Part 8

There is a curious thing comes to my mind. It may not strike you exactly as it does me. But I am going to mention it for the reason that it interests me. You, Peter, even today, are the only thing in life as far as I am concerned, and it took the greatest amount of determination to withstand the temptation which assailed me.

Many times in the past twenty-odd years I have gotten out of my bed with the firm determination to come back to you. To say that probably after all I was wrong, that I laid too much stress upon the condition in which I found myself. You know, or probably you have not thought it out—that once a woman gives herself to a man, once she has borne him children, her whole heart, her whole life is wrapped up in the one experience. Women are not like men. They are monogamous. There is barely a woman in the world who has given herself to one man, and afterwards goes through a divorce court or leaves him, that at times she does not feel within herself an urge that is nearly unconquerable to go back to that man. Women re-marry and they live in what is supposed to be contentment, but in their hearts there is no contentment.

You will never know the tugs I have had or the strength I have used to carry out this thing to its bitter end, but I was certain to do this.

Eight years after I had gone from the house, I stood for hours outside the wall. I looked through the bars of the gate. I looked upon the garden. There was a light in the room in which you had placed the divan—the dear old divan, with the soft light burning behind it. I stood for hours on a clear night. The moon shone through the trees, and I could see the flowers. I could even make out the fountain around which we had walked and you had told me of what you had done during the day. This only happened once—a walk such as this. What joy that walk gave me. I feel it even now. The great door was open. The light beckoned to me. It invited me to come. It seemed to say, “Enter, and you will be forgiven. Love waits for you.” I shook with fear. For I was afraid that I might weaken.

I walked furiously up and down the pavement. My eyes were pinned upon that light, and except for the light that fled through the front doors everything else was dark. Nowhere was there a single light except in that one room. I thought I could see you in it. I wondered whether you were happy. I didn’t believe you were. Somehow I saw you much changed. You were gray. Your shoulders were not full. You seemed to me to be stooped. I wondered if I went in how you would greet me. I was afraid.

It was late when I left. Midnight. The light still burned. It struck me as curious. I wondered why this was so. After I went away, I knew I had made a mistake. I should have gone in to you. I should have walked up to that little room and sat myself down upon the divan, and if you were not there I should have waited. I believe now and I believed then that you would have taken me in your arms and comforted me. You would not have berated me. You didn’t know how lonely I had been. But, Peter, I failed you. You told me so.

I left as I say, at midnight. I walked past my father’s house. Some one was laughing in there. New people. People who had children. Life. The lights were all lit. It looked so gay. I believe I wept. A man came out upon the porch. I could see him from the lodge gates. He put out his hand as if to see if it rained. He did not see the moon. I thought that so funny. He went back again, closed the door and after sometime the lights began to go down one by one, and finally the house became dark. It was so peaceful. And I was so unhappy. So lacking in peace.

I thought of all that I had done in that old house. I saw my early life again. I felt its happiness creep over me. I felt my father at my side. I saw him stand by me. I could almost feel the grasp of his hand. His breath fanned my cheek. And it seemed to me he whispered in my ear. He said with such depth in his voice, “I forgive you Clarinda. I pity you. Go back.” The thing became so vivid to me, that I turned and ran. I don’t know how far I ran; but I ran until a man stopped me. He said, “Why do you run? Are you scared? Has anything happened to you?”

I fled from him. I ran further until I was nearly dropping with exhaustion, then I stopped. I was far from your house. Far down in the city. It was terrible to me. Then I walked rapidly. It was getting late. A bell in a tower near by struck two.

I have never been back since. That happened years ago. But even although it happened years ago, it is as fresh in my mind as if it took place yesterday. I conquered myself. I didn’t go back to you. My second development had taken place. My second stage had been gone through with. I was different. I was no more the Clarinda you married. My old self had died. You would not have loved me any more. It would have been impossible.

It is night, Peter. Good-night.

C.

* * * * *

Dear Peter:

I am continuing the letter I wrote you sometime ago. Of course, I am sending you these as a compilation. They are not in series; for if I should do that you would lose the trend. Probably you would become bored and when these letters came from time to time, you might throw them in the waste basket. It is impossible for me to judge your frame of mind from this distance after all these years. I cannot judge into what you have developed.

However, the first part is finished and the second part is also done with. This is the third part. The drawing of the thing to a conclusion—a finishing of it all. And after this is done, I shall sit down by my window and look out upon the passing world and wonder how long I shall live. How soon I shall have peace—a thing I have never had, or ever known.

I remember the day I left. It was cruel. You recollect the sky. The sun did not shine. The flowers in the garden as I went seemed to tuck their heads down under their leaves as if seeking protection from the cold. It was not cold. It was raining. It was warm.

