CHAPTER V.THE END OF THE DREAM.
“O shaven priest that pratest of souls,Knowest thou not that men are molesThat blindly grope and burrow?The field that is grey shall be green again;But whether with grass or whether with grain,He knoweth who turns the furrow.”
Miss Cartice Hill had been Mrs. Louis Doring six months,—a little portion of time, yet long enough to destroy all her illusions, and arouse her from her trance. The man she had idealized and loved for four years was a different person from him who was now her husband. Day by day the awakening had been going on, until his character stood revealed before her in repellent nudity, with all its pitiable defects unconcealed, and the worst of it was that he was not ashamed. A brilliant rascal usually has some qualities that command respect, however abominable his knavish ones, but Doring’s defects were the contemptible frailties of a fool. His wife had expected intellectual companionship, but she found his even-featured face a mask over dull nothingness, a shield for the emptiness of his mind. When the full force of this discovery came upon her it covered her with humiliationand destroyed her self-confidence and self-respect, nor did these qualities ever return to her in their former strength in all the future years. To have made so fatal a blunder shook her faith in her own wisdom forever. How was it that she had been blind and now saw? Who had woven the spell which had glorified its object from afar? She had been her own enchanter, though she knew it not. In him she had seen only that which was within herself, until forced to see him as he really was.
Two days after their marriage her husband said to her, “Cartice, do you have any money?”
“Yes,” she answered, pleasantly.
“How much?”
“I don’t know. See,” and she handed him her purse.
He took it and counted fifty dollars. “Is that all?” he asked, in a disappointed voice. “As you had only yourself to support you should have saved money.”
“I did save some,” she said, turning pale.
“Where is it?”
She told him.
“I guess we shall have to use it right now,” he said. “Some business ventures of mine have not begun to pay yet, so it’s a good thing we have this ready money.”
From time to time she checked out the little capital that represented years of self-denial, untilit was all gone. In the meantime she learned that the “business ventures” were airy nothings, having no existence outside of empty words. What he had done in the past four years she never knew, as he had nothing to show for the time, not a foothold anywhere.
They floated about until her money was gone, without definite aim and without effort on his part to change conditions. To her it seemed a steady journey to destruction.
Their marriage had revived the story of his trial for murder, and other dark stories were added thereto and published in vile newspapers throughout the country. Some of these came to Cartice’s hands by accident, and some by the foul designs of wretches who find pleasure in giving pain. In these infamous columns she saw herself described as a bold and scheming adventuress, who had obtained an unholy influence over a hitherto blameless man, inciting him to murder and ruining him financially as well as morally.
“I have heard newspapers called civilizers,” she said, “but such as these should be called heart-breakers.”
That experience did break her heart, since we have no other name for the loss of all joy in living. It wrought a pitiful change in her. Her bright mobile face became set, rigid and unreadable. “Oh, but to hide from the eyes of men”is ever the cry of the proud spirit when suffering. When this cannot be done, it makes for itself a mask behind which its wounded pride and aching heart take shelter. The mask which Cartice Doring then put on was so impenetrable that it repelled any meddling with or probing into what lay beneath. It was her shield against that most merciless of all weapons, the human eye, and she wore it for many and many a day and could not cast it off.
Every heart, however self-sufficient its outward bearing, craves sympathy, that precious and potent power which holds the universe together, yet so little faith have we in the compassion of our fellows that nothing in hours of anguish is so dreaded as their gaze.
Cartice’s family discarded her. Being loveless by nature and worshippers of the Monster God, Self, they saw her position only in the light that affected them, by the unpleasant notoriety she had attained, and showed no consideration for the poor victim of malice.
With all this came the humiliation of dire poverty. Her money was all spent, and they could no longer pay for the food and shelter they were receiving in a dingy little hotel in a second-class city. For a time she was kept from sinking under the avalanche of miseries that fell upon her by an illusion to which she held with the clutch of desperation. That was her faith inDoring’s love. Feeble of intellect and contemptible of character as she now knew him to be, she still loved him and believed that he loved her, not knowing that the power to love is in proportion to intellectual capacity and moral development, that a weak nature is as wavering in its affections as in other things, an easy prey to every fulsome word and smile from new sirens.
