YES, what did it mean? Christmas Eve, and Hartley still absent?
Twilight was falling when Irene came down from her room and joined her father in the library. Mr. Delancy looked into her face narrowly as she entered. The dim light of the closing day was not strong enough to give him its true expression; but he was not deceived as to its troubled aspect.
"And so Hartley will not be here to-day," he said, in a tone that expressed both disappointment and concern.
"No. I looked for him confidently. It is strange."
There was a constraint, a forced calmness in Irene's voice that did not escape her father's notice.
"I hope he is not sick," said Mr. Delancy.
"Oh no." Irene spoke with a sudden earnestness; then, with failing tones, added—
"He should have been here to-day."
She sat down near the open grate, shading her face with a hand-screen, and remained silent and abstracted for some time.
"There is scarcely a possibility of his arrival to-night," said Mr. Delancy. He could not get his thoughts away from the fact of his son-in-law's absence.
"He will not be here to-night," replied Irene, a cold dead level in her voice, that Mr. Delancy well understood to be only a blind thrown up to conceal her deeply-disturbed feelings.
"Do you expect him to-morrow, my daughter?" asked Mr. Delancy, a few moments afterward, speaking as if from a sudden thought or a sudden purpose. There was a meaning in his tones that showed his mind to be in a state not prepared to brook evasion.
"I do," was the unhesitating answer; and she turned and looked calmly at her father, whose eyes rested with a fixed, inquiring gaze upon her countenance. But half her face was lit by a reflection from the glowing grate, while half lay in shadow. His reading, therefore was not clear.
If Irene had shown surprise at the question, her father would have felt better satisfied. He meant it as a probe; but if a tender spot was reached, she had the self-control not to give a sign of pain. At the tea-table Irene rallied her spirits and talked lightly to her father; it was only by an effort that he could respond with even apparent cheerfulness.
Complaining of a headache, Irene retired, soon after tea, to her room, and did not come down again during the evening.
The next day was Christmas. It rose clear and mild as a day in October. When Irene came down to breakfast, her pale, almost haggard, face showed too plainly that she had passed a night of sleeplessness and suffering. She said, "A merry Christmas," to her father, on meeting him, but there was no heart in the words. It was almost impossible to disguise the pain that almost stifled respiration. Neither of them did more than make a feint at eating. As Mr. Delancy arose from the table, he said to Irene—
"I would like to see you in the library, my daughter."
She followed him passively, closing the door behind her as she entered.
"Sit down. There." And Mr. Delancy placed a chair for her, a little way from the grate.
Irene dropped into the chair like one who moved by another's volition.
"Now, daughter," said Mr. Delancy, taking a chair, and drawing it in front of the one in which she was seated, "I am going to ask a plain question, and I want a direct answer."
Irene rallied herself on the instant.
"Did you leave New York with the knowledge and consent of your husband?"
The blood mounted to her face and stained it a deep crimson:
"I left without his knowledge. Consent I never ask."
The old proud spirit was in her tones.
"I feared as much," replied Mr. Delancy, his voice falling. "Then you do not expect Hartley to-day?"
"I expected him yesterday. He may be here to-day. I am almost sure he will come."
"Does he know you are here?"
"Yes."
"Why did you leave without his knowledge?"
"To punish him."
"Irene!"
"I have answered without evasion. It was to punish him."
"I do not remember in the marriage vows you took upon yourselves anything relating to punishments," said Mr. Delancy. "There were explicit things said of love and duty, but I do not recall a sentence that referred to the right of one party to punish the other."
Mr. Delancy paused for a few moments, but there was no reply to this rather novel and unexpected view of the case.
"Did you by anything in the rite acquire authority to punish your husband when his conduct didn't just suit your fancy?"
Mr. Delancy pressed the question.
"It is idle, father," said Irene, with some sharpness of tone, "to make an issue like this. It does not touch the case. Away back of marriage contracts lie individual rights, which are never surrendered. The right of self-protection is one of these; and if retaliation is needed as a guarantee of future peace, then the right to punish is included in the right of self-protection."
"A peace gained through coercion of any kind is not worth having. It is but the semblance of peace—is war in bonds," replied Mr. Delancy. "The moment two married partners begin the work of coercion and punishment, that moment love begins to fail. If love gives not to their hearts a common beat, no other power is strong enough to do the work. Irene, I did hope that the painful experiences already passed through would have made you wiser. It seems not, however. It seems that self-will, passion and a spirit of retaliation are to govern your actions, instead of patience and love. Well, my child, if you go on sowing this seed in your garden now, in the spring-time of life, you must not murmur when autumn gives you a harvest of thorns and thistles. If you sow tares in your field, you must not expect to find corn there when you put in your sickle to reap. You can take back your morning salutation. It is not a 'merry Christmas' to you or to me; and I think we are both done with merry Christmases."
"Father!"
The tone in which this word was uttered was almost a cry of pain.
"It is even so, my child—even so," replied Mr. Delancy, in a voice of irrepressible sadness. "You have left your husband a second time. It is not every man who would forgive the first offence; not one in twenty who would pardon the second. You are in great peril, Irene. This storm that you have conjured up may drive you to hopeless shipwreck. You need not expect Hartley to-day. He will not come. I have studied his character well, and know that he will not pass this conduct over lightly."
