the great occasion came. the evening’s entertainment rose, minute by minute, to its climax of glory, on which the curtain fell, amidst an enthusiasm so intense that only the controlled good breeding of the invited audience prevented demonstrations of a noisy character. christine had been previously seen by very few of them, and as the audience dispersed, her name, coupled with expressions of enthusiastic surprise and admiration, was on every lip.
fifteen minutes after the curtain went down the theatre was empty and deserted, every light was out, and profound silence reigned where so lately all had been excitement and animation, and the young creature who had occasioned so much the greatest part of it was being driven homeward, leaning back in the close carriage and clasping close the work-hardened hand of the little teacher who was her companion. her husband sat opposite, silent as usual, and after a few impetuous, ardent words of love and appreciation hannah had fallen silent too, merely holding out her hand to meet the hard and straining clasp that had seized upon it as soon as they were settled in the carriage.
after the performance people who had leaped from the audience to the stage, privileged by an acquaintance with some of the company, had pressed forward eagerly for an introduction to christine. invitations to supper were showered upon her. she might have gone off in a carriage drawn by men instead of horses if she had desired it. but she had turned away from it all. she was in haste to go, and summoning her husband and friend as quickly as possible, she had declared she was tired out, and had made her excuses with an air so earnest, and to those who had the vision for it, so distressed, that amidst the reproaches of some and the regrets of others she had made her escape.
she shivered as the cold night air struck her face outside the theatre, and drew her wrap closer about her as she stepped into the carriage which was waiting. the drive homeward was silent. the two women sat together, each feeling in that fervent handclasp the emotions which filled the heart of the other. mrs. dallas had been roused by something to an unusual pitch of excited feeling, and her little friend, by the intuition of sympathy, defined it. the way was long and mr. dallas, making himself as comfortable as possible on the seat opposite, took off his hat, leaned his head back and in a few moments was breathing audibly and regularly.
“he is asleep,” whispered his wife, and then, on the breath of a deep-drawn sigh, she added in the same low whisper, “oh, god, have mercy on me.”
“what is it?” whispered hannah timidly, her voice tender with sympathy.
“hush! i am going to tell you everything. wait till we get home. i am going to tell you all.”
she spoke excitedly, though still in a whisper, and it was evident that the agitation under which she labored was urging her on to actions in which the voice of discretion and prudence had no part.
hannah, who had long ago suspected that her beautiful friend—whose face and voice, together with the luxury of her surroundings and dress had made her acquaintance seem like intercourse with a being from a higher sphere—was not happy, now felt an impulse of affectionate pity which made her move closer to her companion and rather timidly put her arm around her. in an instant she was folded in a close embrace, the bare white arm under the wrap straining her in an ardent pressure that drew her head down until it leaned against the breast of the taller woman, and felt the bounding pulses of her heart.
“i am so miserable,” whispered the soft voice close to her ear. “i am going to tell you about it. if i couldn’t talk to somebody to-night i feel as if i should go mad. whether it’s right or wrong i’m going to tell you. i can’t bear it this way any longer. oh, i am so unhappy—i am so unhappy.”
hannah only pressed closer, without speaking. there was nothing that she could say. she felt keenly that in what seemed the brilliant lot of her beautiful friend there were possibilities of anguish which her commonplace life could know nothing of. so they drove along in silence until the carriage stopped at the door. mr. dallas was sleeping so soundly that it was necessary for his wife to waken him, and he got up, looking sleepy and confused, and led the way into the house, while the carriage rolled away, the wheels reverberating down the silent streets.
in the hall hannah looked at her friend and saw that her face, though pale, was perfectly composed, and her voice, when she spoke to her husband, was also quiet and calm.
“hannah is going to stay all night, you know,” she said. “you needn’t stay up for us. i will put out the lights.”
he nodded sleepily and went at once up-stairs, as the two women turned into the drawing-room. the lights in the chandelier were burning brightly and a great deep chair was drawn under them, upon which mrs. dallas sat down, motioning her friend to a seat facing her. she was wearing the dress in which she had sung the last act of the opera—a greek costume of soft white silk with trimmings of gold. it was in this dress that she had roused the audience to such a pitch of admiration by her beauty, and seen close, as hannah was privileged to see it now, there were a score of perfections of detail, in both woman and costume, which those who saw her from afar would not have been aware of. hannah, who had an ardent soul within her very ordinary little body, looked at her with a sort of worship in her eyes.
meeting this look, mrs. dallas smiled—a smile that was sadder than tears.
