CHAPTER IV.HER STORY AND FATE.
“Who reads the riddle right?And who can answer whyThese clouds sweep over our mental life?Not you, brave priest, nor I.”
“Instead of being tenderly cared for, as you imagine,” said Miss Hill, “I had a loveless childhood, though above all things I wanted to be loved and to be told that I was loved. I could have been an angel of goodness had I had even a little love; but next to none was given me. If parents only knew that by showing love for their children they made for them a foundation of happiness which no after experiences could knock from under their feet, perhaps they would be kinder than some of them are. But why speak of ifs at all? If we knew at the beginning of life what we know at the end of it, perhaps we should never have to make the journey. I have thought often that I could bear my trouble courageously if I had sweet memories of childhood; but I have only bitter ones. Sometimes I have been unhappy since I have been earning my own bread among people unknown to me before, but never, never for a moment so miserable as I was always in the home into which I was born.
“I understand the reason of it all better now and blame nobody. The law was simply working itself out into its natural results. If I suffered—well, who doesn’t suffer as the mills of the gods grind, set in operation as they usually are by ignorant hands? My father and mother were natural enemies, who should have lived as far asunder as the poles, instead of enacting a hideous, lifelong tragedy in the name of marriage. I am quite sure they hated each other energetically most of the time and bitterly the rest of it, yet they stuck together and brought seven children into the world to suffer in a thousand ways from their incompatible union, and considered themselves virtuous in so doing. Yet, that is the kind of thing that passes for morality. Long ago I saw that it was a foul lie, and the direst foe to morality. When my eldest sister was married, and I heard the words ‘What God has joined together let no man put asunder,’ clinching the curse, as it were, it set me to thinking and asking questions. Somebody explained to me that all husbands and wives were joined together by God, and could not possibly be separated without going violently against His will, except by death, and that, of course, was in accordance with His will. I pondered over this with a heavy heart. Then God had united my father and mother. This dreadful work had been done by His hand, and I was wroth againstHim, for every day I felt and saw the evil effects of it.
“Is it strange that ours was a loveless family? With no love between husband and wife, could they be expected to love their children? Can a mother be expected to love the child who comes unwelcome to her arms? Can a father love children in whom he sees the features and traits of the woman to whom he is hopelessly bound and yet hates? We were all victims of violated law, so who was to blame? Ignorance! Ignorance, which is responsible for all the evil and all the suffering under the sun. In fact ignorance is evil, and evil is ignorance, nothing more nor less. You know Shakspeare says there is no darkness but ignorance.
“We frequently have well-meaning persons say that ill-mated married folk should stick together ‘for the sake of the children.’ Yet for that very reason they should separate. Their children and children’s children pay the penalty of their violation of the laws of harmony, and still farther down the line of the future goes the misery that had its origin in a hateful marriage. Pray tell me how is morality served thereby?
“In addition to the discord that made our lives wretched my parents were victims of the desperate struggle for existence, in which the finer qualities were squeezed out. This so absorbed them that the true meaning of home and familyescaped them, and the material side of the situation alone received attention. We were all wretched. It was a horrible experience. There we were, not of our own choice, wedged into an unwelcome place and unable to extricate ourselves. We were plainly told that whatever was done for us was to help make us able to take care of ourselves. We were urged to be industrious at school, because learning would enable us to be self-supporting. I never heard any other reason put forth in defence of education. This was dinned into our ears until life had but one meaning,—that of getting on in the world. The problem ended there. The result, I need hardly say, was to make us selfish. Instead of loving one another and sharing each others’ burdens, each thought only of his or her individual success, and the cherished dream of all was to get away—to go forth where there was opportunity.
“I was next to the youngest, a sister, an extraordinary little being, who had brought with her traces of a wisdom not of the earth, and a recollection of conditions and surroundings more to her taste than our jarring household. She talked much of a home that she had had somewhere, and often wept to go back to it, nor could she ever be persuaded to call the place in which she found herself home. God knows how alien and comfortless it must have seemed to her delicate spirit. When three years old she leftus, such was her good fortune. At least it seemed good to me even then, and when they told me the usual fanciful tales of wings and a shining heaven, I envied her.
