Part 3 (1/2)
”That was sweet of you, Hannah,” she said presently, a look of simple affectionateness chasing away the other. ”It is good to think that there was any one, in all that great crowd of people, who cared so much about me, but, my good little friend, never trouble yourself with that thought in connection with me again. My heart is dead--so dead that it seem weary waiting for the rest of me to die, and nothing but the resurrection morning that renews it all can ever give me back the heart I had before I was married. It did not die suddenly at one blow, but it died a lingering death of slow, slow pain. Think what it is! I am younger than you, and already joy and pleasure and hope are words that have no meaning for me. Oh, poor Hannah! I oughtn't to make you cry, and yet your tears are blessed things. When I could cry I was not so wretched.”
She leaned toward the girl and clasped her close, kissing the teardrops from each eye and soothing her, as if hers had been the sorrow.
”I want to be just to my husband,” she went on presently. ”I do believe he is not to blame. He gives me all he has to give, but there is nothing! Oh, when I look into my heart and see its power of suffering, and see, too, how marvellously happy I might once have been, I seem a thousand worlds away from him--my husband, who ought to be the very closest, nearest, likest thing to me! Perhaps he is not happy, but at least he does not suffer, and he is always contented to live on as we are--no work, no friends, no ambition, no interest in life, except mere living. Oh, but it is hard! How long will it go on so, Hannah?” she broke out suddenly, with a ring of fervor in her voice. ”Did you ever hear of any one living on and on and on, in a life like this? Could it go on until one got old and deaf and wrinkled, and can anything end it but death? It seems so impossible that I can be the little Christine who used to sit and dream of happiness in marriage, and of the handsome lover who would come some day and carry me off to a beautiful land where all my dreams would be realized. I came out on that stage to-night,” she went on, sitting upright and folding her beautiful arms, ”and while the people were looking at me and clapping, a thought came to me that made me feel like sobbing. I wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling, superficial faces. The thought absorbed me so that I forgot everything and the prompter thought I'd forgotten my part entirely and gave me my cue.”
”I saw you. I saw the strange look that came over your face, but I did not know what it meant. And perhaps the people envied you and thought you must be so happy, to be so beautiful and admired. Oh, poor Christine! I am sorry for you. I wish you could be happy. It seems as if you might.”
”_You_ might! Everything is possible to you. There is no reason, I suppose, why you may not have all the happiness I ever dreamed of, for, after all, the beginning and end of it was love. And yet I have advised you never to marry--for I often disbelieve in the existence of the sort of love that I have dreamed of--but how can I tell? I know nothing but my own life, and I tell you that is an intolerable pain. I sit here and say the words and you hear them, but they are words only to you, shut off as you are from all the experiences that make up my suffering.
Lately there has been a new one. If anything could make my life more miserable it would be the addition of poverty and privation to what I bear already--and that is what I am threatened with--what may probably be just ahead of me. Suppose that should come too! Why, then I should be more unhappy yet, I suppose, although I have thought I couldn't be.”
She spoke still with that strange calm which her companion had wondered at from the beginning of their conversation. Her manner in the carriage seemed to be a part of the excitement of the evening's performance, but now the cold calm of reaction had come on and she was very quiet. She had leaned back again in the big chair, and looked at Hannah gravely.
Neither of them thought of sleep, and their faces expressed its nearness as little as if it were afternoon, instead of midnight. The last words uttered by Christine had presented a practical difficulty to her friend which her own experiences brought home to her forcibly, while they shut her off from a just sympathy with some of her other trials.
”What do you mean?” she said. ”Isn't your husband well off and able to support you comfortably?”
”How do I know? How am I to find out?”
”Ask him. Make him explain to you exactly what his circ.u.mstances are. I wonder you haven't done that long ago.”
”You will wonder at a good deal more if you go on. For my part, I have wondered and wondered until I have no power to wonder left. I did ask him--that and many other things--and the result is I am as blind and ignorant this moment as you are.” She spoke almost coldly. One would have thought it was another and an almost indifferent person whose affairs she was discussing.
”But how can you be ignorant?” said Hannah. ”Does he refuse to answer your questions?”
”No--he doesn't refuse to answer them, though it is evident he thinks them useless and annoying--but generally he tells me he doesn't know.”
”Doesn't know how much money he has, or whether he is rich or poor?”
The other nodded in acquiescence.
”Why, how on earth can that be so? Doesn't he always have money to pay for things as you go along?”
”Yes--heretofore he has always had. I have needed nothing for myself.
All the handsome clothes you see me wear belong to my poor, miserable trousseau.” She smiled bitterly as she said it, but there were no tears in her eyes and her voice was utterly calm.
”What makes you think, then, that he may not continue to have plenty?”
”A letter I read without his permission, though he left it on the table and probably didn't care. I have been troubled vaguely for some time to find he knew nothing whatever about his business affairs, and that he merely drew on his lawyer for what he wanted, and was always content so long as he got it. Lately, however, although he had been looking for a remittance, the lawyer's letter came without it, and it was that letter that I read. I saw he looked annoyed, but not for long. He put the letter down and spent the evening playing solitaire, as he always does when he doesn't go to the theatre. After he went to bed I read the letter. It was from the lawyer in the far West, who had always had charge of the money left by his father--and he said that having repeatedly warned him that he could not go on spending his princ.i.p.al without coming to the end of his rope, he had to tell him now that the end was almost reached. He might manage to send him a remittance soon by selling some bonds at a great sacrifice, and as his orders were imperative of course he would have to do this, but he notified him that there was scarcely anything left, a certain tract of land, which was almost valueless, and that, he said, was the entire remnant of his inheritance, which could never have been very much as he certainly has no extravagant tastes.”
”Why didn't you tell him you had read the letter and ask him about it?”
said Hannah, her rather acute little face animated and serious at once.
”I did.”
”And what did he say?”
”That a woman had no business meddling with men's affairs, and that he could not help it.”