Volume 16 — The House That Jack Built.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

In Two Parts.

Part II.

It was late before Aunt Nancy felt the approach of sleep that night. She turned restlessly from side to side, thinking over Bessie's strange behavior, and trying to find a solution for it. The appearance of a mystery disturbed all calculations based upon her plain and outspoken experience.

But the habits of years are not easily broken, and sleep, that for more than six decades had been wont to settle over this woman's head as regularly as darkness settled on the earth, began now to dim her senses. She was about losing consciousness, when the vague sense of pain and perplexity which still clung to her mind strengthened and took a new form. It was no longer a woman who laughed bitterly when she should have wept, but a woman sobbing violently, she knew not why.

The sound continued, and before its dreary persistence Aunt Nancy's hovering sleep took flight. She started up and listened, not yet quite recalled to recollection. It was indeed a woman's voice sobbing uncontrollably. For one moment, the listener's blood chilled with a superstitious fear; the next, she recollected that she was not alone in the house. It was Bessie who mourned. “Rachel weeping for her children, because they were not,” the old woman thought pityingly.

Poor Bessie had forgotten how thin the walls were in her old home, and, when the door opened and a tall figure clad in white entered her room, she uttered a cry of affright.

“You poor child! I couldn't stand it to hear you cry so,” Aunt Nancy said, going to her bedside and bending down to put a caressing arm around her. “Don't cry! Try to remember that you have not lost everything.”

“I'm sorry I disturbed you, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said faintly, sinking back on the pillow. “You had better leave me to have it out alone. I don't often get a chance to have a good cry, and you have no idea what a relief it is.”

“I know all about it!” Aunt Nancy replied, and her voice, low and deep, had a sound like a tolling bell. “I have seen 'em all go and leave me, one after another, father and mother, brothers and sisters, husband and children, till every earthly hope was covered over with dust, and it seemed as though there was dust on the very bread I ate. Yes, I know what it is better than you, for you have your husband and one child left yet, and I have nothing on earth!”

“I have not!” Bessie cried out passionately, with the jealousy of one whose grief is underestimated. “John and the boy are further away from me than my dead children are!”

The barrier was down. She had betrayed herself, and must tell the whole, though she might be sorry [pg 337] afterward for having spoken. Concealment and self-control were no longer possible.

It was a tale too often true, though not so often told. The husband, engrossed in business, and missing no home care which the love and duty of his wife could bestow, had forgotten, or did not care, or did not believe, that any return was due from him save a pecuniary support, or that he could be guilty of any sin of omission toward his wife, save the omission to provide her with food and shelter.

Perhaps no woman ever saw the heart she had once possessed slipping away from her, without making a mistake in her efforts to retain it. Indifference is her surest means of success, but indifference the loving heart can never affect. As well might flame hope to hide itself, living, in ashes.

The reserve and gravity of wounded feeling, when at length the husband noticed them, he named sulkiness, and the meanness of the causes to which he ascribed that were felt as an insult. The few timid reproaches and petitions the wife had brought herself to utter he listened to with surprise and annoyance, or with ridicule. Why, what in the world did she want?—to begin their courting days over again? In order to do that, they must first be divorced. What had he done? Had he beaten, or scolded, or starved her? Had he gone gallivanting about with other women? Nonsense! He had his business to attend to. Of course he loved her, but she mustn't bother him.

What reply is possible to such arguments? How small seem all our sweetest human needs when they are put into words, simply because words can never express them! In such a controversy, hard natures have always the advantage over sensitive ones, and seem to triumph by their very inferiority.

Bessie was silent, and her husband thought that she was convinced, and dismissed the subject from his mind. If he observed that she grew pale, he supposed that city air did not agree with her. He missed no home comfort, heard no complaint, and therefore took for granted that all was right. He frequently absented himself from home on business, never asking his wife to accompany him, women being in the way on such occasions, and she seemed satisfied to see nothing beyond her own fireside. He brought home his plans and studies at evening, and, when the children's play and caresses disturbed him, their mother took them away and amused them elsewhere. When, later, her little ones asleep, as she sat by her husband silently working, he found that the snip of her scissors and the rattle of her spools fretted him, Bessie said not a word, but went off to bed, and wet her pillow with bitter and unavailing tears, finding no comfort.

The thought of seeking comfort and help in her religion had not once entered her mind. She was dead to its obligations. They had never been impressed on her, and her heart had been engrossed by other interests. Her children had been baptized, and she usually went to an early Mass on Sunday, but never heard a sermon, and never read a religious book. She prayed often, but it was the outcry of pain, the petition for an earthly good, not the prayer for resignation and wisdom.