“One by one my sisters and brothers made haste to leave. So eager were they to get away that some took the first matrimonial boat on which they could secure passage, and thereby made sad shipwreck of their lives. How I longed to be loved. When I saw other children petted and caressed my heart swelled almost to bursting. The result of my unsatisfied longing was that I took refuge in my imagination and there lived a life as congenial and blissful as my outside life was distasteful and miserable. I surrounded myself with imaginary friends whom I loved and who loved me—charming, agreeable, superior people—men and women, not children. The misery that prevailed in our home had taken my childhood from me before I knew I possessed it. I early learned the solemn truth that ‘each soul in what is most itself, in what is deepest and nearest, lives alone, and that there is more loneliness in life than there is communion.’ I, too, like my little sister, suffered from a strange homesickness of the spirit, a longing for sympathetic association, for companionship, in short. I wanted congenial air, ‘that air which may be found everywhere, if we can find sympathetic souls to breathe it with us, and which is to befound nowhere without them,—the air of the land of our dreams, of the country of the ideal.’ Plotinus says ‘Our true country is that from whence we came.’ It has always seemed to me that far back in the past I lived somewhere and was happy. Now I am ever searching for the souls who are in sympathy with me, as in that far-off time. They are my own people, rather than those to whom I am related by consanguine ties. They or their counterparts exist somewhere on the earth, I believe, and the real business of my life is to find them.
“One’s own people! Think of what it would be to dwell among them, where sympathy met one in every glance, and love made itself felt in every tone of the voice.
“I was fond of study, was quick to learn, and when only seventeen was so far advanced that I felt ready to begin life on my own account. Like the others, I was restless to leave a home which had never been more than a shelter to me. I had no dreams of marrying, and walking in the same treadmill in which so many millions of women have worn out their souls as well as their bodies. I could never see why all women should spend their lives in cooking and nursing children any more than why all men should till the soil, which was civilized man’s primal occupation. I saw, too, very clearly, that women could never be more than half-fledged mentally, or have anyreal influence in the world of affairs so long as they were dependents financially. They must achieve pecuniary independence before they could hope for wider orbits, as it were. To get an opportunity to carve my own way in life was my unceasing wish. So unceasing and earnest was it that it created its own fulfilment. You may put it down as a great truth, that a desire held with earnestness, faith and persistence, will bring to the one who holds it its object. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’ is a law that is operative everywhere.
“I held myself ready to do whatever I could find that needed doing, but always in the day-dreams of my future I saw myself a successful painter and author, because hundreds of beautiful pictures danced before my mind and begged to be put on canvas, and thousands of thoughts and fancies flitted through my brain that I longed to share with all who would hear me.
“I had a gift for drawing, but had advanced as far as I could go without better instructors than were attainable where I lived. One thing, however, I had, which was a blessing to my artistic sense and a solace to my spirit. That was a beautiful landscape to look upon. As the mental atmosphere of home was always inharmonious I lived outdoors as much as possible, and from the fine view the location commanded I extracted much profound pleasure.
“One day I saw an advertisement in a newspaper to the effect that a lithographer in a little city fifty miles away wanted an assistant whom he could train to suit his needs. The next day found me face to face with the advertiser, talking myself up unblushingly. He was surprised, of course, that a girl whose frocks as yet came no lower than her ankles, should want to learn an art presumably sacred to men; but after some hesitation he engaged me, and I found myself launched in life as an independent, self-supporting factor. It was a proud day for me, I assure you. To the hardships of the situation I never gave a thought. The chance to work was the wedge that was to split up the tree of my future, so I set myself to hammering upon it with might and main. My pecuniary recompense was microscopical, but even that gave me no distress. Such as it was I managed to live within it, and look forward to something better.
“The lithographer’s establishment proved to be very interesting to me. Some excellent work was done there, and some odd jobs of various kinds—even the engraving of spoons sometimes—all of which I learned to do. In fact I learned to do anything and everything there as well as anybody, and before long received a larger salary, though never anything very imposing. I considered the time well spent, however, for I was perfecting myself in drawing, and when out of officestudied languages and read much. I was happy—happier than I had ever been in my life, for I was out of the wretchedness that prevailed at home, and was treated with politeness and respect by everybody.
“Among the patrons of our establishment with whom I came in contact wasMr.Doring. He made no particular impression on me, until an epidemic came and his three children fell victims to it and died. Then as I heard considerable talk about his sorrow in the office, I tried to express my sympathy when next I saw him.
“Nearly a year passed when the community was startled by the announcement that his wife had died suddenly and suspiciously, and he had been arrested as her murderer. As in all such cases, some considered the accusation preposterous, and others believed in it with vindictive energy, and clamored for his punishment. I was indignant at their gross cruelty and expressed my opinion freely—too freely, I was told. He was tried and acquitted, but his acquittal did not set him right in the eyes of many of his townspeople. They talked over the circumstances, magnifying all the suspicious indications and inventing new ones, and they treated him to cuts, contemptuous looks and other expressions of malevolence, until they almost broke him down. You know there are human beings who bitterly resent it when a sensation doesn’t develop into the last phase ofthe horrible, and of such that town was largely composed.