I entered the car. I closed the door by myself. It appeared to me as if some one was closing me in some place, just as if I were being penned in a great prison, from which I should never come out. I shivered, Peter.

The last face I saw was that of Tizzia who stood at one of the windows. The tears were running down her face. Frantically she waved her hand to me, and then she was gone. It was all gone—the house, you and my happiness.

I wonder if Tizzia told you of my last conversation with her—the threats I made of the things I should do. I often think of that conversation and the stress I was under at the time. Funny as it may appear to you I did those things. I went forth from you—from all the things I thought were right and good.

You should have seen the man. I met him a short time after I left. His name was Bill—Slippery Bill, he was called. A vicious man. A drunkard of the most horrible kind. His mind was a morass of immorality. His sense of humor was beating a woman. He had killed one person, and when he was drunk he bragged to me and described how his victim had moaned and begged. He loved to tell me of the thing he killed. Of course, it was a woman. He was just a man—a coward.

Bill was a thief—a second-story man. One who lies in wait until a house is empty and then goes in safely. When he would steal he would come to me in the hovel we lived in and throw the things he had got on the table, and gloat on them, and brag about the ease with which he did this sort of thing. After that he would get drunk. For days and weeks he was in this condition. He amused me. He was so futile. His operations so foolish. With half the effort he could have made a good living.

Bill hated work. He wanted to live in what he called ease. Poor foolish Bill! He feared everything. The crack of a twig, the sound of the wind, a strange footstep. It was always the law coming for him. The police! He even feared me and sometimes in his frenzy of fear he would beat me. He thought I might betray him. It amused me. His fear was queer. I laughed at it when he was gone on one of his missions.

I met this creature not long after I had gone from you. I went down into the depths of shame and poverty. I lived in one tiny room. Around me was a host of queer furtive people who lived from day to day—seeking always something that might keep them until the morrow. It was sad, but it was interesting. I went to their haunts. I soon became known to them. I even acquired their furtive habits. I appeared to be seeking like they, the things that would keep me until the next day. Sometimes even in their extreme poverty they laughed. I would pretend that I had a good night. That I had seen some man who gave me part of what he had and I would give to them. A dollar now and then. Once I gave a poor old man, who had lived in his horrors for years, a five-dollar bill. You should have seen him. He became my shadow. There was no thankfulness in his manner. He thought he could get more. I found him in my room, going through my things. He found nothing. I took care of that. I cursed him for his temerity. He shrank out of the place, but he came back, for he hoped.

I came across Bill only four weeks after I left you. It was a short time after I took the miserable room in this quarter of this city. What city doesn’t make any difference. But it was not so far from you that I couldn’t watch you and what you did.

You should have seen the dive—dirt, ill-smelling, horrible. A ragged crew came and went. I entered, and I was poorly dressed—that is I had on the kind of finery of the people of the class I tried to identify myself with. I looked the part. I sat at one of the broken-down tables—filthy with stale beer and smeared with old pieces of cheese. Oh, how it smelt!

Bill was standing at the bar. He was partially drunk. He turned, as I sat down, and he saw me. A curious light went over his face, and I knew here was the man! The man who should teach me whether men loved women from their pound value or from love.

Drunkenly he walked over to the table and leaned his great bony knuckles upon it. He didn’t take off his hat. He looked at me. Even though I was dressed so badly, I was beautiful.

He spoke to me, I nodded my head. He ordered a glass of beer for me. He drank a concoction which he called whiskey. He was terribly dirty. Then he sat down. I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a repulsive creature as he was. A great head covered with long shaggy hair, that curled in a mass. His eyes were blue—a deep blue. In them one could see the depths of depravity he had sunk to. His mouth was weak and sloppy, but his chin, covered with a few days’ beard, was strong. He looked brutal. And, Peter, he was brutal.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I replied. I drank a little of the beer. He swallowed the drink he had before him at a gulp. He appeared to throw it down his throat. I noticed that none of the muscles either contracted or expanded with the effort.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“No one,” I replied.

“Where do you live?” he persisted.

I turned from him and arose from the table and left him staring after me. I knew he would follow. He did. We went out of the place together.

“My wife is dead,” he said.

“Well?” I answered.

“I want another.”

We stood outside of the door upon the pavement. In the light that came through the dirty windows. I moved away from him.

That was the beginning of the life I led with him. It was a curious sort of thing. He began to love me. He sought me out everywhere I went. There were many others. But Bill interested me more than any other man I met.

You should have heard him the night we walked together down one of the poorest streets in the city. He turned every few moments and looked back. He always walked near the walls of the buildings, for he told me that he was afraid. He knew he was suspected for all kinds of crimes.