Even while this was said a servant, who had been over to the village, brought in a letter and handed it to Mr. Delancy, who, recognizing in the superscription the handwriting of his daughter's husband, broke the seal hurriedly. The letter was in these words:
"MY DEAR SIR: As your daughter has left me, no doubt with the purpose of finally abandoning the effort to live in that harmony so essential to happiness in married life, I shall be glad if you will choose some judicious friend to represent her in consultation with a friend whom I will select, with a view to the arrangement of a separation, as favorable to her in its provisions as it can possibly be made. In view of the peculiarity of our temperaments, we made a great error in this experiment. My hope was that love would be counselor to us both; that the law of mutual forbearance would have rule. But we are both too impulsive, too self-willed, too undisciplined. I do not pretend to throw all the blame on Irene. We are as flint and steel. But she has taken the responsibility of separation, and I am left without alternative. May God lighten the burden of pain her heart will have to bear in the ordeal through which she has elected to pass.
Your unhappy son,"HARTLEY EMERSON."
Mr. Delancy's hand shook so violently before he had finished reading that the paper rattled in the air. On finishing the last sentence he passed it, without a word, to his daughter. It was some moments before the strong agitation produced by the sight of this letter, and its effect upon her father, could be subdued enough to enable her to read a line.
"What does it mean, father? I don't understand it," she said, in a hoarse, deep whisper, and with pale, quivering lips.
"It means," said Mr. Delancy, "that your husband has taken you at your word."
"At my word! What word?"
"You have left the home he provided for you, I believe?"
"Father!"
Her eyes stood out staringly.
"Let me read the letter for you." And he took it from her hand. After reading it aloud and slowly, he said—
"That is plain talk, Irene. I do not think any one can misunderstand it. You have, in his view, left him finally, and he now asks me to name a judicious friend to meet his friend, and arrange a basis of separation as favorable to you in its provisions as it can possibly be made."
"A separation, father! Oh no, he cannot mean that!" And she pressed her hands strongly against her temples.
"Yes, my daughter, that is the simple meaning."
"Oh no, no, no! He never meant that."
"You left him?"
"But not in that way; not in earnest. It was only in fitful anger—half sport, half serious."
"Then, in Heaven's name, sit down and write him so, and that without the delay of an instant. He has put another meaning on your conduct. He believes that you have abandoned him."
"Abandoned him! Madness!" And Irene, who had risen from her chair, commenced moving about the room in a wild, irresolute kind of way, something like an actress under tragic excitement.
"This is meant to punish me!" she said, stopping suddenly, and speaking in a voice slightly touched with indignation. "I understand it all, and see it as a great outrage. Hartley knows as well I do that I left as much in sport as in earnest. But this is carrying the joke too far. To write such a letter to you! Why didn't he write to me? Why didn't he ask me to appoint a friend to represent me in the arrangement proposed?"
"He understood himself and the case entirely," replied Mr. Delancy. "Believing that you had abandoned him—"
"He didn't believe any such thing!" exclaimed Irene, in strong excitement.
"You are deceiving yourself, my daughter. His letter is calm and deliberate. It was not written, as you can see by the date, until yesterday. He has taken time to let passion cool. Three days were permitted to elapse, that you might be heard from in case any change of purpose occurred. But you remained silent. You abandoned him."
"Oh, father, why will you talk in this way? I tell you that Hartley is only doing this to punish me; that he has no more thought of an actual separation than he has of dying."
"Admit this to be so, which I only do in the argument," said Mr. Delancy, "and what better aspect does it present?"
"The better aspect of sport as compared with earnest," replied Irene.
"At which both will continue to play until earnest is reached—and a worse earnest than the present. Take the case as you will, and it is one of the saddest and least hopeful that I have seen."
Irene did not reply.
"You must elect some course of action, and that with the least possible delay," said Mr. Delancy. "This letter requires an immediate answer. Go to your room and, in communion with God and your own heart, come to some quick decision upon the subject."
Irene turned away without speaking and left her father alone in the library.
WEwill not speak of the cause that led to this serious rupture between Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. It was light as vanity—an airy nothing in itself—a spark that would have gone out on a baby's cheek without leaving a sign of its existence. On the day that Irene left the home of her husband he had parted from her silent, moody and with ill-concealed anger. Hard words, reproaches and accusations had passed between them on the night previous; and both felt unusually disturbed. The cause of all this, as we have said, was light as vanity. During the day Mr. Emerson, who was always first to come to his senses, saw the folly of what had occurred, and when he turned his face homeward, after three o'clock, it was with the purpose of ending the unhappy state by recalling a word to which he had given thoughtless utterance.
The moment our young husband came to this sensible conclusion his heart beat with a freer motion and his spirits rose again into a region of tranquillity. He felt the old tenderness toward his wife returning, dwelt on her beauty, accomplishments, virtues and high mental endowments with a glow of pride, and called her defects of character light in comparison.