“oh, hannah, i am so unhappy,” she said. “i want to tell you but i don’t know how. oh, my child, i am so miserable.”
her utterance had still that little foreign accent that made it so pathetic, although, in spite of some odd blunders, she had become almost fluent in the english tongue. there was still no indication of tears in either her voice or her eyes, as she leaned back in the padded chair, her head supported by its top, and her long bare arms with their picturesque greek bracelets resting wearily on its cushioned sides.
hannah looked at her with the tenderness of her kind heart overflowing in great tears from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. she pressed her handkerchief to her face in the vain effort to keep them back, but the woman for whom they fell shed no tears. she sat there calm and quiet in her youth and beauty and looked at the plain little school-teacher with a wistful gaze that seemed as if it might be envy.
“tell me, hannah,” she said presently, when the girl had dried her eyes and grown more calm, “tell me frankly, no matter how strange it may seem to you to have the question asked, what do you think of my husband?”
this startling question naturally found hannah unprepared with an answer, and after clearing her throat and getting rather red, she said confusedly that she had seen so little of mr. dallas, her intercourse with him had been so slight, that she really did not feel that she knew him well enough to give an answer.
“you know him as well as i do,” his wife replied. “as he is to you—as you see him daily, exactly so he is to me. i have waited and waited for something more, but in vain. i have come at last to the conclusion that this is all.”
hannah, between wonder and distress, began to feel the tears rise again. the other saw them and bent forward and took her hand.
“don’t cry, poor little thing,” she said. “yes—cry if you can. it shows your heart is soft still—mine is as hard as stone. oh, god, how i have cried!” she broke off, in a voice grown suddenly passionate. “how i have laid awake at night and cried until my body was exhausted with the sobs. i have thought of my little white bed in the convent, where i slept so placidly, for every night of all those blessed, quiet, peaceful years, until my whole longing would be that i might once more lay myself down upon it and close my eyes forever. if an angel from heaven had offered me a wish it would have been that one. oh, hannah, you do not know. you ought to be so happy. you are so happy. do you know it? i didn’t know it, and i was never grateful for it, but always looking forward to being happy in the future, and oh, how i am punished!”
she wrung her hands together and bit the flesh of her soft lips, as if with a sense of anguish too bitter to be borne.
“i always thought,” said hannah, in a husky voice that sounded still of tears, “that a woman who was beautiful and gifted and admired, and had a husband to take care of her, must be the happiest creature in the world. i used to look at you with envy, but i knew, before to-night, that you suffered sometimes.”
“sometimes! oh, hannah, it is not sometimes—but always—continually—evening and morning—day-time and night-time, for when i sleep i have such dreams! the things that were my day dreams long ago come back to me in sleep, and when i wake and think of myself as i am, i know not why i do not die of it. oh, hannah, if you have dreamed of marriage, give it up. live your life out as you are. die a dear, sweet, good, old maid, teaching little children and being kind to them and taking care of your old mother. oh, my dear, don’t call yourself lonely. don’t dare to say it, lest you should be punished. there is no loneliness that a woman can know which can be compared to a marriage like mine. oh, i am so lonely every moment that i live, that i feel there is no companionship for me in all this crowded world, for the bitterness of my heart is what no one can feel or share.”
“why did you marry your husband?” said hannah, surprised at her own boldness.
“why? i am glad you asked me that. i will tell you, and perhaps you may be saved what i have suffered. if my mother had lived it might have been all different. surely, surely a mother would have known how to save her child from what i have suffered. a father might not—perhaps a father might not be to blame, though sometimes—oh, hannah, it is dreadful, but my father seems to me a cruel, wicked man. it was he that did it. what did i know? why your knowledge of the world is great and vast compared to mine! i had had only the sisters to teach me, and they were as ignorant as i. my father told me he had no home to take me to, and that robert would give me a sweet home, and love and protection and kindness, and that i would be so happy and must consider myself very fortunate. he told me that robert could not express himself very well, speaking a different tongue from my own, but that he loved me devotedly and that the great object of his life would be to make me happy. and so i married him, glad to please my father, pleased myself, as a child, at the idea of having a home of my own, and ignorant as a child of what i was doing.”
“and without loving your husband?” said the little teacher, with a look that showed she could be severe.