He called me Magdalen. Bill had a slice of poetry in his make-up, and he reasoned well. He told me he loved me. He would even go straight for me. He would never drink again. He got drunk that night. I wouldn’t go with him. Bill was a liar like most men.

A long time went by. We met every night—in all kinds of places. All of them as dirty as the first. It ended by my going with him.

It happened one night we walked to the park. It was late. All the grog shops had closed. It was long after one o’clock. We sat upon a bench together. Bill was sober. He had washed. It was dreadfully dark. It was curious the feeling of disgust I had for the man; yet for some unaccountable reason I was attracted to him. I listened to him as he spoke. I compared his protestations with yours. His were stronger. Bill was only the offspring of the gutter. After a while as he went on he thrilled me. When he unbended his crooked figure and shook the mass of hair on his head, I wondered at the man. Women, Peter, are curious—even more curious than men. Underneath they love the cave man. They like strength and brutality. In this part of my life when I see with what insane cruelty this class of people beat and bruise their women, I wonder at them. But they do not leave—they weep, but they stay.

You should have heard him as he stood before me and looked at me the best he could in the dark. I could see his eyes flash.

I remember each word he spoke, as if it were yesterday. Yet Bill has been dead years and years, and he died in jail.

“You are different, Magdalen. I don’t understand you. I don’t care about that. I only know you came into my life. You are here. The first night I saw you, although I was drunk, I knew you were my woman. I don’t care where you came from, nor who you are. I love you, Magdalen. I would do anything for you. How long it has been since you came into this part of the world, makes no difference to me. I don’t know if you have ever loved before. I suppose you have. All women love at sometime. You don’t know what real love means. I love you—I want you. I am going to have you. It is funny, I never spoke to any women as I do to you. You seem to make me different. I’ve lost my strength; it has died in me. If you were like the rest I should take you. I would not ask. I would make you do as I want. But I cannot. That is the thing I don’t understand. I am afraid of you. Why?”

I whispered, “Yes, Bill.”

Women are curious. It seems as if they are forced to listen to men when they begin to lay before them what they term their hearts. Mostly it is the animal in them. They wish to propagate.

He went on as if I had not interrupted him. “Magdalen, I wonder if you know that the love of a man such as I am, is different from other kinds. We never select from personal advantage. It is more the man. The spirit of a beast. We want. We want physically. I have thought of you a great deal. And I can’t understand what it is in you that makes me look at you differently from the women I have been thrown with, but the difference is there. I don’t believe that you belong to the people you pretend you do. There is something behind. You eat differently. Your fingers are different. Your skin is different. You are beautiful. The people with whom I have always gone are only beautiful in their youth. They have the bloom and that is all. It soon dies. It may be the conditions surrounding them that causes this sort of thing. Tell me where you came from? Why are you here?”

“I won’t tell you that. I am here. That is enough. Misfortune has placed me here. I like it. I am going to stay.”

“Then you love me. Is that the reason you stay?” He shook with emotion and walked up and down in the dark in front of me.

I was terribly attracted. He was a brute, but he was a man after all. He had been unfortunate. And yet I don’t think that exactly covers what I mean. I never asked him from where he had come, or by what fatality he had sunk so low. Bill was the dregs.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

Peter, I could not—I could not! And yet I knew in the end it would happen. I knew as I looked at this creature that to him I would be in name a wife. I trembled with fear. I hated it dreadfully. Every fiber in my body recoiled from any sort of personal contact with him. I wondered whether I would bear him children. I wondered whether he would beat me tomorrow or the day after. I knew he would. He did. Not then, but soon. It was queer, Peter, that after it happened—I mean after I took up life with him. Although he beat me, he did not kill the thing in me that you did. He always wept, when he got sober, and his contrition was wonderful. Unfortunately this did not deter him from beating me later. I think underneath that even though I thought about it all the time I loved him. How do you suppose that came about? I don’t know. Some people say a woman loves but once. Yet, here I was loving two distinct persons. And those persons so diametrically opposed.

It did happen. He kissed me. It was in the park in exactly the same place he had asked me before. He did not ask me. He took me in his arms. I struggled. I fought. I knew it was the end. I anticipated it was coming. I didn’t go with him into the park for weeks and weeks; yet he asked me to go innumerable times. At last I consented. I saw the end. It was written with fiery fingers on the wall. You know just like the words in the Bible. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin! I don’t suppose my words I saw meant the same thing. I don’t know what the Bible words mean; but I knew the words I saw. They were burnt into my brain.

Bill kissed me. He kissed me again and again. The animal came up in him. It was fearful and yet it was to me a wonderful experience. Eventually, I, being a woman, lay quietly in his arms. I could smell his dirty body—the sweat of years was upon it. His clothes were unkempt. His shirt was open at the neck and he looked precisely what he was—a thug.