"If I were more a man, and less a child of feeling and impulse," he said to himself, "I would be more worthy to hold the place of husband to a woman like Irene. She has strong peculiarities—who has not peculiarities? Am I free from them? She is no ordinary woman, and must not be trammeled by ordinary tame routine. She has quick impulses; therefore, if I love her, should I not guard them, lest they leap from her feebly restraining hand in the wrong direction? She is sensitive to control; why, then, let her see the hand that must lead her, sometimes, aside from the way she would walk through the promptings of her own will? Do I not know that she loves me? And is she not dear to me as my own life? What folly to strive with each other! What madness to let angry feelings shadow for an instant our lives!"
It was in this state of mind that Emerson returned home. There were a few misgivings in his heart as he entered, for he was not sure as to the kind of reception Irene would offer his overtures for peace; but there was no failing of his purpose to sue for peace and obtain it. With a quick step he passed through the hall, and, after glancing into the parlors to see if his wife were there, went up stairs with two or three light bounds. A hurried glance through the chambers showed him that they had no occupant. He was turning to leave them, when a letter, placed upright on a bureau, attracted his attention. He caught it up. It was addressed to him in the well-known hand of his wife. He opened it and read:
"I leave for Ivy Cliff to-day. IRENE."
Two or three times Emerson read the line—"I leave for Ivy Cliff to-day"—and looked at the signature, before its meaning came fully into his thought.
"Gone to Ivy Cliff!" he said, at last, in a low, hoarse voice. "Gone, and without a word of intimation or explanation! Gone, and in the heat of anger! Has it come to this, and so soon! God help us!" And the unhappy man sunk into a chair, heart-stricken and weak as a child.
For nearly the whole of the night that followed he walked the floor of his room, and the next day found him in a feverish condition of both mind and body. Not once did the thought of following his wife to Ivy Cliff, if it came into his mind, rest there for a moment. She had gone home to her father with only an announcement of the fact. He would wait some intimation of her further purpose; but, if they met again, she must come back to him. This was his first, spontaneous conclusion; and it was not questioned in his thought, nor did he waver from it an instant. She must come back of her own free will, if she came back at all.
It was on the twentieth day of December that Irene left New York. Not until the twenty-second could a letter from her reach Hartley, if, on reflection or after conference with her father, she desired to make a communication. But the twenty-second came and departed without a word from the absent one. So did the twenty-third. By this time Hartley had grown very calm, self-adjusted and resolute. He had gone over and over again the history of their lives since marriage bound them together, and in this history he could see nothing hopeful as bearing on the future. He was never certain of Irene. Things said and done in moments of thoughtlessness or excitement, and not meant to hurt or offend, were constantly disturbing their peace. It was clouds, and rain, and fitful sunshine all the while. There were no long seasons of serene delight.
"Why," he said to himself, "seek to prolong this effort to blend into one two lives that seem hopelessly antagonistic. Better stand as far apart as the antipodes than live in perpetual strife. If I should go to Irene, and, through concession or entreaty, win her back again, what guarantee would I have for the future? None, none whatever. Sooner or later we must be driven asunder by the violence of our ungovernable passions, never to draw again together. We are apart now, and it is well. I shall not take the first step toward a reconciliation."
Hartley Emerson was a young man of cool purpose and strong will. For all that, he was quick-tempered and undisciplined. It was from the possession of these qualities that he was steadily advancing in his profession, and securing a practice at the bar which promised to give him a high position in the future. Persistence was another element of his character. If he adopted any course of conduct, it was a difficult thing to turn him aside. When he laid his hand upon the plough, he was of those who rarely look back. Unfortunate qualities these for a crisis in life such as now existed.
On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, no word having come from his wife, Emerson coolly penned the letter to Mr. Delancy which is given in the preceding chapter, and mailed it so that it would reach him on Christmas day. He was in earnest—sternly in earnest—as Mr. Delancy, on reading his letter, felt him to be. The honeymoon flight was one thing; this abandonment of a husband's home, another thing. Emerson gave to them a different weight and quality. Of the first act he could never think without a burning cheek—a sense of mortification—a pang of wounded pride; and long ere this he had made up his mind that if Irene ever left him again, it would be for ever, so far as perpetuity depended on his action in the case. He would never follow her nor seek to win her back.
Yes, he was in earnest. He had made his mind up for the worst, and was acting with a desperate coolness only faintly imagined by Irene on receipt of his letter to her father. Mr. Delancy, who understood Emerson's character better, was not deceived. He took the communication in its literal meaning, and felt appalled at the ruin which impended.
Emerson passed the whole of Christmas day alone in his house. At meal-times he went to the table and forced himself to partake lightly of food, in order to blind the servants, whose curiosity in regard to the absence of Mrs. Emerson was, of course, all on the alert. After taking tea he went out.
His purpose was to call upon a friend in whom he had great confidence, and confide to him the unhappy state of his affairs. For an hour he walked the streets in debate on the propriety of this course. Unable, however, to see the matter clearly, he returned home with the secret of his domestic trouble still locked in his own bosom.
