But I must tell you, Auntie, such a strange thing happened night before last. It was after midnight and everybody was in bed when a loud knocking at the hall door waked us all up, and father went down to see who it was. What was our surprise to see our neighbor’s wife, Mrs. McAlpine, all wet with rain, without any hat or shawl, her long black hair hanging down her back, the very picture of a forlorn and despairing creature. She begged my father to take her in and conceal her, for she said she had run away from home, for her husband was going to kill her if he could find her. My mother asked her what she had done to awaken such wrath and vengeance, and she replied: “Nothing at all; Mr. McAlpine had been drinking and was wild from the effects of liquor.” Mother gave the poor lady the guest chamber and sent me to her room with dry clothing, and I assisted her to undress. Auntie, when I pulled her wet dress down from her white shoulders what was my horror to see them all bruised and seamed in every direction as by the marks of whip or cowhide. “Oh, my God,” said I, “what a shame!” She quickly covered herself with the gown I brought, while tears silently flowed down her pale cheeks. My own blood boiled with indignation and I resolved that I never would speak to the handsome, gentlemanly brute who had committed this outrage upon his patient and gentle wife. I told mother what I had seen and she turned pale and told me to say nothing to anyone, but try to contribute in every way to the comfort of the unhappy guest who had come to us in such a singular way. The next day about ten o’clock Mr. McAlpine came and asked to see father. When Mrs. McAlpine found her husband was in the house she seemed crazed with a mortal terror and begged mother to lock her up in the closet and “save” her. Mother tried to reassure her, but in vain; nor did she draw an easy breath until she saw him driving down the avenue after his long interview with father was over. Late that evening father called mother and me into the library and informed us that we must not feel so hostile toward the man whose unhappy wife we were entertaining, for he was entitled to our sympathy and pity, and he was sorry to tell us that Colonel McAlpine was the wretched victim of an intemperate wife, whom he had tried in vain to reform and restrain and in fact he had resorted to everything else before using the lash and my father was convinced of the truth of his version of the miserable story.
The Colonel begged us to keep the lady quiet for a day or two and then bring her home. It seemed to me nothing could excuse such brutality, and when mother grew somewhat reserved to her unbidden guest, I never varied in my conduct, and she was quick to appreciate my kindness. When two days had passed, to my surprise she herself proposed to return and asked me to drive over with her to her home. I was reluctant to leave her then, but the Colonel received her with such an apparent kindness and cordiality that I was entirely reassured and I tried to banish the recollection of those dreadful marks on his wife’s shoulders. But what could I do under the circumstances? The woman said she must go home—to her child.
You will think this is enough of tragedy, but wait, dear Auntie, until you hear the end. Last night Mr. McAlpine shot his wife through the heart, then blew out his own brains, and the whole country is perfectly horrified, and the wildest rumors are going around. Father has written to their friends in New York, and mother has agreed to take care of the baby until they come for it.
It seems really frivolous for me to go back to the dress question after these horrors, but tell Lucy to have our dresses made open a little in the neck, as they are for evening.
Yours devotedly,
Maria.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SOUTHERN WOMAN BECOMES A “CLUBABLE” BEING.
In every individual life there enter events which in their enlarged influence are analogous to epoch-making periods in the nation’s history. Such, surely, was my meeting with Susan B. Anthony, when she visited the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. I had long kept a vivid and dear picture of her in the inner sanctuary of my mind; had become acquainted through the press with the vigor of her intellect and the native independence and integrity of her character; had known she was a woman “born out of due season,” who had already spent fifty years of her life trying to make “the rank and file” of women and men see that the human race in all its social relations is in bondage, while woman occupies a position less than free. I had so long been one with her in spirit and principles that I was not prepared to feel so like a little chicken looking into the shell out of which it has just stepped, as I did feel on coming face to face with all the expansiveness her many years of service for women had wrought her own justice-loving personality.