The Diary of a Saint

"I don't want ever to set eyes on her again," he declared doggedly. "She's cheated me. She told me I was the first man she ever cared for, and I never had a hint she'd been married. She made a fool of me, but thank God I'm out of that mess."

"What do you mean?" I asked him. "You are talking about your wife."

"She isn't my wife, I tell you," persisted he. "I'll never live with her again."

He must have seen how he shocked me, and at last he was persuaded to go home. I know I must see him to-morrow, and I have a cowardly desire to run away. I have a hateful feeling of repulsion against him, but that is something to be overcome. At any rate both he and his poor wife need a friend if they ever did, and I must do the best I can.

I cannot wonder George should be deeply hurt by finding that Mrs. Weston had a husband before and did not tell him. She can hardly have loved him or she must have been honest with him. It may have been through her love and fear of losing him that she did not dare to tell; though from what I have seen of her I haven't thought her much given to sentiment. How dreadful it must be to live a life resting on concealment. I have very likely been uncharitable in judging her, for she must always have been uneasy and of course could not be her true self.

October 29. Some rumor of the truth has flown about the town, as I was sure when I saw Aunt Naomi coming up the walk this forenoon. Sometimes I think she sees written on walls and fences the things which have happened or been said in the houses which they surround. She has almost a second sight; and if I wished to do anything secret I would not venture to be in the same county with her.

She seated herself comfortably in a patch of sunshine, and looked with the greatest interest at the mahonia in bloom on the flower-stand by the south window. She spoke of the weather and of Peter's silliness, told me where the sewing-circle was to be next week, and approached the real object of her call with the deliberation of a cat who is creeping up behind a mouse. When she did speak, she startled me.

"I suppose you know that tramp over to the Westons' died this morning," she remarked, so carelessly it might have seemed an accident if her eye had not fairly gleamed with eagerness.

"Died!" I echoed.

"Yes, he's dead," she went on. "He had some sort of excitement yesterday, they say, and it seems to have been the end of him."

She watched me as if to see whether I would give any sign of knowing more of the matter than she did, but for once I hope I baffled her penetration. I made some ordinary comment, which could not have told her much.

"It's very queer a tramp should go to that particular house to die," observed Aunt Naomi, as if she were stating an abstract truth in which she had no especial interest.

I asked what there was especially odd about it.

"Well, for one thing," she answered, "he asked the way there particularly."

I inquired how she knew.

"Al Demmons met him on the Rim road," she continued, not choosing, apparently, to answer my question directly, "and this man wanted to know where a man named Weston lived who'd married a woman from the West called something Al Demmons couldn't remember. Al Demmons said that George Weston was the only Weston in town, and that he had married a girl named West. Then the man said something about 'that used to be her name.' It's all pretty queer, I think."

To this I did not respond. I would not get into a discussion which would give Aunt Naomi more material for talk. After a moment of silence, she said: —

"Well, the man's dead now, and I suppose that's the end of him. I don't suppose Mrs. Weston's likely to tell much about him."

"Aunt Naomi," I returned, feeling that even if all the traditions of respect for my elders were broken I must speak, "doesn't it seem to you harm might come of talking about this tramp as if he were some mysterious person connected with Mrs. Weston's life before she came to Tuskamuck? It isn't strange that somebody should have known her, and when once a tramp has had help from a person he hangs on."

She regarded me with a shrewd look.

"You wouldn't take up cudgels for her that way if you didn't know something," she observed.

After that there was nothing for me to say. I simply dropped the subject, and refused to talk about the affairs of the Westons at all. I am so sorry, however, that gossip has got hold of a suspicion. It was to be expected, I suppose, and indeed it has been in the air ever since the man came. I am sorry for the Westons.

