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Confessions of a Wife/Chapter 3

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4637676Confessions of a Wife — Chapter IIIElizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

III

November the third.

There is no doubt about it that happiness is an occupation. When I see how long it is since I have added anything worth adding to the Accepted Manuscript, and when I try to define to myself what it is that gives me such a sense of being busy all the time, I find that it is scarcely more than the existence of joy. What I have lost is the leisure of loneliness; what I have gained is the avocation of love.

They teach us that only in heaven can we expect to know happiness. It is not true! I summon mine—a singing witness in the courts of life. I fling down the glove of joy, a challenge to such dismal doctrine. There are whole weeks when I live in poems, I breathe in song. There are entire days when I float in color, and seem to be set free in space, as a bird is, knowing the earth and loving it, but citizen of the skies and homing to them. I fall asleep as if I were a sunset, and I wake as if I were a sunrise, so near am I to Nature, so much a part of her beatitude. Nature is joy—I perceive that now. I used to think she was duty. How wonderful it is to live in harmony with her, out of sheer joyousness—not conscript, but volunteer within her mighty and beautiful forces!

I am always reading new chapters in the Story Without an End. Every day I turn a fresh page in the book of love. I did not think that it would be so absorbing. Really, it has plot. For, what is the plot of incident beside that of feeling? A tame affair, as thoroughly displaced as a piece of sensational fiction by the great drama of the gospels.

Dana and I have been reading the New Testament together on Sunday evenings. He said yesterday: "What a complete situation!" From a histrionic point of view he thinks the life of Christ the most tremendous and well-balanced plot ever conceived. He admitted that he had forgotten how fine it was.

"Morally fine, at least," I said.

"Morally fine, at most; spiritually, if you will," he answered. He spoke quite soberly for Dana. He is a very merry person; he laughs more easily and more often than I do. I am afraid, sometimes, he thinks me too strenuous. (He said so one day, but I felt so badly that he kissed the word savagely away.) He is not at all religious. Why does this make me feel as if I ought to become so? I have never thought much about the philosophy of Christianity—I mean as a practical matter that had anything in particular to do with myself—until lately.

"You are a sumptuous little pagan," he said to me Saturday. Now, this did not please me, as he seemed to expect. It left a little dust, like ashes of roses, in my heart. I feel as if I had failed him somewhere.

"I am afraid I am too happy to be religious," I said.

"Then stay irreligious!" he cried. The plea of his lips smothered that spark of sacred feeling; and against the argument of his arms I cannot reason.

How fearful is the philosophy of a kiss! When I think of poor girls—young, ignorant, all woman and all love—I never thought of them before except with a kind of bewildered horror.

I wonder—to anchor to my thought; see, even my thought casts off its moorings as well as my feeling; I seem to be adrift on all sides of my being—I wonder if it is in the nature of suffering to make people in so far divine as it is in that of joy to keep them altogether human. I begin to see that there is a conflict as old as the axis of the world. Around its fixed and invisible bar every soul of us revolves—so many revolutions to an ecstasy, so many to a pang; and the sum and nature of these revolutions is the sum and nature of ourselves. When I am old and sad, shall I turn penitent and think about heaven? Oh, I am young, I am glad, I am beloved, and I love! Earth is enough for me, for he is in it.

It would be impossible for me to put into words the quality of his consideration for me. It is something ineffable and not to be desecrated by expression. It is my atmosphere. His treatment of me is the very devoutness of love. I breathe a devotion for which any tender woman in the world would die. Though I am wife, thus am I goddess, for he deifies me.

But while his soul looks up to mineMy heart lies at his feet.

The difference is that now I am willing he should know when he has my heart at his feet. Once I kept the secret to myself, and confided it only to this dumb paper. There are some delicate lines in the poem when Radha and Krishna were married—the one that begins:

November the seventh.

Mrs. Gray talked to me a little last week. She said: "My dear, your mother kept your father at her feet. She held him there to the last breath. I tell you a secret, since she cannot. The happiest marriages are those where a wife loves her husband less than he loves her."

"How many such do you know?" I asked her, rather hotly, for my cheeks burned.