Of his wife's real life John Maynard knew no more than he did of life at the antipodes. His profession engrossed his heart. His happiness was to work and study over polished [pg 338] metals, to fit cylinder, crank, and valve with nicety into their places; and at last, when that exquisite but irresistible power of steam, so delicate in its fineness, yet so terrible in its strength, began to steal into his work, to see the creature of brass and iron grow alive, and become more mighty than an army of giants, how tenderly could he handle, how carefully arrange, how patiently study out, the parts of his work! For the problem of that infinitely more exquisite mechanism—his wife's heart—he had no time.

The boy, as boys will, followed in the footsteps of his father. He emulated the slighting of which the father was himself unconscious, and treated his mother with that intolerable mixture of patronizing kindness and impatient superiority so often witnessed in the presumptuous children of our time.

When Bessie Maynard had poured out her complaint, with many an illustration of which a woman could well understand the bitterness, Aunt Nancy was silent a moment.

“It's pretty hard, dear,” she said then, embarrassed what to say. “Some men have that way of not caring anything about their wives, as soon as they have got them; but I never thought John would act so. And you know, Bessie, that, if it is hard, still he is your husband, and you can't leave him for that. Try to be patient, and don't lose courage. I'm sure he loves you, though he doesn't show it; and he'll come round by-and-by.”

The reply almost broke in on this trite advice: “I did not mean to leave him. I came down here to think. I can't think there. I wanted to see again this place where I was a child, and where I was so happy. I thought that perhaps some of the old feelings might come back. I have been afraid of some things. Aunt Nancy, I was afraid I should grow to hate John!”

“Oh! no, Bessie,” the old woman exclaimed. “Never let yourself hate your own husband! It would be a dreadful sin; and, besides, it wouldn't mend matters. It is better for a woman to love one who cares nothing for her than not to love anybody. I don't believe but John is fond of you still, if he'd only stop to think of it.”

There was no reply.

“What else were you afraid of?” Aunt Nancy asked presently. “You said you were afraid of some things?”

Bessie did not answer.

That other fear that, shunned at first, then glanced upon, then brooded over silently till it had grown almost a probability, flashed out again on her in all its original hatefulness when she found herself about to explain it to a listener like this.

“If you don't want to tell, I won't ask you,” Aunt Nancy said, with almost childlike timidity. “But, may be, since you have begun, you would feel better not to keep anything back. You know, Bessie, I am on your side, though I am John's own aunt.”

The younger woman crept nearer into the arm that half held her, and said, in a hurried whisper, “Every one is not so indifferent to me as John is!”

“I'm glad of it, child,” was the calm reply. “I don't like to praise people to their faces, but you always had a sweet, winning way. I am glad that other people are good to you.” She waited again for the explanation, not dreaming that it had been given.

Bessie Maynard drew a breath, like one who plunges into water. “There's some one who thinks me worth watching and sympathizing with, if John doesn't,” she said.

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“You don't mean a man!” exclaimed Aunt Nancy.

“Of course I do,” answered Bessie almost pettishly.

The words were scarcely out of her mouth, before she was flung back on to the pillow by the arms that had held her so tenderly, and Aunt Nancy stood erect by the bedside. “Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Bessie Maynard?” she cried out indignantly.

“No, I am not!” was the dogged answer. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

The flash of the old woman's eyes could be seen in the dim light. “What! you, a married woman, not ashamed to let a man who is not your husband talk love to you!”

“He never spoke a word of love to me,” said Bessie, still sulky.

Aunt Nancy was utterly puzzled. “How do you know, then?” she asked.

Neither by nature nor education was this woman fitted to understand that subtile manner by which impressions and assurances are conveyed without a word having been spoken. A man would have been obliged to use plain language indeed, if he would have had her, a wife, understand that he loved her.

While Bessie described some of the delicate kindnesses of this dangerous friend of hers, Aunt Nancy listened attentively, and presently resumed her seat by the bed. She really could not see that the child had done, or meant, or wished any real harm.

“But, still, you must look out for the fellow, dear,” she said. “He wouldn't hang round you so if he was what he ought to be. You never know what these city gentlemen are.”

“He isn't a bad man!” Bessie exclaimed. “I won't have him called so. I'm afraid; but, for all that, I respect him. I wish John were half as good.”

The story was ended; but with the feeling of relief which followed the disburdening of her heart came also the uneasiness and half regret we always experience when we have been led unawares to confide a secret to one whom we have not deliberately chosen as a confidant. Conscious of this new uneasiness, Bessie wished to close the conversation.

