Married and Single CHAPTER 16.
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"Thunder and lightning, Tom! why don't you come when I ring for you?" This was said impatiently by a portly, middle-aged man, who was confined to his room with a gouty foot, to a colored servant who had just entered. His face was sensual to a disgusting degree.
"I did come, sir, the moment I heard the bell," the servant replied, in a respectful lone.
"No you didn't. I had to ring three times."
"But I didn't — "
"Silence, Tom! You're getting to be good for nothing. You're not worth the powder it would lake to shoot you. Here! take this note over to Mercer's, and don't stay till night, if you please."
The servant took the note and went slowly downstairs, muttering to himself as he did so.
"Blast the whole tribe of servants! I don't believe there is one to be found worth a penny! I never saw one yet for whom I would give a sixpence extra."
"Oh! there! I forgot. Tom! Tom!"
But Tom did not or would not hear. The bell was rung violently, but with no better effect.
"Confound it all!" ejaculated the invalid, sinking back in his chair, with a contracted brow, and an impatient, unhappy face. "The rascal heard me, I know. But what does he care for me? Nothing! Nobody cares for me, I believe. Here I've been shut up for a week, and not a soul have I seen except the doctor, with his nauseous stuff; and Harry Bispham, who cares a devilish sight more for my wine, than he does for me. He comes as regular as clockwork, drinks my best wine, to which he coolly helps himself, and then bores me with his eternal tittle-tattle about dogs and horses. But even his face is better than none."
As this was said, the invalid's eyes were lifted to the wall involuntarily, and rested upon a fine female head, the work of an artist of no ordinary talents. After he had regarded the lovely face, evidently without designing to do so, for some moments, he sighed, and let his eyes fall to the floor. A lonely, dissatisfied feeling followed his impatient spirit. While indulging this, someone knocked at his door, and then walked in.
"Why, how are you, Lane? What in the world is the matter?" asked the visitor, familiarly. "Ah! I see. Been living rather too high. Gout?"
"Yes, so the doctor says."
"And, of course, cuts off the supplies; reduces the feed, to say nothing of the wine and brandy."
"Exactly it — confound him!"
"Who attends you?"
"Old Doctor Gruel."
"He'll starve you to death!"
"I believe he will."
"Why don't you dismiss him, and send for Doctor Arbuckle? He'll cure you, I'll guaranty, and allow you to indulge a little into the bargain. But what ails you, man, besides the gout? Your face is as long as my arm."
"I sometimes wish myself dead!"
"Nonsense! Don't! don't! Live while you can live, and be thankful for good food and drink."
"There's little else worth living for, as I see."
"And aren't they enough?"
"Not if one must pay for them at this rate. Look at my foot! Here I've been confined to my room for a week, to say nothing of the pain I have suffered. Cut off from society, cared for by nobody, and shamefully neglected by a lazy rascal who pretends to be my servant. Isn't that life for you, with a vengeance? I am now fifty years old, and am beginning to go downward on the path of existence. I sometimes ask myself if I have lived to any good purpose — and am compelled to say no. I am neither rich nor happy, that is certain! Is there anything else in life worth having? If there is, I don't know of it. But it's now too late to look for any other good, if such the world have to offer. I thought once that I was going to secure a splendid fortune in a few years. Fool-like, I risked in about twenty thousand dollars a wild speculation, that I had made in my practice at the bar — and lost it all. Now I have about sufficient to live on comfortably with what my practice yields. But when I get too old to attend to business I shall, likely enough, be in a bad way. Oh, dear! I mustn't think of these things, they worry me to death."
"You should have married, Lane. A kind old wife or a gentle daughter would be invaluable now."
"I wonder what they'd live on. I haven't more than enough for myself."
"You know the old adage: A hen that can scratch for one — can scratch for ten!"
"Yes; but I scratch just as much as I care about scratching. I don't want any more mouths to provide for, nor any troubles to bear besides my own. Wives and daughters are, you know, very troublesome kind of property sometimes."
"Yes, at least some people's wives and daughters. But I don't see why you should complain. You have enough to live on, no one to care for but yourself, and can lead as quiet a life as you choose. A week with the gout now and then is nothing."