She gave me a keen look.

"You have more knowledge of the world than I supposed," she answered slowly, and I thought she sighed.

"Would you have a woman coquet with her husband?" I demanded. "Is marriage an intrigue or a sacrament? You don't know my husband!" I cried—proudly, I suppose, for I was touched a little.

"There, there! Never mind," said Mrs. Gray, as if I had been a pouting child. She began to talk about Robert Hazelton's wedding-present. It is a very odd present. Nobody quite understands it. It is just a gold candlestick made in the shape of a compass, with the candle set at one side as you see them, Dana says, on real compasses. Within is the needle, a black point upon a white enameled dial, pointing to the north. I cannot help liking it; it is so like Rob. Dana asked me if it were meant to convey the fidelity of superfluous affection, and I could not help laughing, it was so like Dana. Yet, when I had laughed, I was a little sorry. Robert has always thought me a much better woman than I am, poor fellow! Dana invited him to dinner once, but he went away early to see some patients. I believe he has an excellent practice. I wish he would marry Minnie Curtis.

I am writing somehow pettily this evening. I don't know why. My soul seems shriveled a little. Dana is dining out with some gentlemen: I believe it has something to do with politics. It is the first time. I would not have believed that I could be so ridiculous about it. I have devoted myself to Father the whole evening, but the more devoted I was the worse it grew.

It seemed to me all the while as if the sky were put out, and the earth had stopped, and Dana were dead. Then it seemed as if there never had been any Dana, and never would be or could be. Father was so pleased with having me to himself again that it was quite touching. He even called Job, and told him to stand on his head; and nothing could be more pathetic, for Father is not one of the dog people. He is polite to Job, for he recognizes that Job is a gentleman, too; but he has never loved him. On Job's part it is a wholly unrequited attachment. But for me, I could have cried all the evening. And Job would not stand on his head; he has forgotten how.

He is up here with me now, just as he used to be, quite by ourselves. Poor Job! He kisses me as if he had not seen me for six months—not obtrusively, but with a shy rapture of which no being but a dog is capable. He does not get used to sleeping in the bath-room, but Dana prefers to have him there. He says if we cannot have a home to ourselves, at least we can have our own rooms as he likes them, which is perfectly reasonable in Dana. I find he is always reasonable when he has his preferences consulted. I hope Job will overcome that air of settled melancholy which he wears whenever he regards my husband. It cannot be denied that he never "meets him with a smile." Sometimes I think this vexes Dana. I used to think he loved Job as much as I did.

Dana is very late. It is more than half-past ten. I admit I am rather tired of petting Job. This occupation does not seem as absorbing as it used to be. I cannot read,—I have tried, but I listen so that I understand nothing I read. I hear his footsteps on the concrete walk, past the electric light in the street, whose cool, fair light falls into our room and across it when the gas is out. (Dana likes that light as much as I do; it was a delight to me to find that he understands the way I have always felt about it.)

As I sit here alone I hear him and I hear him, but they are not his footsteps at all, only the footsteps of my heart. I have seen a picture of "Eurydice Listening," and her body was curved a little like an ear.

It is as if I had become an ear—heart and body; I seem to hear with my forehead and my hair. A lifelong invalid told me once that she heard with her cheeks.

It is eleven o'clock. Job barks in his dreams of the grasshoppers at Sanchester; he has distinctly a grasshopper bark. I know politics stay out late nights, but I did not know Dana meant to go into politics. He told me to go to sleep. Men say such singular things to women.

Job is asleep on my lounging-gown; I hate to move him. I did not have a new one, for I'm fond of this; but Maggie trimmed it up for me very daintily with yards of fresh chantilly. Dana likes me in this gown. He likes the lace, and he likes the color. He says it is the shade of my ruby. I think that must be Dana this time. . . .

It was a caller coming away from the Curtises'. Perhaps by the time I get into the gown, and get my hair brushed and braided, and warm my red slippers, and fix his candle and all his little things the way he likes, he will be here.