October 30. After the earthquake a fire, – I wonder whether after the fire will come the still, small voice! It is curious that out of all this excitement the feeling of which I am most conscious after my dismay and my pity is one of irritation. I am ashamed to find in my thought so much anger against George. He had perhaps a right to think as he did about my affection for him, though it is inconceivable any gentleman should say the things he said to me last night. Even if he were crazy enough to suppose I could still love him, how could he forget his wife; how could he be glad of an excuse to be freed from her; how could he forget the little child that is coming? Oh, I am like Jonah when he was so sure he did well to be angry! I am convinced I can have no just perception of character at all, for this George Weston is showing himself so weak, so ungenerous, so cruel, that he has either been changed vitally or I did not really know him. I was utterly deceived in him. No; I will not believe that. We have all of us possibilities in different directions. I wish I could remember the passage where Browning says a man has two sides, one for the world and one to show a woman when he loves her. Perhaps one side is as true as the other; and what I knew was a possible George, I am sure.

He came in yesterday afternoon with a look of hard determination. He greeted me almost curtly, and added in the same breath: —

"The man is dead. She's confessed it all. He was her husband, and she was never my wife legally at all. She says she thought he was dead."

"Then there's only one thing to do," I answered. "You can get Mr. Saychase to marry you to-day. Of course it can be arranged if you tell him how the mistake arose, and he won't speak of it."

He laughed sneeringly.

"I haven't any intention of marrying her," he said.

"No intention of marrying her?" I repeated, not understanding him. "If the first ceremony wasn't legal, another is necessary, of course."

"She cheated me," he declared, his manner becoming more excited. "Do you suppose after that I'd have her for my wife? Besides, you don't see. She was another man's wife when she came to live with me, and" —

I stared at him without speaking, and he began to look confused.

"No man wants to marry a woman that's been living with him," he blurted out defiantly. "I suppose that isn't a nice thing to say to you, but any man would understand."

I was silent at first, in mere amazement and indignation. The thing seemed so monstrous, so indelicate, so cruel to the woman. She had deceived him and hidden the fact that she had been married, but there was no justice in this horrible way of looking at it, as if her ignorance had been a crime. I could hardly believe he realized what he was saying. Before I could think what to say, he went on.

"Very likely you think I'm hard, Ruth; and perhaps I shouldn't feel so if it hadn't come about through her own fault. If she'd told me the truth" —

"George!" I burst out. "You don't know what you are saying! You didn't take her as your wife for a week or a month, but for all her life."

"She never was my wife," he persisted stubbornly.

I looked at him with a feeling of despair, – not unmixed, I must confess, with anger. Most of all, however, I wanted to reach him; to make him see things as they were; and I wanted to save the poor woman. I leaned forward, and laid my fingers on his arm. My eyes were smarting, but I would not cry.

"But if there were no question of her at all," I pleaded, "you must do what is right for your own sake. You have made her pledges, and you can't in common honesty give them up."

"She set me free from all that when she lied to me. I made pledges to a girl, not to another man's wife."

"But she didn't know. She thought she was free to marry you. She believed she was honestly your wife."

"She never was, she never was."

He repeated it stubbornly as if the fact settled everything.

"She was!" I broke out hotly. "She was your wife; and she is your wife! When a man and a woman honestly love each other and marry without knowing of any reason why they may not, I say they are man and wife, no matter what the law is."

"Suppose the husband had lived?" he demanded, with a hateful smile. "The law really settles it."

"Do you believe that?" I asked him. "Or do you only wish to believe it?"

He looked at me half angrily, and the blood sprang into his cheeks. Then he took a step forward.

"She came between us!" he said, lowering his voice, but speaking with a new fierceness.

I felt as if he had struck me, and I shrank back. Then I straightened up, and looked him in the eye.

"You don't dare to say that aloud," I retorted. "You left me of your own accord. You insult me to come here and say such a thing, and I will not hear it. If you mean to talk in that strain, you may leave the house."

He was naturally a good deal taken aback by this, and perhaps I should not – Yes, I should; I am glad I did say it. He stammered something about begging my pardon.

"Let that go," interrupted I, feeling as if I had endured about all that I could hear. "The question is whether you are not going to be just to your wife."

"You fight mighty well for her," responded George, "but if you knew how she" —

"Never mind," I broke in. "Can't you see I am fighting for you? I am trying to make you see you owe it to yourself to be right in this; and moreover you owe it to me."

"To you?" he asked, with a touch in his voice which should have warned me, but did not, I was so wrapped up in my own view of the situation.

