Читать книгу: «The Story of an Untold Love»

I

February 20, 1890. There is not a moment of my life that you have shared with me which I cannot recall with a distinctness fairly sunlit. My joys and my sorrows, my triumphs and my failures, have faded one by one from emotions into memories, quickening neither pulse nor thought when they recur to me, while you alone can set both throbbing. And though for years I have known that if you enshrined any one in your heart it would be some one worthier of you, yet I have loved you truly, and whatever I have been in all else, in that one thing, at least, I have been strong. Nor would I part with my tenderness for you, even though it has robbed me of contentment; for all the pleasures of which I can dream cannot equal the happiness of loving you. To God I owe life, and you, Maizie, have filled that life with love; and to both I bow my spirit in thanks, striving not to waste his gift lest I be unworthy of the devotion I feel for you.

If I were a stronger man, I should not now be sobbing out my heart's blood through the tip of a pen. Instead of writing of my sorrow, I should have battled for my love despite all obstacles. But I am no Alexander to cut the knot of entanglements which the fates have woven about me, and so, Midas-like, I sit morbidly whispering the hidden grief, too great for me to bear in silence longer.

I can picture my first glimpse of you as vividly as my last. That dull rainy day of indoor imprisonment seems almost to have been arranged as a shadowbox to intensify the image graved so deeply on my memory. The sun came, as you did, towards the end of the afternoon, as if light and warmth were your couriers. When I shyly entered the library in answer to my father's call, you were standing in the full sunlight, and the thought flashed through my mind that here was one of the angels of whom I had read. You were only a child of seven, – to others, I suppose, immature and formless; yet even then your eyes were as large and as serious as they are to-day, and your curling brown hair had already a touch of fire, as if sunshine had crept thereinto, and, liking its abiding-place, had lingered lovingly.

"Don," cried my father, as I stood hesitating in the doorway, "here's a new plaything for you. Give it a welcome and a kiss."

I hung back, half in shyness, and half in fear that you were of heaven, and not of earth, but you came forward and kissed me without the slightest hesitation. The details are so clear that I remember you hardly had to raise your head, though I was three years the older. Your kiss dispelled all my timidity, and from the moment of that caress I loved you. Not that I am so foolish as to believe I then felt for you what now I feel, but by the clear light of retrospect I can see that your coming brought a new element into my life, – an element which I loved from the first, though with steadily deepening intensity, and I cannot even now determine at what point a boy's devotion became a lover's.

To the silent and lonely lad you were an inspiration. What I might have grown to be had you not been my father's ward I do not like to think, for I was not a strong boy, and my shyness and timidity had prompted me to much solitude and few friends, to much reading and to little play. But it was decreed that you were to be the controlling influence of my life, and in the first week you worked a revolution in my habits. I wonder if now, when you see so many men eager to gratify your slightest wish, you ever think of your earliest slave, whom you enticed to the roof to drop pebbles or water on the passers-by, and into the cellar to bury a toy soldier deep in the coal? Does memory ever bring back to you how we started to paint the illustrations in Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, or how we built a fire round a doll on the library rug, in imitation of the death of an Inca of Peru as pictured in dear old Garcilasso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries? You were a lazy child about reading, but when not tempting me into riotous mischief, you would sit by me in the library and let me show you the pictures in the old books, and I smile now to think what my running versions of the texts must have been. Our favorite books were the Nuremberg Chronicle and De Bry's Voyages, for the pictures of which, since the Latin was beyond me, I invented explanations and even whole stories, – stories over which you grew big-eyed and sleepless, and which we both came to believe so firmly that we never dreamed them to be the cause for the occasional outburst of laughter from my father, when he was in the library.