I have put fresh wood on the fire, for it is quite a cold night. The blaze springs, as if it laughed. Crossing before the pier-glass just now, I was half startled at the figure I saw there—tall, all that lace and velvet, and all that color, and curved a little, like Eurydice—bent so, just an ear.

I wonder if Orpheus was in politics?

The leaping fire flares upon my ruby; deep, deep, without a flaw, guardian and glad above my wedding-ring. I think a ruby has never been quite understood. I see now—of all the jewels God created one for women. A ruby is the heart of a wife.

Oh, there! After all! He is striding up the avenue. How he swings along! As if he had the world beneath his ringing feet.

I will not run down. I will make believe that I am asleep, or not pleased that he was out so late. And when he gets to the top of the stairs, and as far as the door—

"Dear Love: Was I cross with you to-day about your golf-stockings? Believe, I did not mean to be. I have had a hard headache, and the sore throat, ever since we went in town to the Grays' in the storm, and I wore the lace dress because you like it; but it was pretty thin. And I had darned the stockings myself,—I would not leave them to Maggie,—and I was so sure I had filled every single cavity! What a poor dentist I should make! See, I am trying to laugh. But, really, I have cried. It is the first time you have ever spoken so to me, Darling. No woman ever forgets the first time that the man she loves speaks sharply to her: of that I am sure. Everything else would go out of her consciousness first.

"I was so afraid I should cry on the spot, and that would have shamed me before you and to myself, for I don't like people to see me cry. And I think it was because I tried so hard not to cry that I 'answered back' a little.

"Dear, I am sorry. I was wrong. Forgive me, my own! Love never needs to answer back; it is too great to be so small. Silence would be the nobler way. It is, I think, the stronger weapon. But there need be no weapons, God be thanked! between yourself and

"Marna, your Wife.

"P.S. I have been all over them—the brown ones, and the green, and the gray, and the speckly kinds that are so hard to find the holes in; I "I WAS HALF STARTLED AT THE FIGURE I SAW THERE."
"I WAS HALF STARTLED AT THE FIGURE I SAW THERE."
have worked over the whole pile for a long while, to be sure there are none of those tiny places the barbed-wire fence bites between the pattern. I hope you will not find me so careless and stupid again. I am not much used to mending stockings. Maggie has always done it for Father. But I will see to yours, if you wish me to; of course I will. One day you said so,—had you forgotten?—'Marna, I wish you would mend my clothes yourself. I have always thought how nice it would be to have my wife do such things for me.' So I tried. Dear, I am more than willing to please you about these little things. I care for nothing else but to please you. My heart leans to you all the time. Waking and sleeping I dream, and all my dreams are yours. All my being has become a student in the science of love; and all my art is to learn how skilfully to make you happy. Your frown is my exile. Your smile is my Eden. Your arms are my heaven. Once, ah, once I was—who could believe it now?—your Wilderness Girl. Now, your happy captive, I kiss my chains. Hold them lightly, Love, for I wear them so heavily! Yet lock them; I shall but love you more. Do you remember the day I told you to throw the key away?

"Oh, but you took me from my tribe, you Son of Battle! You hurled me over your shoulder and ran. Do you know how Father misses me, though we are in the very one selfsame house? You have torn me from him, from my own life, from myself. From a depth that you knew not, you drew me, and you slew me; for I tell you in a love like mine is a being slain. To a depth that I know not, you drag me. Ah, be merciful—I love you!—for love's sake!

"If ever the time should come when I could not pour out words like these upon you, if ever the day should dawn when I should be sorry that I had written so to you, or that I had suffered you so to see the beating of my heart, for indeed such words are but drops of my heart's blood—but I scorn myself for that unworthy 'if.' When thought moves without a brain, when blood leaps without a heart, when the moon forgets to swim on summer nights above the tree-house where my lips first drank your kiss, then may I be sorry that I have written as I write to-night to you.

"And I am sure you will never speak again as you did to-day. It was the first time, as it will be the last. I thought if I told you, if I showed you how it slays a woman, if just this once I should put by something in myself that stands guard over my nature and says, 'Do not let him know,' I thought that perhaps it would be worth while. You might, I can understand, you might hurt me, not knowing. Knowing that you did, I'll swear you never would, because you never could."