"Yes, to me. I am your oldest friend, don't you see, and you owe it to me not to fail now."

He sprang forward impulsively, holding out both his hands.

"Ruth," he cried out, "what's the use of all this talk? You know it's you I love, and you I mean to marry."

I know now how a man feels when he strikes another full in the face for insulting him. I felt myself growing hot and then cold again; and I was literally speechless from indignation.

"I went crazy a while for a fool with a pretty face," he went rushing on; "but all that" —

"She is your wife, George Weston!" I broke in. "How dare you talk so to me!"

He was evidently astonished, but he persisted.

"We ought to be honest with each other now, Ruth," he said. "There's too much at stake for us to beat about the bush. I know I've behaved like a fool and a brute. I've hurt you and – and cheated you, and you've had every reason to throw me over like a sick dog; but when you made up the money I'd lost and didn't let Mr. Longworthy suspect, I knew you cared for me just the same!"

"Cared for you!" I blazed out. "Do you think I could have ruined any man's life for that? I love you no more than I love any other man with a wife of his own!"

"That's just it," he broke in eagerly. "Of course I knew you couldn't own you cared while she" —

The egotism of it, the vulgarity of it made me frantic. I was ashamed of myself, I was ashamed of him, and I felt as if nothing would make him see the truth. Never in my whole life have I spoken to any human being as I did to him. I felt like a raging termagant, but he would not see.

"Stop!" I cried out. "If you had never had a wife, I couldn't care for you. I thought I loved you, and perhaps I did; but all that is over, and over forever."

"You've said you'd love me always," he retorted.

Some outer layer of courtesy seemed to have cracked and fallen from him, and to have left an ugly and vulgar nature bare. The pathos of it came over me. The pity that a man should be capable of so exposing his baser self struck me in the midst of all my indignation. I could not help a feeling, moreover, that he had somehow a right to reproach me with having changed. Thinking of it now in cooler blood I cannot see that since he has left me to marry another woman he has any ground for reproaching me; but somehow at the moment I felt guilty.

"George," I answered, "I thought I was telling the truth; I didn't understand myself."

The change in his face showed me that this way of putting it had done more to convince him than any direct denial. His whole manner altered.

"You don't mean," he pleaded piteously, "you've stopped caring for me?"

I could only tell him that certainly I had stopped caring for him in the old way, and I begged him to go back to his wife. He said little more, and I was at last released from this horrible scene. All night I thought of it miserably or I dreamed of it more miserably still. That poor woman! What can I do for her? I hope I have not lost the power of influencing George, for I might use it to help her.

XI

NOVEMBER

November 3. How odd are the turns that fate plays us. Sometimes it seems as if an unseen power were amusing himself tangling the threads of human lives just as Peter has been snarling up my worsted for pure fun. Only a power mighty enough to be able to do this must be too great to be so heartless. I suppose, too, that the pity of things is often more in the way in which we look at them than it is in the turn which fate or fortune has given to affairs. The point of view changes values so.

All this is commonplace, of course; but it is certainly curious that George's wife should be in my house, almost turned out of her husband's. When I found her on the steps the other night, wet with the rain, afraid to ring, afraid of me, and terrified at what had come upon her, I had no time to think of the strange perversity of events which had brought this about. She had left George's house, she said, because she was afraid of him and because he had said she was to go as soon as she was able. He had called her a horrible name, she added, and he had told her he was done with her; that she must in the future take care of herself and not expect to live with him. I know, after seeing the cruel self George showed the other day, that he could be terrible, and he would have less restraint with his wife than with me. In the evening, as soon as it was really dark, in the midst of the storm, she came to me. She said she knew how I must hate her, that she had said horrid things about me, but she had nowhere else to go, and she implored I would take her in. She is asleep now in the south chamber. She is ill, and I cannot tell what the effects of her exposure will be. Dr. Wentworth looks grave, but he does not say what he thinks.