“Don't let me keep you any longer,” she said. “Go to bed now, and forget all the nonsense I have been talking. I am sorry I disturbed you.”

Aunt Nancy paid no attention to this request. She sat a few moments in deep thought, then spoke abruptly: “Bessie, did you ever go to any of your priests about this business?”

“To a priest!” repeated Bessie, astonished at such a question from a rigid Puritan like her aunt, and doubtful in what spirit it was asked. “What made you think of that?”

“I am not a Catholic,” the old woman said, “but you are. And I like to see people live up to their religion, whatever it is. A religion that won't help you in a strait like this isn't worth having.”

Bessie was silent, knowing not what to say. Her faith was sleeping. That religion would help as really as the trials of earth can hurt she had not thought. Like many others, she invoked the aid of the church on the great events, the births, the marriages, and the deaths, but let the rest of life fight its own battles.

“Now, you listen to me,” Aunt Nancy said earnestly. “I'm not very wise, but I'm going to give you the best advice that you can get anywhere. Just you write to old Father Conners, the priest that married you and John, and tell him what [pg 340] a trouble you are in. I've seen him, and I believe he's a good Christian, if he is a priest, and a sensible man, too. He comes three or four times a year up to a Mr. Blake's, over on the railroad, and says Mass in his house. There are a good many Catholics round there now. It's about time for him to come again. You write to him, and you won't be sorry for it. There's nothing else for you to do. Will you write, Bessie? I want you to promise.”

The promise was given hesitatingly, doubtingly, more to get rid of the subject than from any conviction of its wisdom.

But a promise is a promise, and next morning Bessie wrote the letter, not because she wished to, but because she must; and a very dry, cold letter it was. She was a little helped to the writing of it by the pleasant prospect of carrying it to mail. That would give her a long, solitary walk and a whole afternoon quite to herself; for the post-office was in a desk, in a corner of the sitting-room of a farm-house four miles distant. This house was at the end of postal and stage accommodations in that direction. Three times a week a double-seated open wagon was driven there from a seaport town thirty miles to the southward, passing through several small villages on its way. This stage had brought Bessie up, and was to return the next morning.

She set out on her walk soon after their early dinner, and reached the post-office just at the high tide of that country afternoon leisure, when, their noon dinner quite cleared away, the women of the house are ordinarily free from everything that they would call labor. At this time the housewife smooths her hair and ties on a clean apron. One hears the snap of knitting-needles through the silence, or the drowsy hum of the spinning-wheel, or the sound of the loom where the deep-blue woollen web grows, thread by thread, while the weaver tosses her shuttle to and fro.

Bessie had dreaded the gossip which she must expect to encounter; but, as she approached, the sight of blue and pink sun-bonnets out in the field, where the women were raking, hay, relieved her fear. Not a soul was in the house. The watch-dog, recollecting her, gave no alarm, only walked gravely by her side, and looked on while she slipped her letter into the bag left to receive the mail. All the doors and windows stood open, and the sunshine lay bright and clear on the white bare floors. Large, stupid flies bumped their heads against the panes of glass, and a bumble-bee flew in at the front door, wandered noisily about the rooms, and out again by the back door. The painted wooden chairs stood straightly against the yellow-washed walls, and a large rocking-chair, with a chintz cushion, occupied one corner. A braided cloth mat covered the hearth, and the fireplace was filled with cedar boughs, through which glittered the brass andirons. On the high mantel-piece stood a pair of brass candlesticks, and a tumbler filled with wild roses.

Bessie glanced hurriedly about, then stole out, trembling lest she should be discovered and pounced upon by some loud-voiced man or woman from whom escape would be impossible. But no one appeared, and in a few minutes she was out of sight of the house.

Loud would be their exclamations of wonder and regret when they should discover that letter, knowing who must have brought it. How curiously would they handle it over, [pg 341] and examine it, and try to peep into it while they speculated and guessed concerning its contents!

“One comfort,” said Bessie to herself, as she glanced over her shoulder, and saw the last sun-bonnet disappear, “I sealed it so that not even a particle of air could get in; and they can't see a word without committing felony.”

The June day was passing away in a soft glory. All the world was green, all the sky was blue, and all the air was golden. But the green was so various, from a verdant blackness, through many tints, to a vivid green that was almost yellow, it seemed many-colored as it was many-shaped. There was every shape and size, from the graceful plume of ferns to the square-topped oak with its sturdy, horizontal branches. Through it all wound the narrow brown road, with a line of grass in the middle between the wagon-wheels where the horses feet spared it. The birds were singing their evening song, and a brook at the roadside lisped faintly here and there, then lay still and shone, then suddenly laughed outright.