It was past eight o'clock when he entered his dwelling. A light was burning in one of the parlors, and he stepped into the room. After walking for two or three times the length of the apartment, Mr. Emerson threw himself on a sofa, a deep sigh escaping his lips as he did so. At the same moment he heard a step in the passage, and the rustling of a woman's garments, which caused him to start again to his feet. In moving his eyes met the form of Irene, who advanced toward him, and throwing her arms around his neck, sobbed,
"Dear husband! can you, will you forgive my childish folly?"
His first impulse was to push her away, and he, even grasped her arms and attempted to draw them from his neck. She perceived this, and clung to him more eagerly.
"Dear Hartley!" she said, "will you not speak to me?"
"Irene!" His voice was cold and deep, and as he pronounced her name he withdrew himself from her embrace. At this she grew calm and stepped a pace back from him.
"Irene, we are not children," he said, in the same cold, deep voice, the tones of which were even and measured. "That time is past. Nor foolish young lovers, who fall out and make up again twice or thrice in a fortnight; but man and wife, with the world and its sober realities before us."
"Oh, Hartley," exclaimed Irene, as he paused; "don't talk to me in this way! Don't look at me so! It will kill me. I have done wrong. I have acted like foolish child. But I am penitent. It was half in sport that I went away, and I was so sure of seeing you at Ivy Cliff yesterday that I told father you were coming."
"Irene, sit down." And Emerson took the hand of his wife and led her to a sofa. Then, after closing the parlor door, he drew a chair and seated himself directly in front of her. There was a coldness and self-possession about him, that chilled Irene.
"It is a serious thing," he said, looking steadily in her face, "for a wife to leave, in anger, her husband's house for that of her father."
She tried to make some reply and moved her lips in attempted utterance, but the organs of speech refused to perform their office.
"You left me once before in anger, and I went after you. But it was clearly understood with myself then that if you repeated the act it would be final in all that appertained to me; that unless you returned, it would be a lifelong separation. Youhaverepeated the act; and, knowing your pride and tenacity of will, I did not anticipate your return. And so I was looking the sad, stern future in the face as steadily as possible, and preparing to meet it as a man conscious of right should be prepared to meet whatever trouble lies in store for him. I went out this evening, after passing the Christmas day alone, with the purpose of consulting an old and discreet friend as to the wisest course of action. But the thing was too painful to speak of yet. So I came back—and you are here!"
She looked at him steadily while he spoke, her face white as marble, and her colorless lips drawn back from her teeth.
"Irene," he continued, "it is folly for us to keep on in the way we have been going. I am wearied out, and you cannot be happy in a relation that is for ever reminding you that your own will and thought are no longer sole arbiters of action; that there is another will and another thought that must at times be consulted, and even obeyed. I am a man, and a husband; you a woman, and a wife,—we are equal as to rights and duties—equal in the eyes of God; but to the man and husband appertains a certain precedence in action; consent, co-operation and approval, if he be a thoughtful and judicious man, appertaining to the wife."
As Emerson spoke thus, he noticed a sign of returning warmth in her pale face, and a dim, distant flash in her eyes. Her proud spirit did not accept this view of their relation to each other. He went on:
"If a wife has no confidence in her husband's manly judgment, if she cannot even respect him, then the case is altered. She must be understanding and will to herself; must lead both him and herself if he be weak enough to consent. But the relation is not a true one; and marriage, under this condition of things, is only a semblance."
"And that is your doctrine?" said Irene. There was a shade of surprise in her voice that lingered huskily in her throat.
"That is my doctrine," was Emerson's firmly spoken answer.
Irene sighed heavily. Both were silent for some moments. At length Irene said, lifting her hands and bringing them down with an action of despair,
"In bonds! in bonds!"
"No, no!" Her husband replied quickly and earnestly. "Not in bonds, but in true freedom, if you will—the freedom of reciprocal action."
"Like bat and ball," she answered, with bitterness in her tones.
"No, like heart and lungs," he returned, calmly. "Irene! dear wife! Why misunderstand me? I have no wish to rule, and you know I have never sought to place you in bonds. I have had only one desire, and that is to be your husband in the highest and truest sense. But, I am a man—you a woman. There are two wills and two understandings that must act in the same direction. Now, in the nature of things, the mind of one must, helped by the mind of the other to see right, take, as a general thing, the initiative where action is concerned. Unless this be so, constant collisions will occur. And this takes us back to the question that lies at the basis of all order and happiness—which of the two minds shall lead?"
"A man and his wife are equal," said Irene, firmly. The strong individuality of her character was asserting its claims even in this hour of severe mental pain.
"Equal in the eyes of God, as I have said before, but where action is concerned one must take precedence of the other, for, it cannot be, seeing that their office and duties are different, that their judgment in the general affairs of life can be equally clear. A man's work takes him out into the world, and throws him into sharp collision with other men. He learns, as a consequence, to think carefully and with deliberation, and to decide with caution, knowing that action, based on erroneous conclusions, may ruin his prospects in an hour. Thus, like the oak, which, grows up exposed to all elemental changes, his judgment gains strength, while his perceptions, constantly trained, acquire clearness. But a woman's duties lie almost wholly within this region of strife and action, and she remains, for the most part, in a tranquil atmosphere. Allowing nothing for a radical difference in mental constitution, this difference of training must give a difference of mental power. The man's judgment in affairs generally must be superior to the woman's, and she must acquiesce in its decisions or there can be no right union in marriage."