What I ought to do is the question. She has been here two days, and her husband must have found out by this time what I suppose everybody in town knows, – where she is. I cannot fold my hands and let things go. I must send for George, much as I shrink from seeing him. How can I run the risk of having another scene like the one on Friday? and yet I must do something. She can do nothing for herself. It should be a man to talk with George; but I cannot ask Tom. He and George do not like each other, and he could not persuade George to do right to Gertrude. Perhaps Deacon Richards might effect something.

November 5. After all my difficulty in persuading Deacon Richards to interfere, his efforts have come to nothing. George was rude to him, and told him to mind his own affairs. I suppose dear old Deacon Daniel had not much tact.

"I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself," the Deacon said indignantly, "and that he was a disgrace to the town; but it didn't seem to move him any."

"I hope he treated you well," I answered dolefully. "I am sorry I persuaded you to go."

"He was plain enough," Deacon Daniel responded grimly. "He didn't mince words any to speak of."

I must see him myself. I wish I dared consult Tom, but it could not do any good. I must work it out alone; but what can I say?

November 6. Fortunately, I did not have to send for George. He appeared this afternoon on a singular errand. He wanted to pay me board for his wife until she was well enough to go away. I assured him he need not be troubled about board, because I was glad to do what I could for his wife; and I could not help adding that I did not keep a lodging-house.

"I'm willing to be as kind to her while she's here as I can," he assured me awkwardly, "and of course I shall not let her go away empty-handed."

"She is not likely to," I retorted, feeling my cheeks get hot. "Dr. Wentworth says she cannot be moved until after the baby comes."

He flushed in his turn, and looked out of the window.

"I don't think, Ruth," was his reply, "we can discuss that. It isn't a pleasant subject."

There are women, I know, who can meet obstinacy with guile. I begin to understand how it may be a woman will stoop to flatter and seem to yield, simply through despair of carrying her end by any other means. The hardness of this man almost bred in me a purpose to try and soften him, to try to bewitch him, somehow to fool and ensnare him for his own good; to hide how I raged inwardly at his injustice and cruelty, and to pretend to be acquiescent until I had accomplished my end. I cannot lie, however, even in acts, and all that sort of thing is beyond my power as well as my will. I realized how hopeless it was for me to try to do anything with him, and I rose.

"Very likely you are right," I said. "It is evidently useless for us to discuss anything. Now I can only say good-by; but I forbid you to come into my house again until you bring Mr. Saychase with you to remarry you to Gertrude."

He had risen also, and we stood face to face.

"Do you suppose," he asked doggedly, "now I am free I'd consent to marry any woman but you? I'll make you marry me yet, Ruth Privet, for I know perfectly well you love me. Think how long we were engaged."

I remembered the question he asked me when he came back from Franklin after he had seen her: "How long have we been engaged?"

"I shall keep your wife," was all I said, "until she is well and chooses to go. George, I beg of you not to let her baby be born fatherless."

A hateful look came into his eyes.

"I thought you were fond of fatherless babies," he sneered.

"Go," I said, hardly controlling myself, "and don't come here again without Mr. Saychase."

"If I bring him it will be to marry you, Ruth."

Something in me rose up and spoke without my volition. I did not know what I was saying until the words were half said. I crossed the room and rang the bell for Rosa, and as I did it I said: —

"I see I must have a husband to protect me from your insults, and I will marry Tom Webbe."

Before he could answer, Rosa appeared.

"Rosa," I said, and all my calmness had come back, "will you show Mr. Weston to the door. I am not at home to him again until he comes with Mr. Saychase."

She restrained her surprise and amusement better than I expected, but before she had had time to do more than toss her head George had rushed away without ceremony. By this time, I suppose, every man, woman, and child in town knows that I have turned him out of my house.

November 7. "And after the fire a still, small voice!" I have been saying this over and over to myself; and remembering, not irreverently, that God was in the voice.

I have had a talk with Tom which has moved me more than all the trouble with George. The very fact that George so outraged all my feelings and made me so angry kept me from being touched as I might have been otherwise; but this explanation with Tom has left me shaken and tired out. It is emotion and not physical work that wears humanity to shreds.