“what did i know about love? i thought i loved him. he was handsome and kind to me and my father said he adored me—he told me himself that he loved me. if his manner was not very ardent, what did i know about ardor in love-making? i knew my not being able to speak english fluently must be a hindrance to him in expressing himself, and i thought he was everything i could wish, and never doubted i should be as happy as a child with a doll-house and everything else that she wanted. as i remember now,” she said reflectingly, as if searching back into her memory, “robert was different in those days—not an impassioned lover, compared to the tenor who sang in the opera to-night, but compared to what he is now, he was so. there was once that he seemed to care a little—”
she broke off and hannah spoke:
“i was thinking to-night about you and whether you were not in danger,” she said, with a certain air of wisdom which her somewhat hard experience of life had given her. “how that man looked at you as he sang those words! that wild passion of love which they expressed seemed a reality. i wondered if you could hear them unmoved—and a thought of danger for you made me feel unhappy.”
christine did not answer her for a moment. a strange smile came to her lips as her eyes rested gently on the little teacher. eyes and smile had both something of hopelessness in them, as if she despaired of making herself understood.
“that was sweet of you, hannah,” she said presently, a look of simple affectionateness chasing away the other. “it is good to think that there was any one, in all that great crowd of people, who cared so much about me, but, my good little friend, never trouble yourself with that thought in connection with me again. my heart is dead—so dead that it seems weary waiting for the rest of me to die, and nothing but the resurrection morning that renews it all can ever give me back the heart i had before i was married. it did not die suddenly at one blow, but it died a lingering death of slow, slow pain. think what it is! i am younger than you, and already joy and pleasure and hope are words that have no meaning for me. oh, poor hannah! i oughtn’t to make you cry, and yet your tears are blessed things. when i could cry i was not so wretched.”
she leaned toward the girl and clasped her close, kissing the teardrops from each eye and soothing her, as if hers had been the sorrow.
“i want to be just to my husband,” she went on presently. “i do believe he is not to blame. he gives me all he has to give, but there is nothing! oh, when i look into my heart and see its power of suffering, and see, too, how marvellously happy i might once have been, i seem a thousand worlds away from him—my husband, who ought to be the very closest, nearest, likest thing to me! perhaps he is not happy, but at least he does not suffer, and he is always contented to live on as we are—no work, no friends, no ambition, no interest in life, except mere living. oh, but it is hard! how long will it go on so, hannah?” she broke out suddenly, with a ring of fervor in her voice. “did you ever hear of any one living on and on and on, in a life like this? could it go on until one got old and deaf and wrinkled, and can anything end it but death? it seems so impossible that i can be the little christine who used to sit and dream of happiness in marriage, and of the handsome lover who would come some day and carry me off to a beautiful land where all my dreams would be realized. i came out on that stage to-night,” she went on, sitting upright and folding her beautiful arms, “and while the people were looking at me and clapping, a thought came to me that made me feel like sobbing. i wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling, superficial faces. the thought absorbed me so that i forgot everything and the prompter thought i’d forgotten my part entirely and gave me my cue.”
“i saw you. i saw the strange look that came over your face, but i did not know what it meant. and perhaps the people envied you and thought you must be so happy, to be so beautiful and admired. oh, poor christine! i am sorry for you. i wish you could be happy. it seems as if you might.”
“you might! everything is possible to you. there is no reason, i suppose, why you may not have all the happiness i ever dreamed of, for, after all, the beginning and end of it was love. and yet i have advised you never to marry—for i often disbelieve in the existence of the sort of love that i have dreamed of—but how can i tell? i know nothing but my own life, and i tell you that is an intolerable pain. i sit here and say the words and you hear them, but they are words only to you, shut off as you are from all the experiences that make up my suffering. lately there has been a new one. if anything could make my life more miserable it would be the addition of poverty and privation to what i bear already—and that is what i am threatened with—what may probably be just ahead of me. suppose that should come too! why, then i should be more unhappy yet, i suppose, although i have thought i couldn’t be.”
she spoke still with that strange calm which her companion had wondered at from the beginning of their conversation. her manner in the carriage seemed to be a part of the excitement of the evening’s performance, but now the cold calm of reaction had come on and she was very quiet. she had leaned back again in the big chair, and looked at hannah gravely. neither of them thought of sleep, and their faces expressed its nearness as little as if it were afternoon, instead of midnight. the last words uttered by christine had presented a practical difficulty to her friend which her own experiences brought home to her forcibly, while they shut her off from a just sympathy with some of her other trials.
“what do you mean?” she said. “isn’t your husband well off and able to support you comfortably?”
“how do i know? how am i to find out?”
“ask him. make him explain to you exactly what his circumstances are. i wonder you haven’t done that long ago.”
“you will wonder at a good deal more if you go on. for my part, i have wondered and wondered until i have no power to wonder left. i did ask him—that and many other things—and the result is i am as blind and ignorant this moment as you are.” she spoke almost coldly. one would have thought it was another and an almost indifferent person whose affairs she was discussing.
