Up to this point, there is hope, there is energy, there is enthusiasm; the pieces are marshalled and managed with good courage. At last, perhaps in an unexpected moment, one, two, three adverse moves follow each other, and the decisive words, _check-mate_, are uttered.
This is a symbol of what often goes on in the game of life.
Here is a man going on, indefinitely, conscious in his own heart that he is not happy in his domestic relations. There is a want of union between him and his wife. She is not the woman that meets his wants or his desires; and in the intercourse of life they constantly cross and annoy each other. But still he does not allow himself to look the matter fully in the face. He goes on and on, hoping that to-morrow will bring something better than to-day,--hoping that this thing or that thing or the other thing will bring a change, and that in some indefinite future all will round and fashion itself to his desires.
It is very slowly that a man awakens from the illusions of his first love. It is very unwillingly that he ever comes to the final conclusion that he has made _there_ the mistake of a whole lifetime, and that the woman to whom he gave his whole heart not only is not the woman that he supposed her to be, but never in any future time, nor by any change of circ.u.mstances, will become that woman; for then the difficulty seems radical and final and hopeless.
In "The Pilgrim"s Progress," we read that the poor man, Christian, tried to persuade his wife to go with him on the pilgrimage to the celestial city; but that finally he had to make up his mind to go alone without her. Such is the lot of the man who is brought to the conclusion, positively and definitely, that his wife is always to be a hinderance, and never a help to him, in any upward aspiration; that whatever he does that is needful and right and true must be done, not by her influence, but in spite of it; that, if he has to swim against the hard, upward current of the river of life, he must do so with her hanging on his arm, and holding him back, and that he cannot influence and cannot control her.
Such hours of disclosure to a man are among the terrible hidden tragedies of life,--tragedies such as are never acted on the stage.
Such a time of disclosure came to John the year after Grace"s marriage; and it came in this way:--
The Spindlewood property had long been critically situated. Sundry financial changes which were going, on in the country had depreciated its profits, and affected it unfavorably. All now depended upon the permanency of one commercial house. John had been pa.s.sing through an interval of great anxiety. He could not tell Lillie his trouble. He had been for months past nervously watching all the in-comings and outgoings of his family, arranged on a scale of reckless expenditure, which he felt entirely powerless to control. Lillie"s wishes were importunate. She was nervous and hysterical, wholly incapable of listening to reason; and the least attempt to bring her to change any of her arrangements, or to restrict any of her pleasures, brought tears and faintings and distresses and scenes of domestic confusion which he shrank from. He often tried to set before her the possibility that they might be obliged, for a time at least, to live in a different manner; but she always resisted every such supposition as so frightful, so dreadful, that he was utterly discouraged, and put off and off, hoping that the evil day never might arrive.
But it did come at last. One morning, when he received by mail the tidings of the failure of the great house of Clapham & Co., he knew that the time had come when the thing could no longer be staved off.
He was an indorser to a large amount on the paper of this house; and the crisis was inevitable.
It was inevitable also that he must acquaint Lillie with the state of his circ.u.mstances; for she was going on with large arrangements and calculations for a Newport campaign, and sending the usual orders to New York, to her milliner and dressmaker, for her summer outfit. It was a cruel thing for him to be obliged to interrupt all this; for she seemed perfectly cheerful and happy in it, as she always was when preparing to go on a pleasure-seeking expedition. But it could not be.
All this luxury and indulgence must be cut off at a stroke. He must tell her that she could not go to Newport; that there was no money for new dresses or new finery; that they should probably be obliged to move out of their elegant house, and take a smaller one, and practise for some time a rigid economy.
John came into Lillie"s elegant apartments, which glittered like a tulip-bed with many colored sashes and ribbons, with sheeny silks and misty laces, laid out in order to be surveyed before packing.
"Gracious me, John! what on earth is the matter with you to-day? How perfectly awful and solemn you do look!"
"I have had bad news, this morning, Lillie, which I must tell you."
"Oh, dear me, John! what is the matter? n.o.body is dead, I hope!"
"No, Lillie; but I am afraid you will have to give up your Newport journey."
"Gracious, goodness, John! what for?"
"To say the truth, Lillie, I cannot afford it."
"Can"t afford it? Why not? Why, John, what is the matter?"
"Well, Lillie, just read this letter!"
Lillie took it, and read it with her hands trembling.
"Well, dear me, John! I don"t see any thing in this letter. If they have failed, I don"t see what that is to you!"
"But, Lillie, I am indorser for them."
"How very silly of you, John! What made you indorse for them? Now that is too bad; it just makes me perfectly miserable to think of such things. I know _I_ should not have done so; but I don"t see why you need pay it. It is their business, anyhow."
"But, Lillie, I shall have to pay it. It is a matter of honor and honesty to do it; because I engaged to do it."
"Well, I don"t see why that should be! It isn"t your debt; it is their debt: and why need you do it? I am sure d.i.c.k Follingsbee said that there were ways in which people could put their property out of their hands when they got caught in such sc.r.a.pes as this. d.i.c.k knows just how to manage. He told me of plenty of people that had done that, who were living splendidly, and who were received everywhere; and people thought just as much of them."