"If you had it, perhaps you'd think a little differently. And as to a quiet life, why, I have it quiet enough, no doubt. But so tired do I often get of this quiet, or, rather, loneliness — that it would be a relief to hear the thunder of Niagara — anything, in fact."
"Even the cries of half a dozen children, or the barking of ten puppies?"
"No, no, spare me, if you please! If there are any two things in the world for which I have a perfect horror, those two are dogs and children. The squalling of one, or the yelping of the others, will disturb at any time my whole nervous system. A neighbor of mine has a cur that barks through half of every night. It almost sets me crazy at times."
"You don't sleep well, then?"
"No, I lay awake for hours after I go to bed."
"Not as a usual thing?"
"Yes, I don't think I have slept soundly through a whole night for five years."
"Indeed! How is that?"
"I get to thinking — and can't sleep."
"You? What have you to think about that's serious enough to keep you awake?"
"I can hardly tell myself. But one cursed thing or another comes into my mind, and sticks there, in spite of all that I can do."
"The spirit of some broken-hearted maiden, perhaps, who died twenty or thirty years ago of love. I begin to think you have some sin of this kind on your conscience."
This was said jestingly, but it was evidently not relished by Lane.
"Ho, ho!" exclaimed the visitor, who had not much delicacy of feeling.
"I have hit the nail on the head, I perceive. Come, then, confess, and make clean work of it. I will grant you absolution."
Lane still showed a disrelish for such allusions, and they were dropped. After remaining for fifteen or twenty minutes, and drinking a glass of wine, the friend departed. For a long time after he left, Lane sat deeply absorbed, with his head resting upon his hand. What his reflections were, cannot be known, but something of their character may be guessed from the fact of his taking from a drawer in the table near which he sat, a letter that was unfolded, and reading it over with evident madness of spirits. The writer was Dora Enfield — she had been dead one year. Lane had almost forgotten her, when he was startled by the receipt of her picture and the letter just mentioned.
Dora had grown old rapidly in the ten years which preceded her death. During the last five years of her life, her disposition had become, in a degree, modified. Extorted admiration of fine talents and extensive reading, no longer sufficed. It could not satisfy a spirit like hers. From a hard, ill-natured, censorious old maid — she gradually softened in her character, and became more like a woman. But she was not happy. She could not look back with pleasure. It seemed to her as if she had led a useless life, as if she had not filled the place designed for her, and in which she would have been happier far than she had been.
In the perusal of religious books, and in frequent attendance upon religious services, united with the performance of uses in benevolent associations, she spent several years. Then she sunk into the grave. Among her effects was found a letter for Lane, and also directions to have it, and her portrait, immediately sent to him. This was done. The portrait was hung up after a few weeks in his room. The letter ran as follows:
"TO MILFORD LANE, When this is placed in your hands, the writer of it will be in the eternal world. After having lived, for nearly thirty of the best years in her life, a useless, unhappy creature, in view of her approaching change — she finds herself strangely impelled to open up to the only one she ever truly loved, the secrets of an over-tried and over-burdened heart.
"Milford Lane! think back for some twenty-five years or more. Call up vividly, if you can, the days when our hearts were fresh and young; when, in the spring-time of existence, we stood side by side in many a happy company — side by side in quiet places — side by side in the calm morning hour, and in the deep stillness of eventide. Call up those seasons. Bring them into all but actual presence, and then question your heart closely. See whose image is most deeply impressed there.
"Milford Lane! I know what you will find. I know whose image was stamped upon the tablet of your young heart. I know all your desperate efforts to obliterate that image. But they were vain. You could hide it, for a time, from your own eye, but not efface it. And now I sweep off the dust that has accumulated upon it, and, lo! it stands fully revealed.
"Think! was it not a cruel wrong to the tender, loving spirit, whose eyes now look into your own, to turn away from her as you did? to cast off the tendrils that were beginning to entwine around you, and leave the vine unsupported — to grovel along the earth, with soiled, misshapen leaves, and fruitless branches? It was a cruel wrong, Milford Lane!
