“I knew that. The mere thought of it was that. But it would also be the nearest approach to a joy that I could expect. So, in the hope that I might see you, I would stand for hours on the corner of your street, in the snow, in the rain, in the hot sun or cold wind, watching the door of your house, waiting for you to pass in or out—very much as, in the old times, I would watch the door of a house where I knew that you were visiting, and wait to join you at your exit. (Do you remember? And how surprised you always used to be?) But I was always disappointed. I never once saw you. I would walk, also, in those quarters of the city where ladies throng to do their shopping; always searching for one face in the crowd, but never finding it. And I haunted regularly the rehearsals at Steinway Hall and at the Academy of Music, closely watching the audience as it passed out, always hoping that my experience of that afternoon in February might be repeated, invariably getting my labor for my pains. Where did you keep yourself? Oh, sometimes I felt that I positively could not live without a sight of you. I was starving for a sight of you. Only to see you for one little moment! Only to feed my heart with one brief glimpse of you! That did not seem such a greedy or unreasonable desire. It could do you no harm, provided I were careful not to be seen, as well as to see; and I meant to be careful about that. It could do no living creature harm; and to me—oh, to me it would be like a drop of water to a man consumed by thirst. Then my wish would become the father of my thought. I would say:
“'Surely, if I go out now, and scour the city, visiting every spot that in any possibility she may visit—the shops, the park, Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third Street—surely, at some point our paths will cross each other, and I shall see her.' Well, I would go out. I would give my thought a trial. I would walk the streets till I was fagged out and foot-sore. I would come back home, with a heart sick for hope deferred.... What fears tormented me all this time, you will surely be able to conceive for yourself. How could I know but that you might have died? One morning at the breakfast-table my uncle glanced up from his newspaper, and, looking very queerly at me, said, 'Here, Elias, here's news for you. An old friend of yours is dead.' With a horrible, sick heart-leap, I thought: 'Ah, she is dead.' With as indifferent an air as I could put on, I asked, 'Who?' He handed me the paper, pointing to the death notices. It cost me all my strength to look; but I looked. Yes; there I saw your name, Redwood. With the courage of despair, I read the notice. 'No; it was not you; it was your father. But how could I know—what assurance had I—that you had not died, too, without my chancing to learn of it? The thought that you might have, got to be a fixed idea in my brain. There was no way by which I could find out. I knew nobody to whom I could apply for information. But at last, one day, by accident, in looking through a newspaper, I again caught sight of your name, Redwood. Ah, how the sight of it made my temples throb! I read that you had been appointed a teacher in the Normal College. So, my doubts on the score of your death were set at rest. It may seem strange to you that I should care so much whether you live or die, since already you are as far and as hopelessly removed from me, as if you were dead; yet the thought that you may die is the blackest of all thoughts to me. I don't know why it is, but I feel that so long as you remain in it, the world will not be quite a blank wilderness to me. There is still some warmth, some beauty, in the light of day, which would go out utterly if you were to die. So long as you live, I want to live. It seems as though there were something to live for; though I can't tell what. But if you were to die—oh, God! if she were to die! I pray God to put an end to my life at once. Oh, don't die, Christine. Oh, to think that if you were to die, I might not hear of it, and might go on living! To think that I can do nothing to make life worth living for you! Nothing to protect you from the danger of death! To think that if you were lying on a sick bed, and I knew it, I could do nothing to soothe you, to nurse you back to health! Oh, Christine! Oh, God grant that at least we may both live until I have finished this letter, and you have read it! I must not die, you must not die, until I have finished, and you have read, this letter.... Once in a great while, once in six or eight weeks, or even seldomer, I would dream about you. These dreams were the one luxury of my life, being, as they were, the one means of escape from my life; reversing, as they did, the real truth of my life. Every night, when I lay down to sleep, I would think to myself:
“'Perhaps to-night I shall dream of her. She will come to me in my dream.' These dreams always annihilated the recent past, and carried me back to our happy days. You were mine again, with me again. All was as it had been. My lost treasure was for a brief space restored to me. The great joy that I experienced in these dreams, I can not describe. It was boundless, unspeakable. Of course, to wake up in the morning, and realize that it had only been a dream, was hard. To wake up, and look around me, and see the walls of mv bedroom, the view from my window, and breathe the air, and listen to the sounds, of the morning, all quite unchanged, just as they had used to be in the old time; and then to think how completely all the rest was changed—changed beyond possibility of retrieval—you and your love lost to me forever—that was hard enough. It was like a famished man dreaming of food, and waking up to find a stone in his hand. And yet—and yet, so great was the rapture of them, while they lasted, my dreams were worth purchasing at almost any price; certainly, at the price of the pain of waking. To see you, to speak to you, to touch you; to be spoken to, and touched, by you; to hold your little, soft, warm hand in mine, to hear the music of your laughter, to breath the fragrance that the air caught from your presence, to gaze into the depths of your eyes, even though in a dream—it was better than nothing, wasn't it? Better than never, dreaming or waking, to see you at all. So, as I say, every night I would hope to dream of you—notwithstanding the thought that perhaps I had no right to dream of you, that you perhaps would begrudge me the possession of you, even in my dreams; but, as I say, my hope was rewarded very seldom—not oftener than once in every six or eight weeks. This was strange, seeing that you absorbed my mind constantly, all day long, every day.