December the third.

Dana has gone into the law office of Mrs. Gray's brother, Mr. Mellenway—J. Harold. Mellenway. He is so busy that I see him only evenings, and not always then. I am trying to get used to it. Father says he is making a remarkable beginning in his profession, and that if he sustains his promise I shall have reason to be proud of him. Father repeats that he is a brilliant young man. Dana does not have much time to devote himself to Father now. He seems to be whirled along. We all seem to be whirled along like the figures in the Wheel of Life drawn by some ancient Oriental people,—I forget who,—all ignorant that they are helpless, and all hurled on to a blind fate.

I have been married nearly seven weeks. If he came in some night and said, "Marna, do you know it is seven years?" I should not feel surprised. It is as if I had never existed before I loved him, and it is as if I had lived cycles since I became his wife. I have traversed worlds that astronomy never knew, and I am transmuted into a being whose nature I do not recognize.

Here in my own room, where I have been such a happy and solitary girl, I see everywhere the careless, precious signs of him—his slippers on my hearth, his necktie tossed upon my bureau, the newspapers that he always flings upon the floor, and that I go and pick up; a messenger from heaven could not have convinced me six months ago that I would ever do it.

So, upon my heart, upon my brain, he flings the traces of his presence, the impress of his nature. It is to me as if my soul were a nickel plate on which is etched a powerful and beautiful picture, of which I know that I know not yet the composition or the scope, and though I love the picture, I fear it, because it is unfinished. But he—he dips a rosebud in a rainbow, and paints him garlands and Cupids, smiling steadily, so debonair he is. There are times (dear Accepted Manuscript, you will never tell) when the lightness of his heart seems to me disarranged from mine—only for the moment, of course, I mean. But yet I love him for the rainbow in him. And perhaps, as Dana says, there is a zone of twilight in my soul. A man does not like to be loved too solemnly; whereas I think a woman builds within her heart an altar to an unknown god, and leaves her happiest hour to steal away and worship.

December the tenth.

I have discovered a new planet: Dana has a real though untrained musical nature. He has flitted to the piano off and on, of course, and I have sometimes said, "What a touch!" But he has never truly played for me before. Last week he came home with a violin. It seems he sent it somewhere to be mended a year ago, and forgot it (which is quite like him); and now that he has remembered, I am half jealous of the violin, he so devotes himself. He plays with a kind of feeling that I do not know how to define, unless to say that it is passionate, imperious, and fitful. If I said the utter truth to my very soul, perhaps I could not call it tender music. But why say? I have already found that the first lesson a wife must learn is not to admit the utter truth about her husband to her own soul. If she mistranslates, she is unhappy; if she overvalues him, she may be more so. Marriage needs something of the opalescent haze such as betrothal breathes, and daily life goes a beggar for the element of romance. This vanished something Dana's playing seems to be about to recall to us. Just now he has gone music-mad. From violin to piano, and back to violin, he sways like a mast in a storm. As I write he is singing; there are beautiful tones in his voice, and tears are on my cheeks as I listen. He comes to an unaccountable stop, and runs, dashing up the stairs, to see me.—

I am staying in my room with a headache and a kind of foolish languor. He is so kind to me that I could weep for happiness. What wife was ever so cherished as I? Listen! He sings that exquisite thing which his voice seems to have created, and for me. In point of fact I believe it is Handel's.

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade.

And now he dashes into the superb "Bedouin Love-Song" that he often chooses:

From the Desert I come to thee,On my Arab shod with fire;And the winds are left behindIn the speed of my desire.····I love thee, I love but thee!With a love that shall not die!

His voice peals through the house like a triumphal procession. Even Father has opened the library door to listen. Job is lying perfectly still in the hall, with quivering ears, music-smitten, as delicately organized dogs sometimes arc. The eternal bridegroom rings in my husband's singing—joyous, imperial, master of the present and dauntless of the future. Oh, I love thee, master of my heart and of my life!

