Part 34 (2/2)
”You see,” she said at last, for the weeping went on and on, ”there is nothing will do you any good but your husband.”
”No, no; he has cast me from him forever!” she cried, in a strange wail that rose to a shriek.
”The wretch!” exclaimed Dorothy, clenching a fist whose little bones looked fierce through the whitened skin.
”No,” returned Juliet, suddenly calmed, in a voice almost severe; ”it is I who am the wretch, to give you a moment in which to blame him. He has done nothing but what is right.”
”I don't believe it.”
”I deserved it.”
”I am sure you did not. I would believe a thousand things against him before I would believe one against you, my poor white queen!” cried Dorothy, kissing her hand.
She s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, and covered her face with both hands.
”I should only need to tell you one thing to convince you,” she sobbed from behind them.
”Then tell it me, that I may not be unjust to him.”
”I can not.”
”I won't take your word against yourself,” returned Dorothy determinedly. ”You will have to tell me, or leave me to think the worst of him.” She was moved by no vulgar curiosity: how is one to help without knowing? ”Tell me, my dear,” she went on after a little; ”tell me all about it, and in the name of the G.o.d in whom I hope to believe, I promise to give myself to your service.”
Thus adjured, Juliet found herself compelled. But with what heart-tearing groans and sobs, with what intervals of dumbness, in which the truth seemed unutterable for despair and shame, followed by what hurrying of wild confession, as if she would cast it from her, the sad tale found its way into Dorothy's aching heart, I will not attempt to describe. It is enough that at last it was told, and that it had entered at the wide-open, eternal doors of sympathy. If Juliet had lost a husband, she had gained a friend, and that was something--indeed no little thing--for in her kind the friend was more complete than the husband. She was truer, more entire--in friends.h.i.+p nearly perfect. When a final burst of tears had ended the story of loss and despair, a silence fell.
”Oh, those men! those men!” said Dorothy, in a low voice of bitterness, as if she knew them and their ways well, though never had kiss of man save her father lighted on her cheek. ”--My poor darling!” she said after another pause, ”--and he cast you from him!--I suppose a woman's heart,” she went on after a third pause, ”can never make up for the loss of a man's, but here is mine for you to go into the very middle of, and lie down there.”
Juliet had, as she told her story, risen to her knees. Dorothy was on hers too, and as she spoke she opened wide her arms, and clasped the despised wife to her bosom. None but the arms of her husband, Juliet believed, could make her alive with forgiveness, yet she felt a strange comfort in that embrace. It wrought upon her as if she had heard a far-off whisper of the words: _Thy sins be forgiven thee_. And no wonder: there was the bosom of one of the Lord's clean ones for her to rest upon! It was her first lesson in the mighty truth that sin of all things is mortal, and purity alone can live for evermore.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
TWO MORE MINDS.
Nothing makes a man strong like a call upon him for help--a fact which points at a unity more delicate and close and profound than heart has yet perceived. It is but ”a modern instance” how a mother, if she be but a hen, becomes bold as a tigress for her periled offspring. A stranger will fight for the stranger who puts his trust in him. The most foolish of men will search his musty brain to find wise saws for his boy. An anxious man, going to his friend to borrow, may return having lent him instead. The man who has found nothing yet in the world save food for the hard, sharp, clear intellect, will yet cast an eye around the universe to see if perchance there may not be a G.o.d somewhere for the hungering heart of his friend. The poor, but lovely, the doubting, yet living faith of Dorothy arose, stretched out its crippled wings, and began to arrange and straighten their disordered feathers. It is a fair sight, any creature, be it but a fly, dressing its wings! Dorothy's were feeble, ruffled, their pen-feathers bent and a little crushed; but Juliet's were full of mud, paralyzed with disuse, and grievously singed in the smoldering fire of her secret. A b.u.t.terfly that has burned its wings is not very unlike a caterpillar again.
”Look here, Juliet,” said Dorothy: ”there must be some way out of it, or there is no saving G.o.d in the universe.--Now don't begin to say there isn't, because, you see, it is your only chance. It would be a pity to make a fool of yourself by being over-wise, to lose every thing by taking it for granted there is no G.o.d. If after all there should be one, it would be the saddest thing to perish for want of Him. I won't say I am as miserable as you, for I haven't a husband to trample on my heart; but I am miserable enough, and want dreadfully to be saved. I don't call this life worth living. Nothing is right, nothing goes well--there is no harmony in me. I don't call it life at all. I want music and light in me. I want a G.o.d to save me out of this wretchedness. I want health.”
”I thought you were never ill, Dorothy,” murmured Juliet listlessly.
”Is it possible you do not know what I mean?” returned Dorothy. ”Do you never feel wretched and sick in your very soul?--disgusted with yourself, and longing to be lifted up out of yourself into a region of higher conditions altogether?”
That kind of thing Juliet had been learning to attribute to the state of her health--had partly learned: it is hard to learn any thing false _thoroughly_, for it _can not_ so be learned. It is true that it is often, perhaps it is generally, in troubled health, that such thoughts come first; but in nature there are facts of color that the cloudy day reveals. So sure am I that many things which illness has led me to see are true, that I would endlessly rather never be well than lose sight of them. ”So would any madman say of his fixed idea.” I will keep my madness, then, for therein most do I desire the n.o.ble: and to desire what I desire, if it be but to desire, is better than to have all you offer us in the name of truth. Through such desire and the hope of its attainment, all greatest things have been wrought in the earth: I too have my unbelief as well as you--I can not believe that a lie on the belief of which has depended our highest development. You may say you have a higher to bring in. But that higher you have become capable of by the precedent lie. Yet you vaunt truth! You would sink us low indeed, making out falsehood our best nourishment--at some period of our history at least. If, however, what I call true and high, you call false and low--my a.s.sertion that you have never seen that of which I so speak will not help--then is there nothing left us but to part, each go his own road, and wait the end--which according to my expectation will show the truth, according to yours, being nothing, will show nothing.
”I can not help thinking, if we could only get up there,” Dorothy went on,--”I mean into a life of which I can at least dream--if I could but get my head and heart into the kingdom of Heaven, I should find that every thing else would come right. I believe it is G.o.d Himself I want--nothing will do but Himself in me. Mr. Wingfold says that we find things all wrong about us, that they keep going against our will and our liking, just to drive things right inside us, or at least to drive us where we can get them put right; and that, as soon as their work is done, the waves will lie down at our feet, or if not, we shall at least walk over their crests.”
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