Even in those days you veiled your witchery and mischief-loving nature behind that serious face with its curved but unsmiling mouth. Keen as many of our pleasures were and blithe as were our pranks, I can scarcely remember a smile upon your face. Now and then the merriest of laughs rang out, fairly infectious in its happiness and joy, but of so rare recurrence as to win for you the sobriquet of "Madam Gravity." Your inscrutability allured and charmed me then as I have seen it fascinate others since. I shall never understand you, and yet I think I misunderstand you less than others do, for you cannot hide from me the quick thought and merry nature which you keep so well hidden from them; and often when others think you most abstracted or sedate, I know you are holding high carnival with Puck and Momus. Again and again I have noted your gravity in the most humorous situations or with the most ridiculous of persons, and have smiled in secret with you. Last summer, when my mother won such a laugh by telling, as something that had happened to her personally, the old story from Peele's "Merrie Conceits" which we had read as children, you looked grave, though the incident had twice the humor to you that it had to the others. In my own merriment I could not help glancing at you, and though neither of us laughed, we understood each other's amusement. Evidently you were not used to having your mood comprehended, for after a moment you seemed to realize that I was responding to what you had thought unknown to all. You looked startled and then puzzled, and I suppose that I became even more of a mystery to you than ever. You could not know that my knowledge of you came from those early days when your nature was taking shape. Without my memory of you as a child you would be as great an enigma to me as to the rest of your friends, and so no doubt it is a small thing in which to glory. But it gives me joy to feel that I understand you better, and at this very moment know more of your thoughts than your husband ever will.

I owe to you many dark closetings and whippings that I never deserved. My mother complained that from being a troublesome child I had become a fiend of mischief, but my father laughed and predicted that you would make a man of me. I wonder if you ever think of him, and what your thought is? We both so loved him that I cannot believe he has passed entirely out of your heart. How ready he was to be our comrade! Whether tired or busy he would join us, not as mentor but as playfellow; and now that I know what there was to depress his spirits at that time, I marvel at his cheer and courage. Would that I had one half of the bravery with which he met his troubles!

Perhaps he was right in his assumption that you would have made a man of me. I do not recollect any act of mine which bore the semblance of courage except the rescue of the street dog from those boys. I hated to see the poor beast tortured, but I feared the roughs, and so stood faltering while you charged among them. Not till one of them struck you was I driven to help, but I can still feel the fury which then took possession of me. I was blind with rage, and a great weight seemed pressing on my chest as I rushed among the boys and fought, hardly conscious of the blows I gave or received; indeed, the whole thing was a haze until I found myself sitting on the sidewalk, crying. For days I went about with a bandage over my eye; but my father drank my health that night, and I remember his pat of approval, and hear his "Bravo, Donald, I'm proud of you." It was significant that I received all the praise, and you none; my courage was questionable, yours was not.

Those happy, thoughtless years! The one kill-joy was my mother, and she made your life and mine so grievous with her needless harshness, quick temper, and neglect of our comfort that I think she must have made my father's equally miserable. Dimly I can recollect her sudden gusts of temper, and his instant dismissal of us from the room when they began. Do you remember how he used to come up to the nursery to smoke, often staying till our bedtime, and then how we could hear him go downstairs and out of the front door? We did not know that he went to his club, nor at what hour he returned; and if we had it would have meant nothing to us. But we both knew he found no pleasure with my mother, and we felt he was right, for in avoiding her he was but doing what was our chief endeavor. I have heard many express admiration for her beauty, for her church and charitable work, for her brilliancy in society, for her executive ability, and for her general public spirit. Her neglect of family duties, her extravagance, her frequent absences, and her fatigued petulance when at home were known only to her household. Our servants rarely remained a month with us, – were changed so often as to destroy all possibility of comfort; but we three were not free to follow their example, and so our misery made us the dearer to one another. I am proud to think that, close as we drew together, my father never uttered in my presence a single word of criticism or complaint against my mother, and I should be the better man if, instead of writing these unfilial words, I left them unsaid. Indeed, I will not spend more of my evening on these old memories, but begin on my work.

Do you remember, Maizie, how my father taught us to give him and each other a parting word? "Good-night, father. Good-night, Maizie. God bless you both," it used to be. He sleeps now in his grave, and three years ago you barred your door to me, but still I can say as of old, "Good-night, Maizie. God bless and keep you, dear."

II

February 21. To put all this on paper is weak and aimless, yet it seems to ease my sadness. I suppose a scribbler unconsciously comes to write out whatever he feels, as a nervous woman plays her emotions away on a piano. If this is so, why should not I salve my grief in any way that lessens it? Those old days had such happiness in them that the mere memory brings some to me, and to sit here at my study table and write of the past is better than idle dwelling on the present.