I cannot stand this any longer. What's a headache? I think if I get into the warm red gown, and steal down very softly, and up behind him before he knows it, and just put my arms about his neck, with no sound at all, and lay my cheek to his (though the tears are on it still)—Oh, hark! How sure and glad he is!

I love thee, I love but thee!····Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

December the twelfth.

Dana was displeased with me about something (a little thing, too small to write) to-day, and went to his day's work without kissing me. It is the first time. I shut myself in here and cried half the morning. Job's head is quite a mop, for he tried to comfort me.

Awhile ago I went down and telephoned to the office, for I could not, could not, bear it. This is the veracious record of our interview:

He: Oh! That you, Marna? Glad to hear from you. What a lovely telephone voice you have! Well, what is it?

I: I have felt so unhappy, Dear, all the morning! I thought—perhaps—

He: Unhappy? What in thunder for?

I: Why, of course, Dana, you know—

He: I have no more idea what you are talking about than you have of the English common law. Do be quick, Marna! I'm busy.

I: Oh, have you forgotten that you went off without—without—

He: I went off without my handkerchief, if that's what you mean.

I: Dana!

He: Marna! Go find it, Dear, and dry the tears out of your voice. Good-by. Oh, by the way. I tell you I'm busy. Don't wait dinner for me if I'm not home on time. I am rushed to death to-day. Good-by.

I: But, Dana dear—

He: But, Marna dear! Don't bother me. Good-by.

I am thinking of an old French saying: Elle en meurt; il en rit. Once, to think of it—to think of it, I mean, in a way that could possibly have any relation to myself would have brought the blood stinging to my cheeks. Now it brings only the tears starting to my eyes.

December the seventeenth.

Dana is obsessed with an idea. I find he has a good many ideas. Father was a little vexed with him to-day, and called them notions. In point of fact, Dana wants to build a house, and Father thinks it quite unnecessary and expensive. He wants Dana to wait until his legal income is more assured, offering us till such time our present home in his own house. It is large enough, I admit; we have our own suite, and every comfort, and no more care than if we were figures on a fresco.

Father's old Ellen looks after everything; she has been in the house since I was a baby, and rules the family like a Chinese ancestor. I do not think of Ellen any more than I do of the atmosphere. I don't think I have ever so much as mentioned her in the Accepted Manuscript; she is a matter of course. I suppose my life has been more free from care than that of many girls, especially motherless girls, and that I shall have a good deal to learn if I keep house. But if Dana wishes it I should not mind the trouble; I should like to please Dana. I asked Ellen whether she thought I could do it so as to please him. She looked at me and did not say anything, only she patted me on the head with her wrinkled hand; I could n't make out at all what Ellen meant. Then I asked Maggie, quite confidentially, whether she would like to work for me if I kept house; for I suppose we could not afford more than one servant, or two at the most. But Maggie said:

"Is it the lady's-maid ye 'd be wanting, Miss Marna? It's not a housemaid I am accustomed to call myself."

I never felt uncomfortable before the servants before. Sometimes I think they don't like my husband as much as they do me. I never should have believed that it could make any difference to anybody whether they did or not.

I have left the two gentlemen talking it out in the library. Job and I hear their voices as we curl up here upon my lounge to rest. I don't know why I am so tired. Everything seems to agitate or excite me, and then I am tired because I have been agitated. I feel things too much; I am surcharged, like a Leyden jar, and every now and then there is a crash, a sort of explosion of the nerve-force, and I find I am a little weak and spent. I live all the time in an electric world, where everything is tense, and am liable to accidents of feeling for which I can never be prepared. Dana is always in a hurry, and a more nervous man than I thought him. I think he wants calm and comfort all the time. Sometimes I wonder if he did n't need a serener girl than I am—some one quite poised and comfortable—a girl who does n't mind things. It would break my heart if I thought any woman in the world could have made Dana happier than I can.

Father's voice is quite low and controlled, perfectly modulated, always; he never loses himself. Poor Dana must be disturbed about something. All those tones in his voice that I love least are uppermost to-night. I feel as if I wanted to go down and put my arms about him, and put my lips to his, and kiss part of his voice out of his nature.

December the eighteenth.