“I believe I called my life purposeless and hopeless; but it was not exactly this. One purpose and one hope, each forlorn enough, I clung to. They furnished the only light that I could see, as I looked forward into the future. The same hope and purpose that animate me now, as I write. I purposed and I hoped, sometime, by some means, to let you know—to let you know what I have been trying to let you know by all this writing; how thoroughly I had appreciated my own brutality and baseness, how intensely I had realized your suffering, and how my heart was devoured by remorse, despair, and love. This desire to let you know, was the one constant desire that never left me. It was like an extreme thirst, that would not let me rest till I had satisfied it. I could not understand it. Even now I do not understand it. What good could it do either you or me? No good to you, surely; for the most that you can possibly care about, in regard to me, is to be let alone, and allowed to forget me. And what good to me? Would it give you back to me? Would it allay my remorse? Not unless it could undo the past, and blot out the pain I had caused you. Would it rekindle your love? I might as well expect, by my touch, to raise the dead, as ever, by any means, to rekindle your love. Would it even win for me your forgiveness? I knew that it was not within the capacity of human nature, ever really, from the bottom of the heart, without a reservation, to forgive such wrong as I had done to you. This was what my reason said; and yet, despite all this, I felt—and still feel, and can not help feeling—that somehow I ought to let you know, that it was only right to let you know. I longed to let you know. That is the substance of it. I longed to let you know; and my longing defied my reason, just as hunger defies reason. If I could only let you know, it seemed as though both you and I should then be able to find something like peace and repose. My soul ached to unbosom itself before you; and all reasoning to the contrary notwithstanding, my instincts told me that you, as well as I myself, would be happier—at least, less unhappy—afterward. It was as though I had something big and heavy in my heart, that pressed to be got out; that would strain and rack my heart until it was got out; and that could only be got out by letting you know. I suppose this is always the way, when a man's heart is full of conscious guilt. But how to let you know? Oh, my impulses answered at once. They said: 'Seek her out. Kneel down before her. Look into her face. Touch her hand. Give it vent—let it all burst forth—in one good, long, satisfying sob! Then, she will understand. She will understand what is too deep, too passionate, for any speech. Her heart and yours will be at rest. This anguish will be relieved.' Oh, how my temples throbbed, how my breath quickened, how my whole spirit thrilled, as I allowed myself to shape that thought. You, my frail darling, whom I had hurt so! You, my sweet rose-lady, whom I had torn, and crushed, and made to bleed! Christine, pale, sad Christine! To spend one moment weeping at your feet, trying a little to soothe and comfort and console you, to atone a little for the sorrow I had caused you, to pour out my love and my remorse before you! Oh, good God! But of course, of course, I knew that I might as well hope to speak with one who was dead. I, a married man, had no right, even in my own secret thoughts, to wish for such a meeting between you and me. And you, despising me, you would fly from me, you would never permit me to draw near to you. And yet, it is so hard to reconcile one's self to the truth, even when one can have no doubt about it, I would go on hoping, in spite of the hopelessness, in spite of the fact that I had no right to hope—hoping that somehow the impossible might come to pass. But at the same time, I would think: 'How else? Is there any other way?' Necessarily, it occurred to me to write. But the idea of writing was repugnant. I never could tell the half of what I had to tell by writing; and then, what assurance had I that you would read my letter? (What assurance have I, even now?) So, for the time being, I put the plan of writing out of my head; and went back, and asked again: 'How else?' Was there no possible method by which I could let you know what weighed so heavily, so heavily, upon my mind? Sometimes the most absurd notions would seize hold of me, with all the force of realities. For a little while, this would become not merely a theory, as of a thing conceivable, but a conviction, as of a thing actual; that, thinking of you as constantly and as intently as I did, by some occult means in nature, my spirit