Dearest Mother: How rebellious my heart and impatient my pen as I take it up to write words which only your mother’s ear should catch from my lips!
Where shall I begin to tell you the history of the past month? Really, my memory seems too surcharged with a sense of bitterness and wrong to do me service. But I must lead you step by step, reluctant as I know you are to follow me behind the gilded arras.
After his return from St. Petersburg, the baron developed more pronounced signs of jealousy than had ever appeared hitherto. Perhaps this feeling was stimulated by my last letter to you, which I inadvertently left unmailed, and which he opened and read. Suspicious husbands you know are as jealous of moods as of men, and not to be miserable “when the Sultan goes to Ispahan” is indeed a crime. I believe there are few jealous husbands who are themselves guiltless. I do not think, however, that this test applies to my own sex, albeit I do not take refuge in the exception—Heaven save the mark!
But the baron came home, as I said, quite confirmed in many unpleasant ways I had remarked before. Without any apparent cause he stole about my room in unslippered feet, and listened furtively at the keyholes. He locked the doors whenever he passed through, and spoke to the servants through a crevice. Instead of his usual violence he whined his complaints of my demeanor toward him in the weakest and most supine fashion. But that which exasperated me most was, and is still, his unaccountable pertinacity. He would place his chair close by me and hold his knee against mine, or his elbow, or his foot, while, with purpling face and hanging mouth, he entreated me not to leave him, until, in half insane protest, I would break clear of him and throw open a window, or bathe my hands and face in utter exhaustion, or—I had almost said—sense of contamination. In his fits of rage there is something genuine from an animal, if not from a manly, point of view. But how shall I deal with this new phase? Ah, well! let me get on with my letter, for I have much to say, and that is why I am dallying.
I consented to come to Mentone on account of my health. Finding myself growing weak and failing, the physicians ordered an immediate change, and recommended the old cure virtually—to take myself out of their hands. The baron loves to play, and I suspect is a little too well known in gaming circles in Berlin.
Therefore when he proposed Mentone so early in the season, or, indeed, altogether out of season, I—quite knowing that it meant Monte Carlo—accepted, and with valet and maid and dear old Boston we came.
Result, financial ruin! The baron played recklessly. Each time when I saw him he was feverish and abstracted. I did not ask the cause, whether he were winner or loser, for, like most women, I believe that everybody finally loses, but I was not prepared for the dénouement, for he has absolutely lost not only all his ready money, but is heavily in debt, and will need to resort to further mortgage of his landed estates.
Weak and foolhardy as he was, I pity him, for what must have been his feelings as, driving down the Corniche road overhanging the old sea, he reflected how many men had sought forgetfulness for just such acts of folly in the tideless waters. Only that the baron has other ideas about reparation, for he came home and first proposed that I write my father for money to make good his losses. Taking courage from my silence, he suggested that I cable my message at once.
This latter I proposed not to do, as I informed him in very few words. He has left the hotel in a terrible fit of rage, vowing revenge with his last accents. And I am writing this letter while I wait, meanwhile wondering how much I ought to blame myself for my unhappy life, or if I ought not to lock the secret in my own breast, even from you, my mother. But a secret is a dumb devil, and so long as there is another hand to glance the dart, it rarely wounds to death. I will mail this at once in order that it shall not fall into his hands.
Dearest mamma, are these letters never to cease? I think I notice that your replies are more reserved, and I have thought full of pain and discouragement. But do not feel discouraged. I realize the resources within me, and I have a fund of reserved power which I may summon in an exigency. I have not fairly contemplated anything in the future; to deal with the present has been my purpose. Each joy and each sorrow in its turn, so shall no preconceived action operate to the ends of injustice or unfairness. I close this in haste but lasting love.