Part 62 (1/2)

We are in a s.h.i.+p going to the side of the world where you are. Except that we are going towards you, it is like being pushed off a cliff. All my faith in the appearances of things is at an end. I have been juggled with. I have misjudged.

I could have insisted that we hold Mont-Louis as tenants. The count is our friend. It is not a strong man's fault that a weak man is weak and unfortunate. Yet seeing Cousin Philippe wince, I could not put the daily humiliation upon him. He is like my father come back, broken, helpless.

And Paul and I, who are young, must take care of him where he will be least humbled.

I was over-pampered in Mont-Louis and Paris. I like easy living, carriages, long-tailed gowns, jewels, trained servants, music, and spectacles on the stage; a park and wide lands all my own; seclusion from people who do not interest me; idleness in enjoyment.

I am the devil of vanity. Annabel has not half the points I have. When the men are around her I laugh to think I shall be fine and firm as a statue when she is a ma.s.s of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz. When she is a ma.s.s of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz she will be riper and tenderer inside. But will the men see that? No. They will be off after a fresher Annabel. So much for men. On the other hand, I had but a few months of luxury, and may count on the hardness that comes of endurance; for I was an exile from childhood. There is strength in doing the right thing. If there were no G.o.d, if Christ had never died on the cross, I should have to do the right thing because it is right.

Why should we lay up grievances against one another? They must disappear, and they only burn our hearts.

Sometimes I put my arms around Ernestine, and rest her old head against me. She revolts. People incline to doubt the superiority of a person who will a.s.sociate with them. But the closer our poverty rubs us the more Ernestine insists upon cla.s.s differences.

There should be a colossal mother going about the world to turn men over her lap and give them the slipper. They pine for it.

Am I helping forward the general good, or am I only suffering Nature's punishment?

A woman can fasten the bonds of habit on a man, giving him food from her table, hourly strengthening his care for her. By merely putting herself before him every day she makes him think of her. What chance has an exiled woman against the fearful odds of daily life?

Yet sometimes I think I can wait a thousand years. In sun and snow, in wind and dust, a woman waits. If she stretched her hand and said ”Come,”

who could despise her so much as she would despise herself?

What is so cruel as a man? Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, he presses the iron spike of silence in.

Coward!--to let me suffer such anguis.h.!.+

Is it because I kissed you? That was the highest act of my life! I groped down the black stairs of the Tuileries blinded by light. Why are the natural things called wrong, and the unnatural ones just?

Is it because I said I would come to you sometime? This is what I meant: that it should give me no jealous pang to think of another woman's head on your breast; that there is a wedlock which appearances cannot touch.

No, I never would--I never would seek you; though sometimes the horror of doing without you turns into reproach. What is he doing? He may need me--and I am letting his life slip away. Am I cheating us both of what could have harmed no one?

It is not that usage is broken off.

Yet if you were to come, I would punish you for coming!

Fine heroic days I tell myself we are marching to meet each other. If the day has been particularly hard, I say, ”Perhaps I have carried his load too, and he marches lighter.”

You have faults, no doubt, but the only one I could not pardon would be your saying, ”I repent!”

The instinct to conceal defeat and pain is so strong in me that I would have my heart cut out rather than own it ached. Yet many women carry all before them by a little judicious whining and rebellion.

I never believe in your unfaith. If you brought a wife and showed her to me I should be sorry for her, and still not believe in your unfaith.

Louis, I have been falling down flat and crawling the ground. Now I am up again. It didn't hurt.

It is the old German fairy story. Every day gold must be spun out of straw. How big the pile of straw looks every morning, and how little the handful of gold every night!

This prairie in the Indiana Territory that I dreaded as a black gulf, is a gra.s.sy valley.