I was close to my revenge. And yet, I was not getting precisely what I started out to get. I had failed again, Peter. I failed. I loved this thing—this thug. Why do you suppose that happened? I awoke to him. It must have been that unconquerable force—Nature. You know I hate dirt. I have always hated dirt. I mean immorality. And yet here I was an honest woman, a woman of instinct, doing this thing.

Bill kissed me as I say. Then he breathed a sigh. It came from his soul. If he had a soul, which I doubt. “Come, get up. It is late. We will go home.”

I got up from the seat. He controlled me. I could not refuse. I wanted to. I wanted to run. I thought death was better than this thing I was going into with my eyes open. I knew Bill. He took my hand in his. We walked silently through the park. I went easily. There was no drawback on my part.

Down into the streets, from one evil-smelling way to another, through an alley, fetid with decayed dirt that lay in masses, then into another long row of old houses. This was called a street. It was silent. There was no sign of life anywhere. A rat ran across the gutter in front of us occasionally. I held to him with fear. Bill plodded on. He knew where he was. I was in a mist. My mind wouldn’t work. If it had, I should have screamed.

How far I went I don’t know. We stopped. Bill dragged me into a place. It was dark. I stumbled up one stairway, then up another. It must have been the top of the house, before Bill kicked a door open. He lit a light. I don’t know what kind of light it was; but it struggled to dispel the gloom.

I can’t tell you of this room. I’ve lived in it a long time. I’ve suffered in it. But I have been loved for myself. I did not fail there. I have known real love. It has paid me from that standpoint. When I die I will have known something most women miss. I had no children. In this I was fortunate.

My story is nearly finished, Peter. Bill, as I said, went to the penitentiary. I think it was my fault. I wished for something. He couldn’t get it. We had nothing. He went to get it for me and got caught. Bill never failed me.

I left the country after Bill died. I am living in Paris. I am getting old. I am tired. But I don’t regret. I have had my revenge.

I sit all day in the sun. I am always in my garden. I never go out. I have no reason to go. The outside does not attract me.

Goodbye, Peter. It is finished. And I would not have had it otherwise.

C.

* * * * *

Dear Peter:

I had decided not to write you anymore concerning myself or of what has happened to me in these intervening years. But woman-like I felt that there was more you should know, and I did not precisely feel as if I had had the last word. You must forbear with me and be patient.

As I told you in my last letter, Bill went to the penitentiary. I went with him on the train. The sheriff thought I was his wife. He commiserated with me and allowed me to sit next to Bill all the way. Bill was pitiful. I felt for him, for it was so unnecessary for him to be in the position he was in. I would have given Bill a living but I was afraid. He would not have believed me. He would have thought that I had some other man. Bill would have killed me and then you would have been free. I never intended that. I would not have had that happen.

You should have sat back of us and heard Bill swear what he would do after he got out. Twenty years! Can you imagine anybody laying plans for something to happen in twenty years? Bill did not get out. Poor animal, he died in the place. I buried him. And curiously enough I wept for him when he was placed in the ground. I buried with him my one great love. But I had learned what love meant. I don’t mean love surrounded with riches, but love that animates the breast of just a man. It is different.

When he was buried and a small stone placed at his head, I left the country. I came to Paris and I have lived here ever since. I should like to have you see the place. It is beautiful. I have a great house. And in it I have one room with a divan and a light back of it. I have in front of the divan a fireplace. It is kept lit all the time, even in the warmest weather. I look into it a great deal. I build even now hopes and castles that will never be realities.

I see in its blue flame, when the light is out and a quiet has settled upon the streets and only an occasional wayfarer goes by, a castle, and in its walls I place you, Peter—and the boy. I see my life as it might have been. I should not have known Bill. I should have had a different kind of love, not of the same value, but still I imagine it might have sufficed; it might have held me to my own. It would have done for I would not have known Bill—Bill the cave man.

Have you, I wonder, ever thought of this? Have you ever considered how dreadfully wasted your life has been and how lonely?

I have a garden back of this house. French windows open out upon it. Down in its depths, where I love to go, I have had placed trees like those I loved at home, greenswards of grass lead to paths and their borders are lined with flowers, almost the same kinds of flowers I had at home. A fountain plays and casts its waters into the air. I have a lodge keeper who bows when I enter the gates. He has a sinister smile. He, too, seems unhappy, but wise beyond comprehension, Peter.

Underneath, Peter, I want something I haven’t got. I don’t know what that is. I try to argue the thing out. I go carefully over every incident that has comprised my life. I try to blame myself. Sometimes I can and then at other times I cannot. It is curious the condition I am in.

I am not old, yet I feel old. I am only forty-odd years of age, and nowadays that is not age. I have no friends. I know no one. I must be lonely. I don’t know.