at last I heard mamma's voice, just as weak as a baby's—but you know nobody could mistake mamma's voice; and said she, 'Where is John—I saw John;' and then the gentleman said,—oh, I forgot to tell you he was a doctor,—he said,—
"'My dear madam, calm yourself'—and then I cried right out again, and crept out between his legs and almost knocked him down; and said I, 'Don't you try to calm my mamma; it is papa—and me too, mamma!' and then mamma burst out crying; and then the old gentleman ran out, and I guess papa was at the door, for he came right in; and then he put his arms round mamma, and they didn't speak for so long, I thought I should die; and all the people were listening, and going up and down in the halls outside, and I felt so frightened and ashamed, for fear people would think mamma wasn't glad to see us. But papa says that is always the way when people are more glad than they can bear; and the surprise, too, was too much for anybody. But I said at the tea-table that I hoped I should never be so glad myself as long as I lived; and then the old gentleman,—he's a very nice old gentleman, and a great friend of mamma's, and wears gold spectacles,—he said, 'My dear little girl, I hope you may be some day just as glad,' and then he looked at papa and mamma and smiled,—and mamma almost cried again! Oh, altogether it was a horrid time; the worst I ever had; and so different from what papa and I thought it would be.
"But it's all over now, and we're all so happy, we laugh so all the time, that papa says it is disgraceful; that we shall have to go off and hide ourselves somewhere where people can't see us.
"But Auntie, you don't know how perfectly splendid mamma is. She is the prettiest lady in the hotel, Louise says. She is ever so much fatter than she used to be. And the baby has grown so I did not know her, and her curls are more than half a yard long. Louise and Mary have got their hair cut short like boys, but their gowns are splendid; they say it was such a pity you had any made for me at home. But oh, dear Auntie, don't think I shall not always like the gowns you made for me. Charlie isn't here; he's at some horrid school a great way off; I forget the name of the place. But we are all going there to live for the summer. Mamma said we should keep house in an 'apartment,' and I was perfectly horrified, and I said, 'Mamma, in one room?' and then Louise and Mary laughed till I was quite angry; but mamma says that here an 'apartment' means a set of a good many rooms, quite enough to live in. I don't believe you can have patience to read this long letter; but I haven't told you half; no, not one half of half. Good-by, you darling aunty. Alice.
"P.S.—I wish you could just see mamma. It isn't only me that thinks she is so pretty; papa thinks so too. He just sits and looks, and looks at her, till mamma doesn't quite like it, and asks him to look at baby a little!"
Ellen's first letter was short. Her heart was too full. She said at the end,—
"I suppose you will both laugh and cry over Alice's letter. At first I thought of suppressing it. But it gives you such a graphic picture of the whole scene that I shall let it go. It is well that I had the excuse of the surprise for my behavior, but I myself doubt very much if I should have done any better, had I been prepared for their coming.
These events happened many years ago. My sister and I are now old women. Her life has been from that time to this, one of the sunniest and most unclouded I ever knew.
John Gray is a hale old man; white-haired and bent, but clear-eyed and vigorous. All the good and lovable and pure in his nature have gone on steadily increasing: his love for his wife is still so full of sentiment and romance that the world remarks it.
His grandchildren will read these pages, no doubt, but they will never dream that it could have been their sweet and placid and beloved old grandmother who, through such sore straits in her youth, kept her husband!