A woman in the hotel made the art of flattering men a business and had had many years practice in it. By way of recompense for what external charms Time had taken from her, it had given her considerable skill in her art, a skill she seldom used without effect. Her method of erotic archery was of a coarse and common order, but as her victims dropped readily enough, when she twanged her bow, there was no need to resort to subtler ones. It was her opinion that fine work in her specialty was thrown away upon men, one and all; that nothing was too gross for their vanity to feed upon, and her experiences bore out her theories. Doring’s symmetrical face and figure caught her fancy, and she leveled her trusty crossbow at him, and brought him down with the first arrow, an albatross to be proud of, she thought. Her work went merrily on, and the unsuspecting Cartice saw none of it. More experienced eyes did, however. All the rest of the women in the house were aware of it, and some of the bolder onesundertook the delicate work of opening Mrs. Doring’s eyes. While they veiled their good intentions in indirect phraseology she would not see it, and when they came down to plain speech she resented it as a thing absurd and impossible. They went away with ruffled feathers, but predicting a day of doom for her in the near future, when something would happen that would make her see. They were true prophets, for the day was at hand.
As she was passing through the hall in the twilight she came upon two figures clasped in each other’s arms under the broad stairway. They were her husband and Mrs. Parker, the distinguished archer. Without a word Cartice walked away from them.
In a few minutes Doring entered her room with the tittering, airy manner of one who pretends to find himself in a highly humorous situation.
“Well, Heart’s Ease, you caught me flirting a bit, didn’t you?” he gurgled, making a stagy effort to be facetious.
“Is that flirting?” she asked, in the most composed and polite voice.
“Why, yes, of course. What else could it be?”
“I acknowledge that I am so untaught in matters of that kind that I do not know the correct names to apply to them,” she said. “Whatwould you call it had I been in Mrs. Parker’s place, some other man in yours, and you in mine?”
“Nonsense, child; that is not to be thought of.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, determinedly. “My idea of marriage, as I have repeatedly told you, is perfect equality in all things, neither owning nor dominating the other. I give the fidelity of the heart and expect the same from you. The mere outward appearance of loyalty, which some wives enforce with a club would be of no value to me. But the conduct reveals the state of the heart. Were I found in the arms of a man, receiving and answering his kisses, it would be because I loved him intensely, devotedly; and I will not judge you by a lower standard than I wish to be judged. Marriage must mean marriage in the highest and truest sense of the word, or nothing. Now that I know you do not love me, I shall not blame you, for love is not a matter of the will. You shall go free.”
“Hang it all, Cartice,” said Doring, now thoroughly frightened, “you are not going to be melodramatic about a bit of fooling like that, are you?”
“A bit of fooling?” she echoed, unable to understand him.
“Yes. What else do you suppose it could be?”
“I can only suppose that you love Mrs. Parker. Otherwise how could you have had her in your arms kissing her?”
“Love her? What rubbish. As if a man dreamed of loving every woman he—he found it expedient to kiss.”
She looked at him too amazed to speak. This was a revelation of man nature that was overwhelming. She was unaware until then of the light value many men set upon constancy and even decency in themselves, though all prate loud about them as jewels necessary to the adornment of woman’s character. She was a genuine Galatea, in some respects, expecting to meet gods and shocked to find the world peopled with men and women of very crude minds. She was engaged in the difficult and pathetic task of trying to idealize the actual.
“Why should a man kiss a woman he does not love?” she asked at last.
“Why?” echoed Doring, beginning to think he could flounder out of his dilemma by a little bold bluster. “It’s a habit most of us have got into, I guess. In this case I made up to the old flirt because she so manifestly wanted me to. That was all. I meant nothing by it but to gratify her vanity, which is on short rations just now, I fancy.”
This coarse speech made his wife shiver with shame. The man was surely leaving her nothingto respect in himself. As she was silent he thought he was gaining ground and went on:
“The idea of your being jealous of her! Why, she is old enough to be your mother.”
Meantime Cartice had rung for a hall boy, who presently tapped at the door. Stepping outside she sent him to ask Mrs. Parker to have the kindness to come and make her a visit.
The archer promptly fluttered in, all smiles, believing there was only plain sailing ahead.
“Do you love my husband, Mrs. Parker?” Cartice asked.
“Why, what do you mean?” snapped the enraged siren.
“I must suppose you love him, because I saw you and him kissing each other. I could not kiss a man I did not love, and I suppose it must be the same with you and all other self-respecting women. I have been telling him that if you and he love each other, I will not stand in your way. I want to tell you the same.”