On such an evening one does long to be happy; and, if happy, then one feels that it is not enough. Bessie walked on slowly, taking long breaths of the clear, perfumed air that had now an evening coolness. She would fain have stayed out till night fell. The house was near, so she stepped aside, sat down on a mossy rock, and looked at the sunset. The last, thin, shining cloud there melted in the fervid light, grew faint, and disappeared. Bessie's eyes, so tearful that all this universe of green and gold swam before them, were fixed on the sky, and she thought over, with a clearer mind now, the last feverish, miserable years of her life.

It seemed to her that, if she had been less exclusively devoted to her husband, and had interested herself in other people and in the events of the day, she would have been wiser and happier. She had made herself as a slave, and had received a slave's portion. It would be better to stand on a more equal footing, and, since works of supererogation, instead of winning his gratitude and affection, only fostered his selfishness and lowered her, to confine herself to the duties she was bound to perform.

“But it is my nature to love something with my whole strength, so that all else seems small in comparison,” she said, sighing. “How can I help it?”

While she gazed fixedly at the sky, at first without seeing, she presently became aware of a red-gold crescent moon that had grown visible under her eyes, curved like a bow when the arrow is just singing from the string, like the new moon whereon Our Lady stands, a tower of ivory.

The tears in Bessie's eyes made the shining curve tremble in the sky as though a hand held it; and, as though it were a bent bow, an arrowy thought flew from it, and struck quivering into her heart:

“Love God, and all will be well!”

She sat a minute longer, then rose and went quietly homeward. Aunt Nancy would be anxious about her; and the desire for solitude was gone. She was glad now that she had written to Father Conners, though the letter might have shown a gentler spirit. It was a comfort to have done something that was right, though it was not much.

One does not ordinarily become pious in a moment. We may recognize the voice of God, and be startled at the clearness and suddenness of the summons, but our sluggish faith has ever an excuse for a little more folding of the hands to sleep. [pg 342] But though not obedient at once, Bessie Maynard felt, rather than saw, that there was a refuge which made it no longer possible for her to despair.

Within a few days she received an answer to her letter. The priest was coming to that neighborhood by the last of the week, and would see her. The letter was brief and to the point, and contained not one word of sympathy or exhortation; but the tremulous characters, that told of age or infirmity touched the heart of the reader. This old man gave her no soft words, but he was hastening to her relief. For the first time, she anxiously asked herself if it had not been possible for her to avoid all her trouble, and if there was any element in her story which could reasonably be expected to call forth anything but reproof for herself from a man whose whole life had been one of charity and self-denial. She wished to see him indeed, but she awaited his coming with a feeling little short of terror.

Bessie had not written to her husband. She could not bring herself to do that, for she did not wish to write coldly to him, and she would not use expressions of affection which had no echo in her heart. But she wrote to her son a gentle and tender letter, of which he was neither old nor sensitive enough to feel the pathos. Only one reproach found a place there: “I thought you might like to hear from me, though you cared more for your play than you did to say good-by to me when I came here, and left me to go to the depot alone.” She did not intimate, though she thought, that the business which had called her husband away at the same time might as easily have been postponed.

Father Conners came. His open buggy was driven to the door one morning, and the boy who sat with him held the horse while the priest slowly alighted. He was a large, powerful-looking man, still vigorous, though slightly bent and stiff with age. Snow-white hair framed his expressive face, in which sternness and benevolence were strangely mingled. His color was fresh, perfect teeth gave a brilliancy to his infrequent smile, and his pale-blue eyes were almost too penetrating to be met with ease. He walked with his head slightly bent down and his gaze fixed upon the ground till he reached the door, then looked up to see Bessie standing on the threshold.

She was a pretty creature still, in spite of troubled years, and her manner and expression would have propitiated a sterner judge. Blushes overspread her face, and she trembled; yet an impulse of joyful welcome broke through and brightened her, as a sunbeam brightens the cloud.

The priest stopped short, with no ceremony of greeting, and regarded her a moment, while she waited for him to speak.

The scrutiny satisfied him apparently.

“You did well to come back here,” he said then, and made a motion to enter. She stood aside for him to pass, and followed him into the little parlor which she had spent all the morning in preparing for him. An arm-chair had been improvised out of a barrel, some pillows, and a shawl, the rude fireplace was filled with green, and there were dishes of flowers about.

Her visitor did not appear to notice these simple efforts to do him honor. Almost before seating himself, he began to speak of what had brought him there.

“Now, my child, though I have time enough to say and hear all that [pg 343] is necessary, though it should take a week, I have no time to waste. Tell me the meaning of your letter?”