was enabled to transcend the limitations of space and matter, and to reach yours, and to communicate with it. For hours at a stretch, I would sit here at my studio window, harboring this delicious fancy: that now, at this very moment, by the operation of some subtle psychic force, you were receiving the message which my heart was sending you. I had read of such things in wonder-tales, even in serious pseudoscientific treatises. Why might there not be something in them? But, as I have said, only for a little while could a fancy like this hold its place. In a little while my common-sense would assert itself, and bring the dismal truth looming up again stark before me. All of a sudden, one day, I thought of my painting. It made my pulse leap. It seemed like an inspiration. I would paint a picture which—if you saw it; and if I sent it to the exhibition, you would very likely see it—which would tell you the whole story. In a fever of impatience to get the picture begun, and without having stopped to determine what the picture was to be, I procured canvas, paints, brushes. Then I paused, and asked: 'But what shall I paint?' It did not require much thinking, to make the futility of the whole design clear to me. Unless I could tear my heart out, and paint it, with all the fierce passions fermenting in it, I might as well not paint any thing at all. Now, at last, you see, I have returned to my former plan of writing. I have done so, in despair of any other means, and because it is no longer possible for me to hold back. I have held back until I am tired out, worn out. I have been writing at this letter, from time to time, during the past fortnight. To-day is Friday, February 13th. I have much left to say. As soon as it is finished, I shall send it to you.”
“As soon as it is finished!” It was never finished. Events now supervened, which interrupted it, and prevented its completion. Those events, it will be my business, in the concluding chapters of this story, to relate.
XX.
WHEN Elias professed to recognize that, no matter how detestable his marriage might now have become to him, he was bound in all honor and decency to do nothing that could make his wife unhappy, he certainly, so far as he was conscious of his own intentions, meant what he said. Of his free will, he had married a perfectly innocent woman. He must not allow the burden of his guilt to bear in the slightest degree upon her shoulders. He must abide exactly by the letter, and, to the best of his ability, by the spirit, of his marriage vows. He purposed to do so; and, so far as he had fathomed it, his purpose was honest and earnest. Yet, at the same time, inevitably, his life at home galled and irked him more than a little. His daily association with Tillie, with Mrs. Morgenthau, and with the rabbi, was both irritating and enervating. He had constantly, as he put it, to wear a mask; to sham, to play a part, to act a lie. He had to counterfeit emotions and interests which he was very remote from feeling, and to conceal with utmost, unflagging vigilance those that actually dominated his heart. He had to pretend to be cheerful and sympathetic. He had to keep the one vital reality of his existence closely locked down, a secret prisoner in his breast. Shamming, through practiced in a laudable cause, is, as those who have tried it can testify, a sufficiently sorry and thankless business. Elias sickened of it. The never-relaxing guard that he was obliged to maintain over himself, on the perpetual qui-vive lest by some momentary inadvertence he should betray himself, wearied and discouraged him. He became impatient, restive. In certain moods, he would reflect: “It is a part of my punishment. I have brought it upon myself. I deserve it. I must submit to it unrebelliously, in silence.” But Elias was not by temperament a Spartan; and more frequently, longing ardently for respite, he would cry: “If only for a little while I could escape! If only I could go away, and, in solitude, for a little while, give the rein to my own true self—live my own true life, without this eternal necessity of suppression and deceit!” The actor wanted to withdraw for a moment out of view, behind the scenes, there, for a moment, to drop his stage-smile and stage-manner. Not unnaturally, it may be conceded. But the question was one of method. How? Consistently with his resolution not to make his wife unhappy, how could it be done? Gradually a plan, simple of conception, and easy of execution, got shaped in Elias's mind. The plan itself, to be sure, involved a certain amount of falsehood; but falsehood which, Elias concluded, was innocuous, and, under the circumstances, justifiable.