“but how can you be ignorant?” said hannah. “does he refuse to answer your questions?”
“no—he doesn’t refuse to answer them, though it is evident he thinks them useless and annoying—but generally he tells me he doesn’t know.”
“doesn’t know how much money he has, or whether he is rich or poor?”
the other nodded in acquiescence.
“why, how on earth can that be so? doesn’t he always have money to pay for things as you go along?”
“yes—heretofore he has always had. i have needed nothing for myself. all the handsome clothes you see me wear belong to my poor, miserable trousseau.” she smiled bitterly as she said it, but there were no tears in her eyes and her voice was utterly calm.
“what makes you think, then, that he may not continue to have plenty?”
“a letter i read without his permission, though he left it on the table and probably didn’t care. i have been troubled vaguely for some time to find he knew nothing whatever about his business affairs, and that he merely drew on his lawyer for what he wanted, and was always content so long as he got it. lately, however, although he had been looking for a remittance, the lawyer’s letter came without it, and it was that letter that i read. i saw he looked annoyed, but not for long. he put the letter down and spent the evening playing solitaire, as he always does when he doesn’t go to the theatre. after he went to bed i read the letter. it was from the lawyer in the far west, who had always had charge of the money left by his father—and he said that having repeatedly warned him that he could not go on spending his principal without coming to the end of his rope, he had to tell him now that the end was almost reached. he might manage to send him a remittance soon by selling some bonds at a great sacrifice, and as his orders were imperative of course he would have to do this, but he notified him that there was scarcely anything left, a certain tract of land, which was almost valueless, and that, he said, was the entire remnant of his inheritance, which could never have been very much as he certainly has no extravagant tastes.”
“why didn’t you tell him you had read the letter and ask him about it?” said hannah, her rather acute little face animated and serious at once.
“i did.”
“and what did he say?”
“that a woman had no business meddling with men’s affairs, and that he could not help it.”
“but if it is so why doesn’t he get something to do?”
“i asked him and he said he couldn’t.”
“but had he tried?”
“he said he had—several times.”
“what could he do?”
christine shook her head.
“i have wondered,” she said, “and i can think of nothing. he said he was not trained to any business, and i know no more what to tell him to do than he knows himself. the lawyer advised him to go to work, but did not suggest how. he spoke as if he did not know of his marriage, for he said a man ought to be able to get something to do that would support one.”
“oh, christine! and is this all you accomplished?”
“this is all.”
“how long ago was it?”
“about a week.”
“and you have gone through with all that rehearsing and dressing and acting with this weight on your mind? how could you do it?”
“i was determined to do it. it kept me from thinking. i could not withdraw at the last moment. i knew that as soon as the performance was over i would have to look the thing in the face somehow, though i am more helpless than any child. the thought has pursued me through everything. it terrifies me less when i sit and face it calmly, so, than when i put it by and it comes rushing back—as it did to-night while i was singing my last solo. i thought it would take my breath away, but instead it seemed to give an impulse to my voice that made me sing as i had never sung before. i wondered to hear myself, and i was not surprised the people applauded. it was a love song, but what did i care for the stupid man who stood and rolled his eyes at me sentimentally while i sang it? i was in a frenzy, not of love, but despair. this last knowledge that has come to me has put the final touch. to be an actual beggar, as i may be before long, leaves nothing more but death—and that would be peace and satisfaction and joy.”
“but surely your father will help you when he understands.”
“he has no money generally. i know he had to borrow some to get my wedding clothes. he explained to me that the last cent of my little inheritance from my mother had been spent on my education. besides,” she added, with a change of tone that made her face harden, “i shall not tell him. i feel bitterly toward my father. he could never have truly loved me: he wanted to rid himself, as soon as he could, of the burden of me. so i am left absolutely without a friend. i don’t forget you, hannah,” she added quickly. “you are my friend, i know, and would help me if you could. your love can help me and it does and will, but we are poor little waifs together—only you can do something to support yourself, and your mother loves you, while i am utterly helpless and have no love in all the world except what you give me. oh, hannah, you must never leave me!”
“where is mr. noel—the gentleman you told me of who was so good to you on the steamer, and afterward came to see you and spoke to you so kindly?”
“he has forgotten me—at least i suppose so,” she said, shaking her head. “yes, he was good to me. i think he would be sorry for me. he has gone back to europe and taken his mother and sisters. some one was speaking of them and said they all loved him so. you and i are more desolate than most people, hannah. you have only your mother and me to love you—and i have only you.”