Mrs. Parker was unaccustomed to this kind of a situation. She was only skilled in slyness, not in open combat. Embarrassed, she turned to Doring, who stood convicted and shrinking, unable to defend himself or her.
“Mr.Doring,” she said—her voice was dry and nervous—“you should have explained to your wife that we saw her coming and made a foolish attempt to tease her.”
“He explains it differently,” said Cartice, quietly. “He says you seemed to expect some demonstration of affection from him, and he ‘made up to you,’ as he calls it, because not to do so would be to disappoint and mortify you.”
Then Parker turned to Doring swelling with rage and chagrin, fire and flame darting from her eyes, and then, without a word flounced out of the room, and early the next day left the hotel.
Doring, a victim of the cowardice for which his sex is noted when entrapped, began to breathe freer. He sent a snort of derision after the retreating charmer. “There, the sentimental old lady will not trouble us again, I fancy,” he said, with the air of one who sees the end of a disagreeable affair.
“That may be,” said his wife, sadly, “but it cannot put us back in our old places.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it necessary to explain what is so clear? This affair has changed my attitude toward you entirely. It has killed my confidence in your honesty, and revealed your character to me in a new light. I can never be the same to you as before.”
Thoroughly frightened he began to cast about for bigger straws to catch at. His wife took on new value in his eyes. An hour or so before he had commiserated himself for being tied to her, and had wondered why a being so superior as hehad ever been attracted to one so ordinary as she. Now he wanted to keep her at all costs. He was one to whom blessings brightened astonishingly as they took their flight.
“You don’t mean to say you would leave me for a trifle like that, Cartice? It would be ridiculous. Everybody would laugh at you. Why, that little episode is nothing. You should know some of the really reprehensible things married men do and think nothing of it. Men don’t bother much about loyalty and the finer moralities, I assure you. They’re good enough for women, but men can’t walk that kind of a line, you know. Your ideas are too depressingly antique for the age you live in.”
“What men do and what other women accept cannot change my idea of what constitutes marriage. I will not be a party to a contract kept only by one of the two interested. I have seen women whose husbands violated every canon of decency going on patiently, under the delusion that they were doing a virtuous thing. To my mind they were encouraging vice. Kisses represent feelings. One kisses because one loves. I could not kiss a man I did not love because it would be repulsive. One is loyal, not because of a sense of duty, but because one loves; or disloyal because one has ceased to love.”
“Anyway, Cartice, don’t leave me or talk about leaving me. You are all I have in theworld. Forgive me, and love me if you can. I feel mean enough without your contempt.” As he said this, Doring flung himself on the floor clasping her in his arms and began to weep.
“He does not understand; he never will understand—he cannot. He thinks it is something to be forgiven and then to go on as before,” she said, mentally.
Anyhow she went on, but not as before. In that hour her love for her husband had changed its form and face. It had become maternal. All hope that they could make the journey of life as companions on an equal footing was dead.
No more painful experience can come to a proud woman than that of seeing that the man she has idealized must be propped up instead of leaned against.
The days went relentlessly on for Cartice Doring, as days have a way of doing for everybody. One trouble had grown to proportions so huge that his hateful shape blotted out all the rest, and his name was Poverty. The bread of dependence is bitter. Every bite to her was heavy as lead. Civilization has many tortures; but it is doubtful if it has any more cruel than this.
Every waking moment Cartice racked her brain in the effort to think of some means of earning money, and at night when she slept her dreams were full of horrors. Thoughts of theriver obtruded themselves and were driven away only to come back more determined in aspect than before.
Somewhere she had read that if every suicide would but wait twenty-four hours after determining to end life, deliverance would come. So she waited, and the worst depression would pass, and her courage come slowly back.
Meantime her husband walked the street in his helpless way seeking employment, returning at night with the story of failure written on his face.
Cartice had been used to a busy life, and the enforced idleness of those depressing days was more of a weariness to both flesh and spirit than the hardest labor would have been. In trying to escape from her own thoughts she sometimes walked long distances. One cold day she was accosted by a woman who asked her to buy some trifle she was selling.
“I wish I could, but I cannot, for I have no money,” said Cartice.
“Ah, don’t say that,” said the other, with incredulity and disgust in her voice. “So many say it when it isn’t true. It is impossible that any one so comfortably dressed as you, is without money. Compare your warm and beautiful wrap with my thin shawl.”