"Must lose herself in him," said Irene, coldly. "Become a cypher, a slave. That will not suit me, Hartley!" And she looked at him with firmly compressed mouth and steady eyes.
It came to his lips to reply, "Then you had better return to your father," but he caught the words back ere they leaped forth into sound, and, rising, walked the floor for the space of more than five minutes, Irene not stirring from the sofa. Pausing at length, he said in a voice which had lost its steadiness:
"You had better go up to your room, Irene. We are not in a condition to help each other now."
Mrs. Emerson did not answer, but, rising, left the parlor and went as her husband had suggested. He stood still, listening, until the sound of her steps and the rustle of her garments had died away into silence, when he commenced slowly walking the parlor floor with his head bent down, and continued thus, as if he had forgotten time and place, for over an hour. Then, awakened to consciousness by a sense of dizziness and exhaustion, he laid himself upon a sofa, and, shutting his eyes, tried to arrest the current of his troubled thoughts and sink into sleep and forgetfulness.
FORsuch a reception the young wife was wholly unprepared. Suddenly her husband had put on a new character and assumed a right of control against which her sensitive pride and native love of freedom arose in strong rebellion. That she had done wrong in going away she acknowledged to herself, and had acknowledged to him. But he had met confession in a spirit so different from what was anticipated, and showed an aspect so cold, stern, and exacting, that she was bewildered. She did not, however, mistake the meaning of his language. It was plain that she understood the man's position to be one of dictation and control: we use the stronger aspect in which it was presented to her mind. As to submission, it was not in all her thoughts. Wrung to agony as her heart was, and appalled as she looked, trembling and shrinking into the future, she did not yield a moment to weakness.
Midnight found Irene alone in her chamber. She had flung herself upon a bed when she came up from the parlor, and fallen asleep after an hour of fruitless beating about in her mind. Awaking from a maze of troubled dreams, she started up and gazed, half fearfully, around the dimly-lighted room.
"Where am I?" she asked herself. Some moments elapsed before the painful events of the past few days began to reveal themselves to her consciousness.
"And where is Hartley?" This question followed as soon as all grew clear. Sleep had tranquilized her state, and restored a measure of just perception. Stepping from the bed, she went from the room and passed silently down stairs. A light still burned in the parlor where she had left her husband some hours before, and streamed out through the partly opened door. She stood for some moments, listening, but there was no sound of life within. A sudden fear crept into her heart. Her hand shook as she laid it upon the door and pressed it open. Stepping within, she glanced around with a frightened air.
On the sofa lay Hartley, with his face toward the light. It was wan and troubled, and the brows were contracted as if from intense pain. For some moments Irene stood looking at him; but his eyes were shut and he lay perfectly still. She drew nearer and bent down over him. He was sleeping, but his breath came so faintly, and there was so little motion of his chest, that the thought flashed through her with an electric thrill that he might be dying! Only by a strong effort of self-control did she repress a cry of fear, or keep back her hands from clasping his neck. In what a strong tide did love rush back upon her soul! Her heart overflowed with tenderness, was oppressed with yearning.
"Oh, Hartley, my husband, my dear husband!" she cried out, love, fear, grief and anguish blending wildly in her voice, as she caught him in her arms and awoke him with a rain of tears and kisses.
"Irene! Love! Darling! What ails you? Where are we?" were the confusedly uttered sentences of Mr. Emerson, as he started from the sofa and, holding his young wife from him, looked into her weeping face.
"Call me again 'love' and 'darling,' and I care not where we are!" she answered, in tones of passionate entreaty. "Oh, Hartley, my dear, dear husband! A desert island, with you, would be a paradise; a paradise, without you, a weary desert! Say the words again. Call me 'darling!'" And she let her head fall upon his bosom.
"God bless you!" he said, laying his hand upon her head. He was awake and clearly conscious of place and position. His voice was distinct, but tremulous and solemn. "God bless you, Irene, my wife!"
"And make me worthy of your love," she responded faintly.
"Mutually worthy of each other," said he. "Wiser—better—more patient and forbearing. Oh, Irene," and his voice grew deep and tender, "why may we not be to each other all that our hearts desire?"
"We can—we must—we will!" she answered, lifting her hidden face from his bosom and turning it up fondly to his. "God helping me, I will be to you a better wife in the future."
"And I a more patient, loving, and forbearing husband," he replied. "Oh that our hearts might beat together as one heart!"
For a little while Irene continued to gaze into her husband's countenance with looks of the tenderest love, and then hid her face on his bosom again.
And thus were they again reconciled.
AFTERthe storm. And they were reconciled. The clouds rolled back; the sun came out again with his radiant smiles and genial warmth. But was nothing broken? nothing lost? Did each flower in the garden of love lift its head as bravely as before? In every storm of passion something is lost. Anger is a blind fury, who tramples ruthlessly on tenderest and holiest things. Alas for the ruin that waits upon her footsteps!
