"I was bewildered, paralyzed; for up to that moment I had hoped for some unexpected deliverance. I was hardly conscious during the ceremony. I remembered the face of my child, and of a friend who was witness. I remember Stahle's convulsive pressure of my arm against his side. I remember how like a knell fell these words upon my ear, 'I now pronounce you man and wife.' I remember my dread of the clergyman's taking leave of us; and I remember that the gleam of Stahle's eye, as he did so, made me shiver.
"Stahle was mentally infinitely my inferior; still I believed him a conscientious Christian. Now when I look back, I only wonder that I did not lose my faith in the very belief he so disgraced by his professorship. His external religious duties were most punctiliously performed. He never was absent, how inclement soever the weather, from church or vestry-meeting; he never, under any circumstances, omitted family devotions; the Bible was as familiar to him as A, B, C, and as often on his lips. I myself was religiously inclined; it was this alone which had buoyed me up when wave after wave of trouble dashed over me. I had thought sometimes that on this ground we could meet, if on no other. This alone inspired me with confidence that his promises to me and my child would be conscientiously kept.
"How can I describe to you my gradual waking up from this delusion? The conviction that came slowly—but surely—that he was a hypocrite, and a gross sensualist. That it was passion, not love, which he felt for me, and that marriage was only the stepping-stone to an else impossible gratification.
"Now I understood why that, which, to a delicate mind, would have been an insuperable obstacle to our union, was but a straw in his path. It was not the soul of which he desired possession, it was not that which he craved or could appreciate. I was wild with despair. O, the creeping horror with which I listened to his coming footsteps! I sprang from my seat when his footfall announced his approach—not to meet him, as a wife should meet her husband, as I in happier days had met Arthur—but to fly from him—to throw out my arms despairingly for help, and then to sink back into my chair, and nerve myself with a calm voice and shrouded eye to meet his unacceptable caresses.
"O, what a fate—and for me! I who had soared with the eagle, to burrow with the mole!
"How aggravated the misery that one must bear alone! My perfect self-control could not be penetrated by Stahle's imperfect vision;—to him my disgust was only coyness, and served but as fuel to the flame. This was my penance, for a sin against God, of which every woman is guilty who goes from the altar with perjured lips. But alas! little by little, as a drop of water may wear away the stone, had poverty, and sorrow, and discouragement robbed me of my energy, and made me the helpless tool I was. Still it comforted me that I had not deceived Stahle;—he knew my heart was not his, and but for the trick to which I was now sure his fears and passion had alike urged him on that fatal morning, I might have roused myself ere too late, from the benumbing spell of despair.
"Still, before God I resolved conscientiously to perform the duties I had assumed. The more my heart recoiled, the more strict was my outward observance. I patiently repaired the dilapidations of Stahle's widower wardrobe; I attended to his minutest wishes with regard to the management of his household; I saw that his favorite dishes were set before him.
"Duty in place of Love! O, the difference in the two watchwords! The irresistible trumpet tones of the two combined!
"During the day, the labor of my hands served as an escape-valve for the restlessness of my heart; but the evenings—the long, long evenings!—for Stahle never left my side. I proposed his reading to me, as a reprieve from his caresses. I did not care what, so that his arms were not round my waist, or his lip near mine. The plan succeeded but very indifferently; the books which I had on hand were not suited to his understanding, or his taste. I then procured some novels, involved him in tracing the fates of distressed lovers and their adjuncts, and succeeded better; not but that even then there were occasional parantheses which recalled me from the dream-land into which I had wandered away from the book and its reader, while employed with my needle. This reading also served as a pretext for lengthening the evenings—which, paradoxical as it may appear, was very desirable to me.
"I have said Stahle had two absent children. I had urged him ever since our marriage to bring them home. His reply always was: 'I can not leave you yet, Gertrude, to go for them.' I urged their separation from him, and the necessity that probably existed for those who had passed through so many different hands, of some system, as to their government and education. He seemed quite insensible to these appeals, having only one thought, that of leaving me, although the journey required but one day.