“It is true I have a good cloak,” Cartice answered, “but I am probably poorer than you, for I cannot pay for either my shelter or my food.Your position is superior to mine, for you are trying to earn a livelihood, while I am longing to do so and know not where to begin. And besides poverty I have other woes from which I hope you are exempt. I tell you this that hereafter you may not judge from appearances. Many whom you envy are, perhaps, more miserable than yourself.”
Her old childish fancies came back to her sometimes, and she would half believe that some good fairy would suddenly comfort her and mercifully change everything. And her people—the dear, kind, fond, ever-courteous people of her very own world, unseen by all who had not sympathetic eyes, came to comfort her. The inner world in which they dwelt afforded her a refuge when the miseries of the outer one became too heavy. Perhaps it was because of much time spent there that she scarcely took on the ways and speech of this world. There was ever something unusual and not easy to understand in her presence, something that suggested another and a different world.
“O my own people, my dear people of my dreams! How far I have wandered in my search for others like you clothed in the flesh!” she said, on returning from a long walk one evening, as she looked at the dingy hotel where she was obliged to take unwelcome refuge.
Within was no soul akin to hers, not one whosewords or presence, in any sense mitigated the deep solitude and loneliness of spirit in which she lived.
With it all she was physically wretched. A climate that was ungenial, a sunless room and a daily diet of anxiety combined had made deep inroads on a physique elastic but never rugged. Overstrained nature was giving way. For weeks her body had been racked with pain. Fevers came, tarried awhile and went away to come again, and languor had taken entire possession of her.
One day the culmination came. A neighbor passing her open door saw Cartice lying helpless on the floor where she had fallen. Assistance was called and she was lifted to the bed, rigid as in death. “A congestive chill,” said the doctor. Then science and humanity united their efforts to save her from death and succeeded. When her husband came back in the evening, she was lying powerless to speak and only faintly conscious of being alive.
The doctor—may it be a star of great radiance on his breast in the unseen world in which he now dwells—was attentive and kind to a point far beyond the ordinary. He had seen much of life and its inevitable suffering. Experience and a heart of exceptional goodness enabled him to read the signs of the sick soul as well as the sick body at a glance.
A few days later as he sat by her bedside, Cartice edged herself nearer, and laying one of her slender hands on his, said, “I am grateful to you, doctor, very grateful for helping me so much.”
The words were commonplace enough, but there were the eyes, the wonderful eyes, with their strange power to melt the heart, gazing into his. The doctor’s soul was shaken, he knew not why.
“I don’t understand it,” he mused as he left the house. “What was it that came out of her eyes and unnerved me in a flash, making me want to cry like a baby.” At the memory of that look, in which the mask of pride fell off and the suffering spirit revealed its anguish, the tears rushed anew to his eyes.
“No, I don’t understand it,” he repeated, “but if I had been performing a surgical operation of the most delicate and dangerous kind, and she had looked at me that way, I am afraid I should have dropped the knife. What was that indefinable thing I saw in her eyes? What was it? If anguish can accumulate for ages and ages and then look out through a pair of eyes, it was that.”
Days of convalescence came, bringing the despondency, gloom and sometimes despair that attack those who have retreated from the edge of the grave before they are quite out of sight of it.
Cartice sat by her window with the breeze blowing over her, and it seemed that a thousand years had passed since last she saw the spring. Watching the people on the street, hurrying hither and yon, she envied them their strength, their activity, aims and interests. Idle and purposeless, weary and hopeless, she sat wondering what she was to do with the rest of her life. By nature she was an outdoor child, who loved field and forest and brook and hill. The hateful brick walls that stared at her now fatigued her eyes and depressed her spirit. When funeral processions went by she wondered what mystery the narrow black box represented. Sable and solemn and dreadful as it all was she envied those who rode in the long black wagon of death. “At least they are out of this horror,” she said. “If there be another life its conditions cannot be worse than they are here. If there be nothing on the other side of death’s silence, then the problem is very simple.”
This great problem at the end of life always interested her more than all those to be solved on the journey. If death be an open door to larger activities and happier conditions, then we should bear with courage whatever comes upon us here, and go smiling on, indifferent to pain and disappointment; but if all our striving and longing, sorrowing and suffering and loving reach a finality in the grave, then—no words are strongenough and bitter enough to tell the tragic story of the cheat.
Cartice had always marveled that many could see their nearest and dearest pass into that dread silence, and yet put the thought of what it is out of their minds, and go on pursuing their foolish little pleasures exactly as though the riddle was not for them also to solve.