As always your daughter, Ellen.
From the Baroness Von Eulaw to Mrs. Perces Thornton.
Mentone, Italy, September 1, 1893.
O My Beloved Mother: While I feel always sure of your earnest sympathies, how shall I expect you to appreciate the sentiment of horror which this new and fiendish device for torturing my feelings visits upon me! How can I write it?—my poor little Boston is dead.
That fact, with a few silent tears, and a day or two of depression, I could have borne as the end of all things mortal. But he was as foully murdered as ever was the victim of the most infernal plot, for he was given no poorest or most unequal chance to fight for his life, which was as dear to him as mine to me—and that is the least possible to be said. I am in no condition of mind to discuss ethics, or to philosophize upon the events which led to this tragical termination of differences, of which poor little Boston’s life paid the forfeit.
It may be that I was wrong, certainly I would have made any terms to have saved my poor terrier from his terrible fate, few as were the years he would have lived at most.
I am not unaware that there are certain concessions, and certain acts of graciousness, which, in a limited sense, may properly be expected of every wife toward a reasonable husband. Not his boasted superiority by any means, but the fact that she is measurably relieved from financial stress or responsibility, constitutes an unwritten law among well-thinking wives everywhere, I believe, and makes the demand upon her. But I considered nothing but the enormity of my husband’s exactions, and erred in my estimate of the possibility of my husband’s brutality. I wish there were a stronger word which I might politely use.
Shall I give you briefly the harrowing details of this ruffianly act of cowardice? I think I told you in my last how the baron had left the house, filled with vindictive rage at my refusal to demand of my father large sums of money for his gambling losses. In about an hour he returned and renewed his proposition with increased violence, at the same time seizing a pen and writing a cablegram, which he commanded me to sign.
Remembering that I had given him considerable sums of money from time to time, amounting to many thousands of dollars, I entreated him to wait for a day, while he should make me understand the condition of his financial affairs. This proposition he received with the most frightful oaths. He declared that he would take my life, and would begin by killing my pet dog. No sooner said than done. He rushed to the veranda, where poor little Boston lay stretched upon his cushion asleep in the sun, and, seizing him by the neck, he dashed him violently to the ground below. A few minutes later my little friend was brought to me still feebly conscious, but mangled, bleeding, dying.
How can I ever forget, who ever did who has ever witnessed it forget that last questioning, beseeching look of affection and dumb fright which a dying animal turns upon the face of someone he has loved? Is it less than human or more? Not till the mists gathered across his pretty brown eyes was that last eloquent appeal swept away. “What have I done?” “What have I done?” was the question he was asking of me. Who shall say whether he received his answer in some later and easier translatable speech than mine, in some new and disenthralled state of being? Who shall say that he did not carry away with him a love which was all love, with no taint of selfishness or ulterior thought, quickened by no new speculation, or tradition, or sanction, or human edict? Who shall say that the attributes of faith, and self-surrender, and charity, and forgiveness, and loyalty are lost because in one incarnation they were tongue-tied? For myself I want to see my dogs again. They were my loved companions, as are my books or my works of art. And if the fire destroy them, are their contents naught or worthless because an unlettered man could not read them? At best an after life is a problem, but let us put the problems together and one may help to solve the other, for half a truth is oftenest a lie.