Out in the World CHAPTER 4.
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For two months Madeline lay ill at Mrs. Woodbine's. A portion of the time there had been despair of her life. Then she was removed to her own home.
More than one sweet hope died in her heart during these never-to-be-forgotten days. She came out of them, changed for all the time to come. What guarded explanations of his conduct which her husband unbent himself to make, in no degree satisfied her. She did not, indeed, comprehend them. She could not get to his point, and from thence view herself. Her very innocence and artlessness obscured all perception of wrong.
On the part of Jansen, there was regret for the consequences which had followed his too hastily determined withdrawal from the party, and he blamed himself for what he had done. But pride kept back from his lips and manner a confession of regret, or an acknowledgment of blame. On the whole subject, he was coldly reticent; trying, as it were to throw a veil over the affair, as something that could not bear the light. So far as Madeline was concerned, she was ready to answer for herself in everything — had no desire forconcealment — would have justified herself to the last particular, because she knew herself to be loyal and pure.
But, her husband never gave her this opportunity. If the truth, in regard to him, could have been exhibited in clear light, it would have shown such a state of keen sensitiveness concerning the world's opinion of what had taken place, as to overshadow considerations that lay at the very foundations of peace and happiness. And this sensitiveness to the world's opinion did not regard his wife's reputation, as much as his own. He wished to appear blameless in the eyes of all men; and must we say it, desired, in his secret heart, that Madeline should stand convicted of wrong — rather than himself!
Always Carl Jansen was consciously in the world's presence. Keep this trait of character in mind. He was an actor on life's stage, and the men and women he knew and mingled with socially, or in business, were the audience. He acted badly, you will say, at Mrs. Woodbine's. So he did, and no one knew that better than Jansen himself. It was the smarting consciousness of this, which made him cold and unforgiving towards Madeline. He blamed her for what he suffered; and failed adequately to pity her suffering, because he deemed it deserved and beneficial.
Out of sharp mental agonies — most people arise with a clearer moral vision. It was not so with Mrs. Jansen. True, her thought had a wider range; she had developed in some directions in a remarkable degree. But, concerning her true position as a wife — perception had not grown clearer. She felt that she had been wronged in her husband's heart, and wronged by him before the world. Nothing was clearer to her than this. She could see it only in one light. What had she done? Nothing evil. In not one line had she swerved from honorable thought or feeling. There had not been the least variableness nor shadow of turning, in the needle of her love, which pointed to her husband as its polar star. As of old, she had entered with all the outflowing impulses of her nature into the night's festivities. She had sung with that sweet abandonment of soul common with those who have a passion for music. She had felt the all-pervading sphere of pleasure that filled the atmosphere in which she moved, as she had felt it a hundred times before. That Guyton sought tomonopolize her company, was something to which she had not given a thought, until summoned so harshly by her husband and virtually commanded to retire with him from the house. Then, as a kind of self-justification, and from wounded pride — she permitted his further attentions. Had there been the feeblest motion of desire towards him — of preference above her husband — she would have started back from him in conscious fear and shame. But being, as we have said, loyal and pure, she did not, in imagination, invest him with any attractions that could hold her regard for an instant of time. He was a pleasant companion — that was all.
Alas for Madeline! Alas for her husband! that she had not come up out of the valley of pain and deep humiliation, with a clearer vision! Alas for them, that both were blinded by natural feeling, and that, alike, they saw obscurely — were alike disposed to self-justification and mutual blame. There was no outward arraignment of each other — no allusion, even remotely, to that one unhappy circumstance, the memory of which was as an ever present cloud in the horizon of their souls, dimming the sunlight; but, thoughtaccused.
Each began to perceive in the other a sphere of coldness. The reserve that followed Madeline's restoration to health, increased rather than diminished. On the side of Madeline, this was attributed to a state of hardness towards her by her husband; on the side of Jansen, it was attributed to wilfulness and defect of love. To one thing the husband had made up his mind — reasoning from his own standpoint. It was his duty to guard his wife; to hold her as far as possible away from the allurements of society, and the dangerous association of attractive — but unprincipled men — and he meant to do this. If he had really known the artless, pure-minded woman who had promised to be true to him as a wife — he would not have seen his duty in this way. But he did not know her, and what was worse, lacked the perceptive power by which to know her. He had no plummet line that would sound the depths of her real consciousness. And so, standing side by side with her, in the closest of all human relations — she was yet a stranger. For all this, he judged her as inexorably as if the book of her inner life were laid open to him, and he knew every page by heart!