The day that followed this night of reconciliation had many hours of sober introversion of thought for both Emerson and his wife; hours in which memory reproduced language, conduct and sentiments that could not be dwelt upon without painful misgivings for the future. They understood each other too well to make light account of things said and done, even in anger.
In going over, as Irene did many times, the language used by her husband on the night before, touching their relation as man and wife, and his prerogative, she felt the old spirit of revolt arising. She tried to let her thought fall into his rational presentation of the question involving precedence, and even said to herself that he was right; but pride was strong, and kept lifting itself in her mind. She saw, most clearly, the hardest aspect of the case. It was, in her view, command and obedience. And she knew that submission was, for her, impossible.
On the part of Emerson, the day's sober thought left his mind in no more hopeful condition than that of his wife. The pain suffered in consequence of her temporary flight from home, though lessened by her return, had not subsided. A portion of confidence in her was lost. He felt that he had no guarantee for the future; that at any moment, in the heat of passion, she might leave him again. He remembered, too distinctly, her words on the night before, when he tried to make her comprehend his view of the relation between man and wife—"That will not suit me, Hartley." And he felt that she was in earnest; that she would resist every effort he might make to lead and control as a man in certain things, just as she had done from the beginning.
In matrimonial quarrels you cannot kiss and make up again, as children do, forgetting all the stormy past in the sunshiny present. And this was painfully clear to both Hartley and Irene, as she, alone in her chamber, and he, alone in his office, pondered, on that day of reconciliation, the past and the future. Yet each resolved to be more forbearing and less exacting; to be emulous of concession, rather than exaction; to let love, uniting with reason, hold pride and self-will in close submission.
Their meeting, on Hartley's return home, at his usual late hour in the afternoon, was tender, but not full of the joyous warmth of feeling that often showed itself. Their hearts were not light enough for ecstasy. But they were marked in their attentions to each other, emulous of affectionate words and actions, yielding and considerate. And yet this mutual, almost formal, recognition of a recent state of painful antagonism left on each mind a feeling of embarrassment, checked words and sentences ere they came to utterance, and threw amid their pleasant talks many intermittent pauses.
Often through the day had Mr. Emerson, as he dwelt on the unhappy relation existing between himself and his wife, made up his mind to renew the subject of their true position to each other, as briefly touched upon in their meeting of the night before, and as often changed his purpose, in fear of another rupture. Yet to him it seemed of the first importance that this matter, as a basis of future peace, should be settled between them, and settled at once. If he held one view and she another, and both were sensitive, quick-tempered and tenacious of individual freedom, fierce antagonism might occur at any moment. He had come home inclined to the affirmative side of the question, and many times during the evening it was on his lips to introduce the subject. But he was so sure that it would prove a theme of sharp discussion, that he had not the courage to risk the consequences.
There was peace again after this conflict, but it was not, by any means, a hopeful peace. It had no well-considered basis. The causes which had produced a struggle were still in existence, and liable to become active, by provocation, at any moment. No change had taken place in the characters, dispositions, temperaments or general views of life in either of the parties. Strife had ceased between them only in consequence of the pain it involved. A deep conviction of this fact so sobered the mind of Mr. Emerson, and altered, in consequence, his manner toward Irene, that she felt its reserve and coldness as a rebuke that chilled the warmth of her tender impulses.
And this manner did not greatly change as the days and weeks moved onward. Memory kept too vividly in the mind of Emerson that one act, and the danger of its repetition on some sudden provocation. He could not feel safe and at ease with his temple of peace built close to a slumbering volcano, which was liable at any moment to blaze forth and bury its fair proportions in lava and ashes.
Irene did not comprehend her husband's state of mind. She felt painfully the change in his manner, but failed in reaching the true cause. Sometimes she attributed his coldness to resentment; sometimes to defect of love; and sometimes to a settled determination on his part to inflict punishment. Sometimes she spent hours alone, weeping over these sad ruins of her peace, and sometimes, in a spirit of revolt, she laid down for herself a line of conduct intended to react against her husband. But something in his calm, kind, self-reliant manner, when she looked into his face, broke down her purpose. She was afraid of throwing herself against a rock which, while standing immovable, might bruise her tender limbs or extinguish life in the strong concussion.
BOTHEmerson and his wife came up from this experience changed in themselves and toward each other. A few days had matured them beyond what might have been looked for in as many years. Life suddenly put on more sober hues, and the future laid off its smiles and beckonings onward to greener fields and mountain-heights of felicity. There was a certain air of manly self-confidence, a firmer, more deliberate way of expressing himself on all subjects, and an evidence of mental clearness and strength, which gave to Irene the impression of power and superiority not wholly agreeable to her self-love, yet awakening emotions of pride in her husband when she contrasted him with other men. As a man among men, he was, as he had ever been, her beau ideal; but as a husband, she felt a daily increasing spirit of resistance and antagonism, and it required constant watchfulness over herself to prevent this feeling from exhibiting itself in act.