"O Lillie, Lillie! my child," said John; "you don"t know any thing of what you are talking about! That would be dishonorable, and wholly out of the question. No, Lillie dear, the fact is," he said, with a great gulp, and a deep sigh,--"the fact is, I have failed; but I am going to fail honestly. If I have nothing else left, I will have my honor and my conscience. But we shall have to give up this house, and move into a smaller one. Every thing will have to be given up to the creditors to settle the business. And then, when all is arranged, we must try to live economically some way; and perhaps we can make it up again.
But you see, dear, there can be no more of this kind of expenses at present," he said, pointing to the dresses and jewelry on the bed.
"Well, John, I am sure I had rather die!" said Lillie, gathering herself into a little white heap, and tumbling into the middle of the bed. "I am sure if we have got to rub and scrub and starve so, I had rather die and done with it; and I hope I shall."
John crossed his arms, and looked gloomily out of the window.
"Perhaps you had better," he said. "I am sure I should be glad to."
"Yes, I dare say!" said Lillie; "that is all you care for me. Now there is d.i.c.k Follingsbee, he would be taking care of his wife. Why, he has failed three or four times, and always come out richer than he was before!"
"He is a swindler and a rascal!" said John; "that is what he is."
"I don"t care if he is," said Lillie, sobbing. "His wife has good times, and goes into the very first society in New York. People don"t care, so long as you are rich, what you do. Well, I am sure I can"t do any thing about it. I don"t know how to live without money,--that"s a fact! and I can"t learn. I suppose you would be glad to see me rubbing around in old calico dresses, wouldn"t you? and keeping only one girl, and going into the kitchen, like Miss Dotty Peabody? I think I see myself! And all just for one of your Quixotic notions, when you might just as well keep all your money as not. That is what it is to marry a reformer! I never have had any peace of my life on account of your conscience, always something or other turning up that you can"t act like anybody else. I should think, at least, you might have contrived to settle this place on me and poor little Lillie, that we might have a house to put our heads in."
"Lillie, Lillie," said John, "this is too much! Don"t you think that _I_ suffer at all?"
"I don"t see that you do," said Lillie, sobbing. "I dare say you are glad of it; it is just like you. Oh, dear, I wish I had never been married!"
"I _certainly_ do," said John, fervently.
"I suppose so. You see, it is nothing to you men; you don"t care any thing about these things. If you can get a musty old corner and your books, you are perfectly satisfied; and you don"t know when things are pretty, and when they are not: and so you can talk grand about your honor and your conscience and all that. I suppose the carriages and horses have got to be sold too?"
"Certainly, Lillie," said John, hardening his heart and his tone.
"Well, well," she said, "I wish you would go now and send ma to me.
I don"t want to talk about it any more. My head aches as if it would split. Poor ma! She little thought when I married you that it was going to come to this."
John walked out of the room gloomily enough. He had received this morning his _check-mate_. All illusion was at an end. The woman that he had loved and idolized and caressed and petted and indulged, in whom he had been daily and hourly disappointed since he was married, but of whom he still hoped and hoped, he now felt was of a nature not only unlike, but opposed to his own. He felt that he could neither love nor respect her further. And yet she was his wife, and the mother of his daughter, and the only queen of his household; and he had solemnly promised at G.o.d"s altar that "forsaking all others, he would keep only unto her, so long as they both should live, for better, for worse," John muttered to himself,--"for better, for worse. This is the worse; and oh, it is dreadful!"
In all John"s hours of sorrow and trouble, the instinctive feeling of his heart was to go back to the memory of his mother; and the nearest to his mother was his sister Grace. In this hour of his blind sorrow, he walked directly over to the little cottage on Elm Street, which Grace and her husband had made a perfectly ideal home.
When he came into the parlor, Grace and Rose were sitting together with an open letter lying between them. It was evident that some crisis of tender confidence had pa.s.sed between them; for the tears were hardly dry on Rose"s cheeks. Yet it was not painful, whatever it was; for her face was radiant with smiles, and John thought he had never seen her look so lovely. At this moment the truth of her beautiful and lovely womanhood, her sweetness and n.o.bleness of nature, came over him, in bitter contrast with the scene he had just pa.s.sed through, and the woman he had left.
"What do you think, John?" said Grace; "we have some congratulations here to give! Rose is engaged to Harry Endicott."
"Indeed!" said John, "I wish her joy."
"But what is the matter, John?" said both women, looking up, and seeing something unusual in his face.
"Oh, trouble!" said John,--"trouble upon us all. Gracie and Rose, the Spindlewood Mills have failed."
"Is it possible?" was the exclamation of both.
"Yes, indeed!" said John; "you see, the thing has been running very close for the last six months; and the manufacturing business has been looking darker and darker. But still we could have stood it if the house of Clapham & Co. had stood; but they have gone to smash, Gracie.
I had a letter this morning, telling me of it."
Both women stood a moment as if aghast; for the Ferguson property was equally involved.