It is very suddenly decided—for that is Dana's way to do things at once. We are to build a cottage of our own here on Father's place. Father will deed the land to me, but Dana builds the house. We shall have to mortgage it, he says. This seems to me somehow a little disgraceful. Dana threw back his curling head and laughed when I said so. I told him he laughed like the young god Pan, so I laughed, too. Dana's spirits are contagious; that is, all but sometimes. Once in a while I feel as if he tried to laugh away things which are not laughable, and then I am not merry. Father is rather quiet; he does not talk much about the cottage. He only said that it was perfectly natural for a man to want his own home; he finds no fault at all with Dana.

"It will be a good deal of a care for you just now," he said, but that was all.

Dana's voice—his best voice—soars all over the house. He is singing:

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;The bird is safest in its nest;O'er all that flutter their wings and flyA hawk is hovering in the sky;To stay at home is best.

Now he has slipped into a discord, and stopped the music with a crash. Now he will come running up-stairs, two at a time. I know what that means: he misses me. He will come bounding in. There will be a kiss, a laugh, his arms, his love, and paradise. We shall have a long, happy evening by ourselves. The fire is fair; the sweeping crimson curtains are drawn; there are jacqueminots on my dressing-table; the expectant room is solemn. The winter night is like the angel Joy, strong and beautiful. It is as I said those first few weeks beside the autumn sea: Eden waits in every weather. Oh, I love him! I love him so that it is as if I could perish of loving and not know that I had been slain.

December the twenty-fourth.

We are all so happy to-night that it seems a kind of theft from joy to take the time to say so. The angel of life is bearing us along on quiet wings. Father is quite well, better than usual, and Dana has done some brilliant thing at court which pleases the governor. The ground is to be broken to-morrow for our new house; it is to stand just behind Ararat, in the garden, near the wall and the electric light. Dana is very merry and kind; no one can be so kind as Dana. For me, I am better, and I am happy, too. The doctor (old Dr. Curtis) has quite talked me out of the blues I was in awhile ago. And to-morrow—I thought I had pages to say about tomorrow; but my pen is deaf and dumb. I find I cannot speak, even to my own heart—only to his. I will leave a note upon his pillow; I hope he will like it. At first it was a joy to write then because it was clearly such a joy to him to read them. My brain seemed to be stimulated, as well as my heart, by happiness; thought itself was sharpened, and all my feeling and expression refined. There is no inspiration like that which comes of being beloved. I think, if I had been born a writer or a poet, I could have written a great book or song in my bridal weeks.

Dana has been so busy lately that I have not written him many love-notes. It is quite a while since I left one upon his pillow. I put this blank white paper to my lips, and I breathe words upon it, and love them into meaning.

"Darling: I should like to say that to you which fails me in the saying, for it is our first Christmas eve together, and to-morrow will mean something for us which no other Christmas in our lives can mean. Just this little time while you are reading to Father (I am glad you thought to offer him that pleasure) I am taking the leisure of my heart to write you a wife-note. Do you remember how you used to kiss them? I shall put this you know where.

"The night is strong and still. There is not much wind, and a mighty frost. The snow is like the shield of the great Venus (supposing her to have been a Victory; you know I always fancied that idea; I like to think that she lost her arms trying to defend herself—she, Victory, vanquished). See! the pagan is not drowned out of me yet, though you have n't called it 'sumptuous' for quite a time, and to-night how can imagination cherish any but the Christian images?

"I admit that the others ring rather hollow. Even the great Venus, solemn and strong, ideal of Unattained Love,—perhaps, who knows? of the Unattainable,—woman from the first heartbeat, but goddess to the end, even she, the glory of paganism—she bows with the shepherds before the Child of Bethlehem. Can't you see just how she would look, the awful Venus, on her knees? I can.

"I am writing by the firelight and the electric street-light, crumpled upon a cricket between the two, the paper on my lap and, Dear, the tears upon my cheeks. I am thinking of the strange light that blossomed on the sky that night in Palestine. I have always thought it was deep pink, like a bursting rose. I am thinking of the village khan and the grotto stable; it flits before me like the plates in a sacred magic-lantern at some religious scene, now this slide, now that, returning on themselves and repeating the effect, and always centering upon one group.