Tom came to discuss the reading-room. He is delighted that it has started so well and is going on so swimmingly; and he is full of plans for increasing the interest. I was, I confess, so preoccupied with what I had made up my mind to say to him I could hardly follow what he was saying. I felt as if something were grasping me by the throat. He looked at me strangely, but he went on talking as if he did not notice my uneasiness.

"Tom," I broke out at last, when I could endure it no longer, "did you know that Mrs. Weston is here, very ill?"

"Yes," was all he answered.

"And, Tom," I hurried on, "George won't remarry her."

"Won't remarry her?" he echoed. "The cur!"

"He was here yesterday," I went on desperately, "and he said he is determined to marry me."

Tom started forward with hot face and clenched fist.

"The blackguard! I wish I'd been here to kick him out of the house! What did you say to him?"

"I told him he had insulted me, and forbade him to come here again without Mr. Saychase to remarry them," I said. Then before Tom's searching look I became so confused he could not help seeing there was more.

"Well?" he demanded.

He was almost peremptory, although he was courteous. Men have such a way in a crisis of instinctively taking the lead that a woman yields to it almost of necessity.

"Tom," I answered, more and more confused, "I must tell you, but I hope you'll understand. I had a frightful time with him. I was ashamed of him and ashamed of myself, and very angry; and when he said he'd make me marry him sometime, I told him" —

"Well?" demanded Tom, his voice much lower than before, but even more compelling.

"I told him," said I, the blood fairly throbbing in my cheeks, "that I should marry you. You've asked me, you know!"

He grew fairly white, but for a moment he did not move. His eyes had a look in them I had never seen, and which made me tremble. It seemed to me that he was fighting down what he wanted to say, and to get control of himself.

"Ruth," he asked me at last, with an odd hoarseness in his voice, "do you want George Weston to marry that woman?"

"Of course I do," I cried, so surprised and relieved that the question was not more personal the tears started to my eyes. "I want it more than anything else in the world."

Again he was still for a moment, his eyes looking into mine as if he meant to drag out my most secret thought. These silences were too much for me to bear, and I broke this one. I asked him if he were vexed at what I had said to George, and told him the words had seemed to say themselves without any will of mine.

"I could only be sorry at anything you said, Ruth," he returned, "never vexed. I only think it a pity for you to link your name with mine."

I tried to speak, but he went on.

"I've loved you ever since I was old enough to love anything. I've told you that often enough, and I don't think you doubt it. I had you as my ambition all the time I was growing up. I came home from college, and you were engaged, and all the good was taken out of life for me. I've never cared much since what happened. But if I've asked you to love me, Ruth, I never gave you the right to think I'd be base enough to be willing you should marry me without loving me."

Again I tried to speak, though I cannot tell what I wished to say. I only choked and could not get out a word.

"Don't talk about it. I can't stand it," he broke in, his voice husky. "You needn't marry me to make George Weston come up to the mark. I'll take care of that."

I suppose I looked up with a dread of what might happen if he saw George, and of course Tom could not understand that my concern was for him and not for George. He smiled a bitter sort of smile.

"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I'll treat him tenderly for your sake."

I was too confused to speak, and I could only sit there dazed and silent while he went away. It was not what he was saying that filled me with a tumult till my thoughts seemed beating in my head like wild birds in a net. Suddenly while he was speaking, while his dear, honest eyes full of pain were looking into mine, the still, small voice had spoken, and I knew that I cared for Tom as he cared for me.

November 8. I realize now that from the morning when Tom and I first stood with baby in my arms between us I have felt differently toward him. It was at the moment almost as if I were his wife, and though I never owned it to myself, even in my most secret thought, I have somehow belonged to him ever since. I see now that something very deep within has known and has from time to time tried to tell me; but I put my hands to the ears of my mind. Miss Fleming used to try to teach us things at school about the difference between the consciousness and the will, and other dark mysteries which to me were, and are, and always will be utterly incomprehensible, and I suppose some kind of a consciousness knew what the will wouldn't recognize. That sounds like nonsense now it is on paper, but it seemed extremely wise when I began to write it. No matter; the facts I know well enough. It is wonderful how a woman will hide a thing from herself, a thing she knows really, but keeps from being conscious she knows by refusing to let her thoughts put it into words.