You were jubilant when first told that we were all to go to Europe for a summer, and laughed at my fears and despondency. Could I have had an intuition of coming evil, or was my alarm due to the engravings of those terrible sea-monsters with which Mercator populated the oceans in his "Atlas sive Cosmographicæ," and to the pictures and tales in bloodthirsty old Exquemelin's "Bucaniers of America"? Our notions of what the trip meant were evidently not very clear, for at once we set to storing up provisions, and weeks before the time of sailing we were the proud possessors of a cracker-box full of assorted edibles, a jar of olives we had pilfered, and a small pie you had cajoled the cook into making for us. How we loved and gloated over that pie! Daily we sorted our sea-stores, added new supplies, and ate what clearly could be kept no longer. My mother found us one day deeply engrossed in the occupation, cuffed us both, and sent the olives back to the pantry and the tin box to the ash-barrel. As for the pie, such hot words passed about it between "Madame" and "Monsieur Philippe" that our cook left us without warning. We were again punished for being the cause of his desertion, and that evening father dined at his club.

The different effects my mother's gusts of anger had on you and on me were curiously distinctive. You met them fearlessly and stubbornly, while to me the moments of her fury were moments in which I could scarcely breathe, and of which I felt the terror for hours after. I sometimes wonder if the variance was because I had learned to fear the outbursts even as a baby, whereas your character had partly formed before you encountered them. Who knows but a change of circumstances might have made me the fearless one, and you the timorous? At least I should be glad to think that I might have been like you in courage and spirit, even though it is impossible to imagine that you could ever be like me. It is a singular turn of life's whirligig that when my mother tried to pain you last autumn by her cruel remarks, you were helpless to retort, and owed your escape to my help.

What a delight the ocean voyage was to us! Those were the times of ten-day trips, still dear to all true lovers of the sea; and had our wishes been consulted, thrice ten would have been none too long for our passage. The officers, the crew, the stewards, and the passengers were no more proof against your indefinable spell than was I, and it seemed quite as if the boat were your private yacht, with all on board seeking only to serve you. Our pleasure was so intense that we planned an ideal future, in which I was to become the captain of a steam-ship, and you were to live on the vessel in some equally delightful if impossible capacity.

The last time I was in Paris, I walked several miles merely to look at the outside of our pension, and then went on and sat dreaming in the little park near it in which we passed so many hours of our stay in that city. As of old, the place was full of children and nurses, and I understood what had puzzled me not a little in recollection, – how you and I, without mingling with them, had learned so quickly the language they chattered. Do you remember their friendly advances, met only by rebuffs? My coldness flowed from shyness, and yours from a trait that people to this day call haughtiness, but which I know to be only a fastidious refinement that yields acquaintance to few and friendship to fewer. From the moment you came into my life I craved no other friend, and you seemed equally content. What was there in me that won for me what you gave so rarely? Was there an instinct of natural sympathy, or was it merely pity for me in the loving heart you masked behind that subtle face?

It is indicative of what children we still were that during the whole of our sojourn in Paris neither of us was conscious that our standard of living had changed. We lodged in a cheap pension; instead of our own carriage we used the omnibus; and a thousand other evidences told the story of real economy; yet not one we observed except the disappearance of our bonne, and this was noted, not as a loss, but as a joy to both.

After the nurse was gone my father became more than ever our comrade, and a better one two children never had. Oh, those long excursions to Versailles, Montmartre, and Fontainebleau, our boat trips up and down the Seine, and our shorter jaunts within the city! What happiness it was to us when he came in whistling and cried, "Donald, Maizie, you are horribly bad children, and I'm going to take you on a lark to punish you!" After time spent in filling our lunch-basket with big rolls bought at the boulangerie, a few sous' worth of cherries or other fruit lengthily bargained for with the fruitier, and a half litre of cheap wine, plus whatever other luxuries our imaginations or our appetites could suggest, away we would go for a long day of pure delight, whether passed under green trees or wandering through galleries and museums. My father was an encyclopædia of information, and had the knack of making knowledge interesting to the child mind. He could re-create a bygone period from a battle-axe or a martel de fer, the personality of a queen from her lace ruff or stomacher, and the history of plant growth from a fern or flower. If his mind had been allowed to expand when he was young, instead of being stunted in a broker's office, I believe he might have been one of the world's great writers or critics.