"Dear, I have done all my Christmasing for Father, for the servants, for Job, and for everybody, and I have not much for you; only one thing. I shall fold it in this note, it is so small. For when I tried to think what I could give you, it seemed to me that there was nothing left. I have given you all I am. How can I, who am so spendthrift of myself for your dear sake—how can I offer you any small thing on this, on this first Christmas of our life together? I chose the little gold Madonna for your watch-guard because I could not bring myself to anything else. It was made for me in Paris (if you care to know), but it is to me as if Love had ordered it for me out of heaven. Wear it, Dear, because you love me, because you love us.

"I find I cannot write to-night; I cannot think; I dare not dream. I find it out of my power to admit your soul altogether to my own. For I begin to feel now, as I used to do before we were married, that a woman must not exact too much of a man; she must not expect him to understand; she must remind herself that he is a man, and cannot. For a time we have been one, you and I, husband and wife, and the eternal and almighty difference has been smitten out between us by strong love, which makes of twain one being.

"Now, at the very time when we begin to be dearest to each other, closest, most sacred, now we begin again, for I do perceive it, while most united, to deviate, nature from nature, sex from sex. Already, thou dear lord of me and of mine, I feel with blinding tears that I stand apart from thee, when most cherished by thee. Already I see that I begin to tread a separate and a solemn road.

"Dana! Dana! My heart reaches out to you with an unutterable cry. Try to interpret its inarticulate meaning.

"Forgive this too solemn letter, my dear Love, and love me better for it if you can. If your love does not advance with my need of it, I shall perish of that pause.

"For I can see nothing in all the world of visions this Christmas eve but the Mother with the Child upon her breast.

"Oh, be gentle to

"Your Wife."

May the fifteenth.

When I see how long it is since I have opened this book, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. As a rule I find the former works better. Masculine tenderness is said to respond to tears. I do not find it so. Rather, I should Rather, I should say that a man's devotion fades under salt water, like a bathing-suit, proving unserviceable in the very element for which it is supposed to be adapted.

I never used to be a crying girl; I am quite ashamed of the number of times a week I lock myself into my own rooms to have it out with myself. I suppose it is a physical condition. Nobody sees but Job. He jumps into my lap, more gently than he used to, and kisses my wet face. Heaven knows how he understands that drops on a cheek mean grief in the heart. Sometimes I think that perception of the finer states of one we love is in relation to dumbness. Words, protestations, impulses of the lip, come to mean less as love means more. One of the sages was he who said that conduct is three fourths of life.

Our cottage is done and we move in to-morrow. It is the night before I leave my father's home for our own. There has been too much to do, and I am not quite equal now to the tax upon my strength. I was always such a well, strong girl—poised, I think, in soul and body. Physical malaise is a foreigner to me, and there is no common vocabulary between it and myself. No girl thinks of this. When I expected to be most comforted I find myself most solitary. I suppose it is a common, or at least a frequent, experience. Men are so busy and so insolently strong. There is something cruel in their physical freedom.

No woman deity could ever have constructed Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/139 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/140 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/141 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/142 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/143 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/144 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/145 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/146 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/147 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/148 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/149 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/150 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/151 Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/152 thing in earth or heaven but you—not of the baby at all, only you, you.

"Stay by me when you come, Darling! Don't let them persuade you that it will harm me. It will save me, and it is the only thing that will. They thought that I should die, but I could not die when you were so far away. That would have been impossible.

Dana, Dana, I live, and I love you. For I am

"The Mother of your Child."

August the thirtieth.

This is the first time I have been allowed to write (to amuse myself), and I am limited to eight lines. "Being happy," I remember Hawthorne said, "he had no questions to put." Being happy because my husband gives me every moment that he can beg or steal from time, being happy because he is so happy, because he blinds me with tenderness, I have no letters to write. Instead, I record the fact that my daughter is two weeks old to-day, and that Job is so jealous of her that we cannot keep them in the same room. I think he is planning definite hostilities. Job finds her more objectionable than David and Dora.