No time for gradual approach, for timid intimations, or delicate reserves till, warming with the subject, she could show plainly all that was in her heart. She must make the “epic plunge” without delay. Stimulated by the necessity, Bessie called up her wits and her courage, and, without being aware of it, told everything in a few words.

When she paused and expected him to question her, to her surprise he seemed already to know the whole. And, to her still greater pleasure, those points on which she had touched lightly, fearing that they might seem trivial in his eyes, he spoke of with sympathy.

“It is those little attentions and kindnesses which sweeten human life, my child, and help to sustain us under its heavier trials,” he said.

Bessie lifted her grateful, tearful eyes, and thanked him with a sad smile.

“And now,” he continued, “I want you to go to confession.”

Her eyes dilated with astonishment. She was confused and distressed, and a painful blush rose to her face.

“I have not confessed for years,” she stammered. “I am not prepared. When I have time to think, I will go to confession in a church. It seems strange to confess here.”

The priest was by nature and habits peremptory, and he knew that this was the proper time to exercise that quality. “Any place is proper for confession, if a better one is not to be had,” he said. “As to being prepared, let us see. You tell me that you have been thinking this all over this week, to see wherein you may have done wrong. There, then, is an examen of your conscience as to your duties toward your husband and, indirectly, toward God. You say that you have not practised your religion, but mean to do so in future. There is attrition, at least, and a purpose of amendment. You say that you know all you have committed of serious wrong in these years, don't you?”

“Yes,” was the answer.

“You know humanly, as far as you can know, without the illumination of the Holy Spirit?” the priest corrected.

“Yes,” said Bessie again. “But I want to think it over, and make sure of my sorrow and good resolutions.”

“In short, you wish to reform and convert yourself, then go to God,” said Father Conners. “That is not the way. It is God who is to convert you. You need not stay to try to conquer your feelings, and hesitate for fear you may not be able to. Your reason is convinced. It is enough. Go to God, and ask him to help you to do the rest. While you are thinking the subject over in the woods here, you may die, or the devil may come and tempt you in the shape of this friend of yours. I will give you half an hour. While I have gone out to read my office under the trees, you kneel down here, and first ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you, and reveal all your sins. Then say, and mean, that you are sorry, and plan how you may do better with God's help in the future.”

He had risen while speaking, and was going toward the door. Refusal was impossible. Bessie carried her shawl-covered arm-chair out, and set it under a thick old pine-tree on the slippery brown pine-needles, through which tiny ants were running in every direction, very busy about some buildings of their own, carrying sticks larger than themselves.

[pg 344]

Father Conners seated himself, set his hat on the ground by his side, spread a red silk handkerchief over his head, and took out his Breviary. He had but little time to attend to the beauties of nature, but the situation brought an expression of pleasure to his face. He gave one glance up into the overshadowing branches that spread their fragrant screen between him and the sun, then a kindlier glance to the young woman who stood looking wistfully at him.

“Come here for your confession when you are ready, child,” he said, “and don't be afraid. See how peaceful the skies are. Is God less gentle? And here! take my watch, and come back in twenty-five minutes. You have lost five minutes already.”

Bessie took the large silver watch on its black ribbon, and hastened to shut herself in her room, and Father Conners became absorbed in his office. So much absorbed was he, he did not observe that the silk handkerchief slipped slowly from his head, and that a large spider let itself down by a thread from the tree above, stopped within a few inches of that silvery hair, which it contemplated curiously, then ran up its silken ladder again as a young woman came out of the house, walked with faltering steps across the sward, and sank on her knees by the priest's side.

An hour later, Father Conners climbed laboriously into his carriage, and drove away, and Bessie leaned on the bars, and watched him as long as he was in sight. She felt strong and peaceful. She counted over the promises she had made him, and resolved anew that they should be kept.

She stood there so long that Aunt Nancy, after having kept her dinner waiting out of all reason, came down to speak to her. She came with anxiety and hesitation, not knowing whether her niece was better or worse for this visit.

“You gave me good advice, Aunt Nancy,” Bessie said, turning at the sound of her step.

The old lady was delighted. “So you're all right?” she said.

“I have got into the right track, at least,” Bessie answered, as they walked up toward the house. “I have been to confession.”

Aunt Nancy's face clouded again on hearing this avowal. That was all the priest's visit had amounted to, then—that John's wife had been induced to go to confession! How could people be so superstitious, so subjected, to their priests? She had hoped that Bessie might have received some good sound advice and instruction.

This she thought, but said nothing.

How was she to know that in that one word confession was included advice, instruction, good resolution, and sorrow for sin, as well as the mystical rite which she abhorred?

To Be Continued.

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