On the part of Emerson, the more he thought about this subject of the husband's relative duties and prerogatives—thought as a man and as a lawyer—the more strongly did he feel about it, and the more tenacious of his assumed rights did he become. Matters which seemed in the beginning of such light importance as scarcely to attract his attention, now loomed up before him as things of moment. Thus, if he spoke of their doing some particular thing in a certain way, and Irene suggested a different way, instead of yielding to her view, he would insist upon his own. If she tried to show him a reason why her way was best, he would give no weight to her argument or representation. On the other hand, it is but just to say that he rarely opposed her independent suggestions or interfered with her freedom; and if she had been as considerate toward him, the danger of trouble would have been lessened.
It is the little foxes that spoil the tender grapes, and so it is the little reactions of two spirits against each other that spoil the tender blossoms of love and destroy the promised vintage. Steadily, day by day, and week by week, were these light reactions marring the happiness of our undisciplined young friends, and destroying in them germ after germ, and bud after bud, which, if left to growth and development, would have brought forth ripe, luscious fruit in the later summer of their lives. Trifles, light as air were noticed, and their importance magnified. Words, looks, actions, insignificant in themselves, were made to represent states of will or antagonism which really had no existence.
Unhappily for their peace, Irene had a brooding disposition. She held in her memory utterances and actions forgotten by her husband, and, by dwelling upon, magnified and gave them an importance to which they were not entitled. Still more unhappily for their peace, Irene met about this time, and became attached to, a lady of fine intellectual attainments and fascinating manners, who was an extremist in opinion on the subject of sexual equality. She was married, but to a man greatly her inferior, though possessing some literary talent, which he managed to turn to better account than she did her finer powers. He had been attracted by her brilliant qualities, and in approaching her scorched his wings, and ever after lay at her feet. She had no very high respect for him, but found a husband on many accounts a convenient thing, and so held on to the appendage. If he had been man enough to remain silent on the themes she was so fond of discussing on all occasions, people of common sense and common perception would have respected him for what he was worth. But he gloried in his bondage, and rattled his chains as gleefully as if he were discoursing sweet music. What she announced oracularly, he attempted to demonstrate by bald and feeble arguments. He was the false understanding to her perverted will.
The name of this lady was Mrs. Talbot. Irene met her soon after her marriage and removal to New York, and was charmed with her from the beginning. Mr. Emerson, on the contrary, liked neither her nor her sentiments, and considered her a dangerous friend for his wife. He expressed himself freely in regard to her at the commencement of the intimacy; but Irene took her part so warmly, and used such strong language in her favor, that Emerson deemed it wisest not to create new sentiments in her favor out of opposition to himself.
Within a week from that memorable Christmas day on which Irene came back from Ivy Cliff, Mrs. Talbot, who had taken a fancy to the spirited, independent, undisciplined wife of Emerson, called in to see her new friend. Irene received her cordially. She was, in fact, of all her acquaintances, the one she most desired to meet.
"I'm right glad you thought of making me a call," said Mrs. Emerson, as they sat down together. "I've felt as dull all the morning as an anchorite."
"You dull!" Mrs. Talbot affected surprise, as she glanced round the tasteful room in which they were sitting. "What is there to cloud your mind? With such a home and such a husband as you possess life ought to be one long, bright holiday."
"Good things in their way," replied Mrs. Emerson. "But not everything."
She said this in a kind of thoughtless deference to Mrs. Talbot's known views on the subject of homes and husbands, which she had not hesitated to call women's prisons and women's jailers.
"Indeed! And have you made that discovery?"
Mrs. Talbot laughed a low, gurgling sort of laugh, leaning, at the same time, in a confidential kind of way, closer to Mrs. Emerson.
"Discovery!"
"Yes."
"It is no discovery," said Mrs. Emerson. "The fact is self-evident. There is much that a woman needs for happiness beside a home and a husband."
"Right, my young friend, right!" Mrs. Talbot's manner grew earnest. "No truer words were ever spoken. Yes—yes—a woman needs a great deal more than these to fill the measure of her happiness; and it is through the attempt to restrict and limit her to such poor substitutes for a world-wide range and freedom that she has been so dwarfed in mental stature, and made the unhappy creature and slave of man's hard ambition and indomitable love of power. There were Amazons of old—as the early Greeks knew to their cost—strong, self-reliant, courageous women, who acknowledged no human superiority. Is the Amazonian spirit dead in the earth? Not so! It is alive, and clothing itself with will, power and persistence. Already it is grasping the rein, and the mettled steed stands impatient to feel the rider's impulse in the saddle. The cycle of woman's degradation and humiliation is completed. A new era in the world's social history has dawned for her, and the mountain-tops are golden with the coming day."
Irene listened with delight and even enthusiasm to these sentiments, uttered with ardor and eloquence.