Under such stimulating tutelage our progress in those two years was really wonderful. No subject my father touched upon could remain dull; we were at a receptive age when the mind is fresh and elastic for all that interests it, and Paris was a great picture-book to illustrate what he taught us. We did not know we were studying far deeper into subjects than many educated people ever go. I laugh still at your telling the old German on the train to Sèvres the history of the Faust plot, and at his amazed "Ach, zo!" to hear such erudition pour from your childish lips. I think you were the cleverer and the quicker, but there was no competition, only fellowship about our learning. I suppose you were above rivalry, as you are above all mean things.

And that is your chief glory to me. In those seven years of closest companionship, and in these last three years of lesser intercourse but far keener observation, I have never known you to do a mean thing or to speak a mean thought. I almost feel it treason to couple the word with you, or deny a trait so impossible for you to possess, and of which you have always shown such scorn and hatred. At this moment I know that I should only have to speak to part you forever from – Ah, what foolishness I am writing, tempting me to even greater meanness than his, and so to deserve the greater contempt from you! Thinking me base, you closed your doors to me three years ago, and I love you the better that not even for auld lang syne could you pardon what is so alien to you. If the day ever comes when you again admit me to your friendship, I shall be happy in knowing that you think me above baseness or meanness; for you would not compound with them, Maizie, be the circumstances what they might.

Our Paris life would not have been so happy and careless but for the slight part my mother had in it. So little did we see of her in those years that I think of her scarcely as one of us. I remember dimly a scene of hot anger between her and my father, – he standing passively by the high porcelain stove, while she raged about the room. So great was her fury that once, in passing, as I crouched scared and silent on the sofa, she struck me, – a blow which brought my father to my side, where he stood protectingly while the storm lasted, with his hand resting lovingly on my shoulder. My vague impression is that the outburst was only a protest against the poor lodgings, but it may have occurred when some explanation took place between my parents. I can see my mother now, sitting on the little balcony overlooking the garden of our pension, snarling an ill-natured word at us as you and I tried to play consultation games of chess against my father. He gave us odds at first of the rook and two pawns, but finally only of a knight. Oh, the triumph of those victories! How we gloried in them, and how delighted our antagonist was when we conquered him! Little we minded what my mother did except when we happened to be alone with her, and I think that the dear father played bad chess with us rather than good at the cafés, and made us his companions wherever he went, to save us from her severity.

I can recall very clearly her constant difficulties with our landlady and the servants, which finally culminated in a request that we should seek lodgings elsewhere. Do you recollect Madame Vanott's clasping us both in her arms and filling our hands with bonbons, when the time of parting came? I do not know where we removed to, my sole remembrance of the next few weeks being of my mother's complaints of lodgings, food, servants, and French life generally. We moved three times within a month, fairly expelled by our landlords because they could not live at peace with "la Madame." Our last exodus began in an angry scene between her and the housewife, in which a gendarme played a part, and from which you and I fled. The next morning we learned that my mother had determined to return to America, and leave us to live our own life. Three days later we said emotionless good-bys, my father going as far as Havre with her.

Her departure set us asking questions, and my father's replies explained many things which, in our childish talks, we had gravely discussed. He told us how his own wealth had been lost in Wall Street, barely enough being left for a competence even in Europe. Of my mother's leaving us he spoke sadly. "She never pretended to care for me," he said, "but I loved her and was willing to marry her. The wrong was mine, and we should not blame her if, when I can no longer give what was her price, she does not choose to continue the one-sided bargain." At the time her absence seemed to you and me only a relief, but now, as I look back, I know that my father never ceased to love her, – all the more, perhaps, because his love had never been requited, – and that separation must have been the final wrecking of his life. Yet from the day she left us I never heard him speak an angry word, and sorrow that would have crushed most men seemed to make him the gentler and sweeter. I wish – Ah! the clock is striking three, and if I am to bring working power to working hours I must stop writing.

Good-night, dear one.