"For three years after you had won my heart, and then steadily avoided me, on the ground, as I was informed, of a strange aversion to marriage — I struggled hard to forget you. But my effort was vain. I could no more forget you, than I could forget myself. Consciousness was inseparably connected with the thought of you. Other young men, in every way worthy, sought my favor — but I had no love for any but you. Oh, the remembrance of those hopeless years! I would not live them over again for millions of worlds. Yet, in that dark midnight, there was one star, and, but for the feeble ray that came from it, I must have died in despair. You said to a mutual friend, that you loved me. That love I fondly hoped would change, sooner or later, your views of marriage. But you did not change. Years went slowly by, leaving deep scars upon me. I was conscious that I was changing very fast. When, at last, I gave up all hope of gaining my heart's desire, the pure streams of tender regard that I had felt for everyone, began to be poisoned. I found pleasure in thinking unkindly of your gender. It was my delight to show the lords of creation their inferiority. I read extensively, and stored my mind with varied knowledge, to the end that I might prove woman's superiority. To others, I was pedantic, but to you, whenever we met, I was reserved and gentle. In this difference there was no design on my part. I could not help acting as I did. Other men I could despise, but not you.
"As time wore on, my feelings hardened. I could think of you without emotion, and meet you without a quicker throb of the heart. Still, I was conscious that my whole character had been warped; that I had not filled my true place as a woman; that I had cumbered the ground. This made me, at last, begin to think more humbly of myself. I saw that merebrilliancy of intellect was not a woman's true boast. By this time, my years had fallen in the 'sere and yellow leaf.' It was autumn — to me, a fruitless autumn.
"Vigor of thought and rigidness of determination — gave way to a softer, gentler state of mind. Old states of tenderness came back upon me. My woman's heart was restored. Again I could think of you, and sit for hours with your image before my mental eyes; not, as before, with agitation, and an earnest yearning to be conjoined to you as my second self, but with a quiet and pleasing emotion. This has continued up to this time. I am now within a few weeks of my journey's end. A few more pulsations — and I shall lay aside this mortal body, and rise into another and eternal state of being. I look not with fear beyond the grave.
"Still, I am deeply conscious of one thing, that, had I lived as a wife and mother — as your wife and the mother of your children — my character would have been more perfected — the inner of my mind more opened. As a consequence, in the new life I am about to live, I would rise much higher, be more useful, and far happier. As the tree falls— so it lies. Here the spiritual mind is opened — there it is perfected. But only what is opened can be perfected. To open up and regenerate all the principles of the mind, we must enter into and live through all orderly states, and bear the trials and pains attendant upon them. This I have not done. I need not tell you why. But I do not mean to chide. I am only uttering the truth, and that, something within is impelling me to do.
"I have directed my picture to be sent to you. I ask of you nothing in regard to it.
"And now, farewell. Think of me as one whose life would have been happily spent, could she have walked its winding paths by your side; denied that blessed privilege, she has lived uselessly, and drank daily from a bitter cup. Again I say that I do not mean to chide; I write only the truth, and this it may be good for you to know. Farewell! From the spirit-land to which I go, I may sometimes return to you; but I know not. Farewell! Dora Enfield."
After reading this letter over slowly (perhaps for the hundredth time), under the circumstances just mentioned, Lane folded it, replaced it in the drawer, and carefully locked it. Then, with a deeply drawn sigh, he sank back in his chair, and thought over every touching sentiment of this strange epistle. Thus he remained for more than an hour, when some want reminded him of his absent servant, who was staying away from him much longer than the errand he was on would justify. An impatient expression flitted over his face, his body moved with an impatient gesture, and an imprecation on the head of Tom, fell from his lips. But it availed nothing.
Though advanced in life and helpless from sickness, there was no gentle hand, made gentler by affection, to minister to his needs; no voice, sweeter than music, to soothe his weariness. All he received was reluctant, mercenary service.
But now for the other scene — a brief, quiet, and unimposing one. Let the reader look at it, and then decide which, at fifty, is happiest — the married or the single man.
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