"It is not woman's fault, taking her in the aggregate, that she is so weak in body and mind, and such a passive slave to man's will," continued Mrs. Talbot. "In the retrocession of races toward barbarism mere muscle, in which alone man is superior to woman, prevailed. Physical strength set itself up as master. Might made right. And so unhappy woman was degraded below man, and held to the earth, until nearly all independent life has been crushed out of her. As civilization has lifted nation after nation out of the dark depths of barbarism, the condition of woman physically has been improved. For the sake of his children, if from no better motive, man has come to treat his wife with a more considerate kindness. If she is still but the hewer of his wood and the drawer of his water, he has, in many cases, elevated her to the position of dictatress in these humble affairs. He allows her 'help!' But, mentally and socially, he continues to degrade her. In law she is scarcely recognized, except as a criminal. She is punished if she does wrong, but has no legal protection in her rights as an independent human being. She is only man's shadow. The public opinion that affects her is made by him. The earliest literature of a country is man's expression; and in this man's view of woman is always apparent. The sentiment is repeated generation after generation, and age after age, until the barbarous idea comes down, scarcely questioned, to the days of high civilization, culture and refinement.
"Here, my young friend, you have the simple story of woman's degradation in this age of the world. Now, so long as she submits, man will hold her in fetters. Power and dominion are sweet. If a man cannot govern a state, he will be content to govern a household—but govern he will, if he can find anywhere submissive subjects."
"He is born a tyrant; that I have always felt," said Mrs. Emerson. "You see it in a family of sisters and brothers. The boys always attempt to rule their sisters, and if the latter do not submit, then comes discord and contention."
"I have seen this, in hundreds of instances," replied Mrs. Talbot. "It was fully illustrated in my own case. I had two brothers, who undertook to exercise their love of domineering on me. But they did not find a passive subject—no, not by any means. I was never obedient to their will, for I had one of my own. We made the house often a bedlam for our poor mother; but I never gave way—no, not for an instant, come what might. I had different stuff in me from that of common girls, and in time the boys were glad to let me alone."
"Are your brothers living?" asked Mrs. Emerson.
"Yes. One resides in New York, and the other in Boston. One is a merchant, the other a physician."
"How was it as you grew older?"
"About the same. They are like nearly all men—despisers of woman's intellect."
Irene sighed, and, letting her eyes fall to the floor, sat lost in thought for some moments. The suggestions of her friend were not producing agreeable states of mind.
"They reject the doctrine of an equality in the sexes?" said Mrs. Emerson.
"Of course. All men do that," replied Mrs. Talbot.
"Your husband among the rest?"
"Talbot? Oh, he's well enough in his way!" The lady spoke lightly, tossing her head in a manner that involved both indifference and contempt. "I never take him into account when discussing these matters. That point was settled between us long and long ago. We jog on without trouble. Talbot thinks as I do about the women—or pretends that he does, which is all the same."
"A rare exception to the general run of husbands," said Irene, thinking at the same time how immeasurably superior Mr. Emerson was to this weakling, and despising him in her heart for submitting to be ruled by a woman. Thus nature and true perception spoke in her, even while she was seeking to blind herself by false reasonings.
"Yes, he's a rare exception; and it's well for us both that it is so. If he were like your husband, for instance, one of us would have been before the legislature for a divorce within twelve months of our marriage night."
"Like my husband! What do you mean?" Mrs. Emerson drew herself up, with half real and half affected surprise.
"Oh, he's one of your men who have positive qualities about them—strong in intellect and will."
Irene felt pleased with the compliment bestowed upon her husband.
"But wrong in his ideas of woman."
"How do you know?" asked Irene.
"How do I know? As I know all men with whom I come in contact. I probe them."
"And you have probed my husband?"
"Undoubtedly."
"And do not regard him as sound on this subject?"
"No sounder than other men of his class. He regards woman as man's inferior."
"I think you state the case too strongly," said Mrs. Emerson, a red spot burning on her cheek. "He thinks them mentally different."
"Of course he does."
"But not different as to superiority and inferiority," replied Irene.
"Mere hair-splitting, my child. If they are mentally different, one must be more highly organized than the other, and of course, superior. Mr. Emerson thinks a man's rational powers stronger than a woman's, and that, therefore, he must direct in affairs generally, and she follow his lead. I know; I've talked with and drawn him out on this subject."
Mrs. Emerson sighed again faintly, while her eyes dropped from the face of her visitor and sunk to the floor. A shadow was falling on her spirit—a weight coming down with a gradually increasing pressure upon her heart. She remembered the night of her return from Ivy Cliff and the language then used by her husband on this very subject, which was mainly in agreement with the range of opinions attributed to him by Mrs. Talbot.
"Marriage, to a spirited woman," she remarked, in a pensive undertone, "is a doubtful experiment."
"Always," returned her friend. "As woman stands now in the estimate of man, her chances for happiness are almost wholly on the side of old-maidism. Still, freedom is the price of struggle and combat; and woman will first have to show, in actual strife, that she is the equal of her present lord."
"Then you would turn every home into a battlefield?" said Mrs. Emerson.
"Every home in which there is a tyrant and an oppressor," was the prompt answer. "Many fair lands, in all ages, have been trampled down ruthlessly by the iron feet of war; and that were better, as the price of freedom, than slavery."
Irene sighed again, and was again silent.
"What," she asked, "if the oppressor is so much stronger than the oppressed that successful resistance is impossible? that with every struggle the links of the chain that binds her sink deeper into her quivering flesh?"
"Every age and every land have seen noble martyrs in the cause of freedom. It is better to die for liberty than live an ignoble slave," answered the tempter.
"And I will die a free woman." This Irene said in her heart.