On the return of health, the friends of Mrs. Jansen, who made up a large circle, drew her speedily back again into society. Deliberately acting from what he conceived to be an imperative duty, her husband began throwing impediments in her way. She stepped over them without pause, acting in part from a spirit of womanly independence, in part fromawakened pride, and with something of self-will; yet, chiefly, from an impelling necessity of her life. She was social, and felt drawn towards society with an almost irresistible impulse.
There needed to be a warmer atmosphere — more demonstrative love — tenderer consideration — to give home the magnet's power over her. Even these could not have made her content with a semi-cloistered existence. She could love her husband (if worthy of her love); be true to him in all things; be faithful to every home-duty — and yet enjoy society with the keenest relish. But, such was the limited range of Jansen's ideas, that he was not able to understand how his wife could love society — without a decrease in her love of her husband and the love of her home.
"We cannot serve two masters," so he reasoned on the subject, as he turned it over and over in the circumscribed chamber of his thoughts. "If she prefers social life to home life — then she loves society better than her home. If she prefers the company of other men to the company of her husband — does she not put them above her husband?"
So he blinded, irritated, and hardened himself causelessly; and this, simply because he could not comprehend Madeline. On the other side, Madeline did not comprehend her husband. If she could have looked into his mind, and thus been able to understand something of his peculiar way of regarding things, the result of mental conformation and habits of life, she would have seen it best to deny herself in many things, in order that he might not read her actions as against honorable principles.
Selfish and arbitrary! Alas for domestic felicity, when a wife so interprets her husband! Madeline was not able to give any higher interpretation to her husband's conduct on too many occasions, when, instinctively, self-will, stimulated by pride, nerved her to opposition.
Carl Jansen was not what we call an emotional man. He neither enjoyed nor suffered intensely — nor in paroxysms. He never forgot himself in the overflow of pleasure or pain; but he was a brooding man, and would spread his wings over a false idea, warming it into vitality, and bringing into life a host of imaginations falser than the original; and what was worse, he too often acted on these imaginations as if they were truths. Self-poised, quiet, firm, resolute — he was one of those people who, after adopting a line of conduct, generally pursue it to the end, bearing down — sometimes trampling down — whatever sets itself in opposition.
Madeline, on the other hand, was, as we have seen, emotional in a high degree. She could enjoy intensely, and she could suffer intensely; and what was peculiar in her case, thedominant wave usually effaced all marks of that which preceded. To her husband she was, on this account, inexplicable. Things that would have set him to brooding — that would have clouded him for days — passed with her, as the morning cloud and the early dew. Now it was a rain of tears — and now a flood of sunshine. At dawn in the valley — and at noon upon the mountaintop.
It was impossible for a man of Carl Jansen's range of ideas to comprehend such a woman. Narrow men are always exacting of prerogative. He was the husband — and thehead. Assuming this as the position of superiority he saw very clearly that it was his duty as the head, to rule — and the duty of his wife, to obey. The fact that she had defied his authority at Mrs. Woodbine's, could never be forgotten — it was never forgiven. Often since then, he had laid his hand upon her to hold her back, as she was moving in ways he did not approve; but just as often, she had disregarded the intimations.
Remembering the unhappy consequences which had followed the decided course taken at Mrs. Woodbine's, Jansen had hesitated on the question of assuming authority, and at the same time maintaining authority. Many times he had resolved to assert the right, held as he deemed, by virtue of the relation assumed in marriage — but not prepared for consequences that might follow, he yet hesitated. Madeline was a riddle to him. The laws of mental action, as educed from his own motives and consciousness, did not appear to govern in her case. He never knew how to determine the result of forces acting in her mind. It was a mystery to him that she had no sensitiveness to the world's opinion. This was his weak point — "How will it appear to others?" "What will he think?" or, "What will she say?" Forever, with him, action was coming to this standard — while she lived, and moved, and had her being, in an almost entire unconsciousness of observation.
It must needs be, that minds so diversely constituted come, sooner or later, into stern and unyielding antagonism. Nothing but genuine Christian virtues, the growth of self-denial — can save from this unhappy result, and in the case of Jansen and his wife, only natural feelings and considerations had influence.
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