Millbank;

by Mary Jane Holmes

It was dated on board the “Sea Gull” and began as follows:

“My husband:—It would be mockery for me to put the word dear before your honored name. You would not believe I meant it when I have sinned against you so deeply and wounded your pride so sorely. But oh, if you knew all which led me to what I am, you would pity me even if you condemned, for you were always kind, too kind by far to a wicked girl like me. But I am not so bad as you imagine. I have left you, I know, and left my darling baby, and he is here with me, but by no consent of mine. I am not going to Europe. I am going to Charleston, where Lucy is, and shall mail this letter from there. Every word I write will be true, and you must believe it and teach Roger to believe it, too, for I have not sinned as you suppose, and Roger need not blush for his mother except that she deserted him. I am writing this quite as much for him as for you, for I want him to know something of his mother as she was years ago, when she lived among the Schodick hills, in the dear old house which I have dreamed about so often, and which even here on the sea comes up so vividly before me, with the orchard where the mountain shadows fell so early in the afternoon, and the meadows where the buttercups and clover blossoms grew. Oh, I grow sick, and faint, and dizzy when I think of those happy days and contrast myself as I was then with myself as I am now. I was so happy, though I knew what poverty meant; but that did not matter. Children, if surrounded by loving friends, do not mind being poor, and I did not mind it either until I grew old enough to see how it troubled my father. My mother, as you know, died before I could remember her, and my aunt Mary, my father’s only sister, and cousin Lucy’s mother, took her place and cared for me.

“The summer before you came to us, I met Arthur Grey. He was among the visitors who boarded at the hotel. He was said to be very rich, very aristocratic, very fastidious. You never saw him, and cannot understand the strange fascination there was about him, or how his manner, when he chose to be gracious, was calculated to win upon a simple girl like me. I met him, and, ere I was aware of it, he taught me how to love him. He became an inmate of our house at last, and thus our growing fondness for each other was hidden from the public, which would have said that I was no match for him. I know that he loved me. I never doubted that for a moment. Deception can assume many garbs, but never the guise he wore when he won my girlish love. He asked me to be his wife one autumn night, when the Indian summer haze was on the hills, and the mountain tops were gorgeous with scarlet and gold. I had never dreamed that a human being could be as happy as I was when, with him at my side, I walked back across the fields to our home. The very air around seemed full of the ecstatic joy I felt as I thought of a life spent with him. He wished me to keep our betrothal a secret for a time, he said, as he did not care to have his mother and sisters know of it just then. They were at the hotel for a few weeks, and I used to see them at church; and their cold, haughty manner impressed me disagreeably, just as it did every one who came in contact with them. I should not live with them, Arthur said. I should have a home of my own on the Hudson. He had just bought a residence there, and he described it to me until I knew every tree, and shrub, and winding walk upon the place.

“Then he went away, and the dreary winter came, and his letters, so frequent at first, began to come irregularly, but were always loving and tender, and full of excuses for the long delay. Once I heard of fierce opposition from his mother and sister, and a desire on their part to persuade him into a more brilliant marriage. But I trusted him fully until the spring, when after a longer interval of silence than usual there came a letter from his mother, who wrote at her son’s request, as he was ill and unable to write himself. I was still very dear to him, she said, but considering all things he thought it better for us both that the engagement should be broken. I had been brought up so differently, that he did not believe I would ever be happy in the society in which he moved, and it was really doing me a kindness to leave me where I was; still, if I insisted, he was in honor bound to adhere to his promise, and should do so.

“I pass over the pain, and bitter disappointment, and dreadful days, when, in the shadow of the woods where I had walked so often with him, I laid my face in the grass and wished that I could die. I did not write him a word, but I sent him back his letters, and the ring, and every memento of those blissful hours; and the few who knew of my engagement guessed that it was broken, and said it had ended as they expected.

“Then you came, just when my heart was so sore, and you were kind to father, and sought me of him for your wife, and he begged me to consider your proposal, and save him his home for his old age. Then I went again into the shadow of those woods, and crept away behind a rock, under a luxuriant pine, and prayed that I might know what was right for me to do. My father found me there one day and took me home, and said I need not marry you. He would rather end his days in the poor-house than see me so distressed. But the sight of his dear old face growing so white, and thin, as the time for the foreclosure drew near, was more than I could bear, and it mattered little what I did in the future; so I went to you and said ‘I will be your wife, and do the best I can; but you must be patient with me. I am only a little girl.’

“I ought to have told you of Arthur, but I did not, and so trouble came of it. We were married in the morning, and went to Boston, and then back for a few days to Schodick, where there was a letter for me, from Arthur. It was all a terrible deception: he had had a long, long illness, and his mother,—a cruel, artful woman,—took advantage of it, and wrote me that cruel letter. Then, when my package reached her, and she found there was no word of protest in it, she gave it to him, and worked upon him in his weak condition until he believed me false, and the excitement brought on a relapse which lasted longer and was more dangerous than his first illness had been. As soon as he was able to hold his pen, he wrote to me again; but his mother managed to withhold the letter, and so the time went on until, by chance, he discovered the deception, but it was too late. I was your wife. I am your wife now, and so I must not tell you of that terrible hour of anguish in my room at home, when cousin Lucy, who was then at our house, found me fainting on the floor with the letter in my hand. I told her everything, for we were to each other as sisters; but with that exception, no living being has ever heard my story. I asked her to send him a paper containing the notice of my marriage, and that was all the answer I returned to his letter.

“Then you took me to Millbank, and I tried to do my duty, even though my heart was broken. After Roger came, I was happier, and I appreciated all your kindness, and the pain was not so hard to bear, till we went to Saratoga that summer, where I met him again.

“He loved me still, and we talked it over together, sometimes when you were sleeping after dinner, and nights when you were playing billiards. There is so much of that kind of thing at Saratoga that one’s sense of right and wrong is easily blunted there, and I was so young; still this is no excuse. I ought not to have listened for a moment, especially after he began to talk of Italy and a cottage by the sea, where no one would know us. I was his in the sight of Heaven, he said. I was committing sin by living with you. I was more his wife than yours, and he made me believe that if once I left you, a divorce could easily be obtained, and then there would be nothing in the way of our marriage. I caught at that idea and listened to it, and from that moment my fate was sealed. But I never contemplated anything but marriage with him, when at last I consented to leave you. I wanted to take Roger, and went on my knees to him, begging that I might have my baby, but he would not consent. A child would be in the way, he said, and I must choose between him and my boy. His influence over me was so great that I would have walked into the fire with him then, had he willed it so.

“I left Millbank at night, intending to meet Arthur in New York, and go at once to the steamer bound for Liverpool, but on the way thoughts of my baby sleeping in his crib, with that smile on his lips when I kissed him last, came to save me, and at New Haven I left the train and took the boat for New York, and went to another hotel than the one where he was waiting for me. I scarcely knew what I meant to do, except to avoid him, until, as I sat waiting for a room, I heard some people talking of the ‘Sea Gull,’ which was to leave the next day for Charleston. Then, I said, ‘Heaven has opened for me that way of escape. I dare not go back to Millbank. My husband would not receive me now. Lucy is in Charleston. She knows my story. I will go to her,’ and so yesterday, when the ‘Sea Gull’ dropped down the harbor, I was in it, and he was there too; but I did not know it till we had been hours upon the sea, and it was too late for me to go back. He had wondered that I did not come according to appointment, and was walking down Broadway when he saw me leave the hotel, and called a carriage at once and followed me to the boat, guessing that it was my intention to avoid him. I have told him of my resolve, and when Charleston is reached, we shall part forever.