Pages from a Journal with Other Papers

by William Hale White

With what sickening fear I opened your letter! I was sure it contained some dreadful news. You have decided not to come till Wednesday, because your cousin Tom can accompany you on that day. I know you are quite right. It is so much better, as you are not strong, that Tom should look after you, and it would be absurd that you should make the journey two days before him. I should have reproved you seriously if you had done anything so foolish. But those two days are hard to bear. I shall not meet you at the coach, nor shall I be downstairs. Go straight to the library; I shall be there by myself.

Diary.

January 1, 1838.—Three days ago she died. Henceforth there is no living creature to whom my existence is of any real importance. Crippled as she was, she could never have married. I might have held her as long as she lived. She could have expected no love but mine. God forgive me! Perhaps I did unconsciously rejoice in that disabled limb because it kept her closer to me. Now He has taken her from me. I may have been wicked, but has He no mercy? “I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.” An answer in anger could better be borne than this impregnable silence.

January 3rd.—A day of snow and bitter wind. There were very few at the grave, and I should have been better pleased if there had been none. What claim had they to be there? I have come home alone, and they no doubt are comforting themselves with the reflection that it is all over except the half-mourning. Her death makes me hate them. Mr. Maxwell, our rector, told me when my child was ill to remember that I had no right to her. “Right!” what did he mean by that stupid word? How trouble tries words! All I can say is that from her birth I had owned her, and that now, when I want her most, I am dispossessed. “Self, self”—I know the reply, but it is unjust, for I would have stood up cheerfully to be shot if I could have saved her pain. Doubly unjust, for my passion for her was a blessing to her as well as to me.

January 6th.—Henceforth I suppose I shall have to play with people, to pretend to take an interest in their clothes and their parties, or, with the superior sort, to discuss politics or books. I care nothing for their rags or their gossip, for Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. James Montgomery. I must learn how to take the tip of a finger instead of a hand, and to accept with gratitude comfits when I hunger for bread—I, who have known—but I dare say nothing even to myself of my hours with him—I, who have heard Sophy cry out in the night for me; I, who have held her hand and have prayed by her bedside.

January 10th.—I must be still. I have learned this lesson before—that speech even to myself does harm. If I admit no conversation nor debate with myself, I certainly will not admit the chatter of outsiders. Mr. Maxwell called again to-day. “Not a syllable on that subject,” said I when he began in the usual strain. He then suggested that as this house was too large for me, and must have what he called “melancholy associations,” I should move. He had suggested this before, when my husband died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other people despise. To me they are realities and a law. I shall stay where I am. “A villa,” forsooth, on the outskirts of the town! My existence would be fractured: it will at least preserve its continuity here. Across the square I can see the house in which I was born, and I can watch the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and down it just as they did forty years ago—not the same persons, but in a sense the same people. My brother will call me extravagant if I remain here. He buys a horse and does not consider it extravagant, and my money is not wasted if I spend it in the only way in which it is of any value to me.

January 12th.—I had thought I could be dumb, but I cannot. My sorrow comes in rushes. I lift up my head above the waves for an instant, and immediately I am overwhelmed—“all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me.” My nights are a terror to me, and I fear for my reason. That last grip of Sophy’s hand is distinctly on mine now, palpable as the pressure of a fleshly hand could be. It is strange that without any external circumstances to account for it, she and I often thought the same things at the same moment. She seemed to know instinctively what was passing in my mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any unworthy thought, feeling sure that she would detect it. Blood of my blood was she. She said “goodbye” to me with perfect clearness, and in a quarter of an hour she had gone. In that quarter of an hour there could not be the extinction of so much. Such a creature as Sophy could not instantaneously not be. I cannot believe it, but still the volume of my life here is closed, the story is at an end; what remains will be nothing but a few notes on what has gone before.

January 21st.—I went to church to-day for the first time since the funeral. Mr. Maxwell preached a dull, doctrinal sermon. Whilst my husband and Sophy lived, I was a regular attendant at church, and never thought of disputing anything I heard. It did not make much impression on me, but I accepted it, and if I had been asked whether I believed it, I should have said, “Certainly.” But now a new standard of belief has been set up in me, and the word “belief” has a different meaning.

February 3rd.—Whenever I saw anything beautiful I always asked Tom or Sophy to look. Now I ask nobody. Early this morning, after the storm in the night, the sky cleared, and I went out about dawn through the garden up to the top of the orchard and watched the disappearance of the night in the west. The loveliness of that silent conquest was unsurpassable. Eighteen months ago I should have run indoors and have dragged Tom and Sophy back with me. I saw it alone now, and although the promise in the slow transformation of darkness to azure moved me to tears, I felt it was no promise for me.

March 1st.—Nothing that is prescribed does me any good. I cannot leave off going to church, but the support I want I must find out for myself. Perhaps if I had been born two hundred years ago, I might have been caught by some strong enthusiastic organisation and have been a private in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray for any more pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I can lie down and rest. I have had more rapture in a day than my neighbours and relations have had in all their lives. Tom once said to me that he would sooner have had twenty-four hours with me as his wife than youth and manhood with any other woman he ever knew. He said that, not when we were first married, but a score of years afterwards. I remember the place and the hour. It was in the garden one morning in July, just before breakfast. It was a burning day, and massive white clouds were forming themselves on the horizon. The storm on that day was the heaviest I recollect, and the lightning struck one of our chimneys and dashed it through the roof. His passion was informed with intellect, and his intellect glowed with passion. There was nothing in him merely animal or merely rational. . . . To endure, to endure! Can there be any endurance without a motive? I have no motive.