“A few days after his acquittal Doring came into our office and thanked me warmly for my kind expressions of faith in his innocence, of which it seems he had been told. He looked haggard and ill, and at sight of him I felt renewed indignation at the cruelty of man to man, and I said so as earnestly as I could.
“About that time I began to notice something queer in the faces of people when they talked about Doring to me. I could not read it clearly, but that it was inimical to me I soon discovered. It was something they pretended to conceal, yet really wanted to make conspicuously noticeable. It was a suspicion of a low order, but what? The man was nothing to me more than any other victim of injustice. What had I to do with him and his sorrowful affairs?
“I am intuitive and sensitive. As soon as I began to notice this unspoken suspicion, I began to look guilty. My face flamed red at the mention of his name or any allusion to the case. You can understand that, but minds of a lower grade could not. They construed it as a sign of guilt, yet it was but the knowledge of their offensive thoughts that embarrassed and unsettled me. To know that I was suspected made me look confused and guilty. It was always so even when I was a child at school. If a culprit were sought, Ilooked like one. You know, however, that most people are mere surface readers of others, and nothing in the world is so little understood as a delicate, sensitive, high spirit. I who was far removed in thought from that of which I was suspected, crimsoned with horror when I encountered this base suspicion in the faces of those who harbored it, and it made me self-conscious and shy when I spoke with Doring himself. In short, it ate into me and destroyed my peace.
“In a little while the air grew black with it. All pretence of concealment was abandoned, and significant looks blossomed into speech. They said Doring and I were infatuated with each other, and that he had killed his wife in order to be able to marry me, and that I had put him up to it. The vilest and falsest tales were circulated about us. The miserable local newspapers printed thinly-veiled insinuations, and fool friends came and poured abhorrent stories into my ears.
“The brutal malevolence of their lies amazed as well as horrified me. I could not see what I had done to bring such an avalanche of malice upon me. You may imagine what I suffered. Alone, and with a heart that had in it originally nothing but good will for everybody, this cruel experience almost withered me for life.
“I longed to leave the accursed place which now seemed peopled with devils. Driven almostto desperation, at last I went forth to find a spot untainted by the hatred that there had destroyed my peace. I came here to Gougal’s great engraving house, and with nothing in the way of help or influence from anybody, asked for employment and got it.—‘Ask and ye shall receive’ being a true law. Here I have been ever since, almost happy—at least not miserable.
“But this is not all my story. The difficult part is to come. A few days before I leftMr.Doring came into the office where I was at work and told me that he loved me. I was surprised and startled, and yet I listened gladly, and the story sounded sweet to me. It seemed to me that I had always loved him, though I don’t know why, for I am sure I had not thought of it before. We were both victims of unjust and malicious public opinion, so perhaps it was natural that we turned to each other for consolation, though I have often wondered since what it was that suddenly filled my mind with love for a man who, until that moment was no more to me than any other. Are the words ‘I love you’ so potent that they can create responsive love? In no sense is he my ideal, but the feeling that came into life when he spoke those words to me has dominated me from that hour, though I have never seen him since that day. I have wondered if he loved me before that scandal came upon him, and if, in some mysterious way, people foundit out and constructed their tales according to their light on such situations? Or whether their stories put it into his head, and if so, through what occult channels was it communicated to me? I am almost persuaded that it was brought about somehow by the accusations of the community in which we lived. Somebody put out the suggestion, it reached his mind and there sprouted, took root and grew until it was strong enough to transplant a counterpart of itself to mine, for ideas are transmissible, you know. Ah! if we but knew the mystery of mind we should know all there is to know, perhaps.
“After I came away, Doring left too. He writes me constantly, and is now urging me strongly to marry him. I believe that I love him, and the knowledge that he loves me sustains me. Merely thinking about it keeps me from being lonely. ’Tis said that love is life; that even the love of a bird or a dog will keep a human being alive. You and others have wondered why I am apparently so contented and cheerful and want no lovers, only good comrades. It is because my heart is anchored.
“And yet I shrink from marrying Doring. It would mean the stirring up of all the now stagnant pools of scandals. I am content to go on as I am, for a time at least, finding my joy in the thoughts of being loved; but he is not willing. He says he has waited long enough—that thematter must be decided one way or the other very soon. When I think of giving him up, of putting it all out of my life and plodding on with nothing to sustain me, I feel that I can’t do it. Unhappily, I am one of those miserable beings who are loyal by nature and cannot help it if they would. An affection becomes a part of me, and can’t be put off without disaster to the whole structure.
“This love has absorbed me to the extent of destroying my ambition to achieve something excellent with pen or pencil. What dreams have I not woven around this central idea—dreams impossible of fulfilment, yet nearly as blissful as reality.
“In a few daysMr.Doring will be here. He has written me that he intends to come to talk over our future. So you shall see him.”
One evening soon after as Westfield was returning to the house he met Miss Hill accompanied by a stranger. “It is Doring,” he said, and his heart sank. Intuitive moments come to all of us, when the hidden is revealed, when souls stand naked before our eyes, stripped of the cloaks and without the props which make them fair and imposing to ordinary perception. Such a moment came to Westfield, and he saw Louis Doring with an inner sight to which everything was made plain, and as he looked his face grewwhite to the lips and his eyes became fixed and glassy like those of the dead.
“God help her,” he groaned inwardly, as he passed on. “The man is a fool—a stupid, brainless, flabby character—a dull dolt with regular features and a straight figure made imposing by the tailor’s skill, and a selfish heart. Exactly the kind of beast that can dazzle women as brainless as himself. But how has he bewitchedher? Why do I ask, when I know that the destinies of the grandest and sweetest souls, a grim and perverse fate often rules? The ‘highest suffer most,’ the ‘strongest wander farthest and most hopelessly are lost.’
“How can I bear it? It crucifies me to know that that wax-faced, tailor-made biped has been carried in her mind as a hero and worshipped. And now after years of deception he will destroy her whole life.
“I see how it came about. The scandal invented by the community suggested it to him—sowed the seeds in both their heads. We live under the influence of suggestion of one kind or another all the time. What is the force of public opinion but this on a gigantic scale? The wretch has sighed and maundered and posed before her about his sufferings until he awoke her sympathy, and he will hang on to her and will not give her up because he is attracted by the magnetism of her strength of character. Andshe, deluded soul, idealizes him, endows him with splendid qualities—in short, sees in him that which is in herself. She will go straight to her destruction, and I can’t save her. Until I saw him I believed the best of him; but now Iknowwhat is before her if she should marry him. It will be like awaking from a blissful trance—it will be just that. O my heart of light! O, my tall young pine! The tragedy of your life is more than I can bear.”
Going hastily to his room he made ready and tore away to the country for a few days. “I could not endure to see the creature again,” he said, as his train pulled out of the station.
When he returned everything was going on as usual at the house, yet nothing was the same to him, nor could it ever be again. He did not speak of Doring to Miss Hill, but she herself went back to the subject, chiding him for going away.
“I sawMr.Doring,” he answered, curtly, “and didn’t like him. You may think my opinion of him is colored by jealousy, but I am sure it is not. I hope you will never marry him.”
“Well, I have not yet decided to marry him,” she said.
“If you have not given him up entirely it will end that way at last. You are merely temporizing with the situation, and it will master you.”
“Probably,” she said, wearily, and then they spoke of it no more.
Not long after, Westfield went away. When he was gone she felt a sense of desolation new in her experience. He was so good a comrade. Why had he been so foolish as to leave? Could men and women never be good comrades—only lovers, or nothing?
The days went on apparently as though there had never been a Westfield, though the other members of the household thought Miss Hill was not quite like herself, that perhaps she was fonder of Westfield than she had believed herself to be, and regretted him. Brooks was strongly inclined to this opinion, though when he talked with his wife about it he drubbed Westfield soundly. “Blast the fool,” he said, “what could she do but let him go, even if she were fond of him? What woman not an idiot would think of marrying Westfield, who is simply a charming failure, a penniless, indifferent, intellectual tramp?”
In truth they were half right in their surmises. The old content had vanished. She missed the intellectual sympathy of Westfield, and Doring kept her restless with his importunings. She read his letters by the light of her own integrity, and therefore saw not the rank selfishness of thewriter, who was vain and dull, but persistent to a degree that made him formidable as a wooer. He had recourse to all the selfish arguments of little souls. He said he was so perturbed in mind that he could not get on in anything, consequently in danger of financial ruin, and hinted darkly at suicide. A crisis had come to her. Forces within and without were wrestling over her destiny. Unseen hands were pushing her. At times she determined to marry Doring at all risks, and thus settle the problem, but the decision did not bring peace, as decisions should. A sickening sense of imminent disaster followed, and she was at sea again.
Weeks rolled into months, and the chaotic misery of her mind was making her look worn and ill. A day came at last in which the genius of her fate cast the die.
“The pursuit of happiness is a constitutional privilege, even for women. At least one has the right to choose the particular form of misery one prefers. Now Fate,” she said, “I am tired. Take you the reins and guide. What I am to meet, I must meet, and no shrinking or hesitating will avail against the inevitable.”
And so she too, went away, never to return.