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THE INVITATION.
When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her
husband to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered
flutter--of pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay:
how dared she show her face in such a grand assembly? She would
not know a bit how to behave herself! But it was impossible, for
she had no dress fit to go anywhere! What would Tom say if she
looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed of her, and she dared not
think what might come of it!
But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed.
Letty was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little
anxious with herself how Tom would take it.
The first matter, however, was Letty's dress. She had no money,
and seemed afraid to ask for any. The distance between her and
her husband had been widening.
Their council of ways and means lasted a good while, including
many digressions. At last, though unwillingly, Letty accepted
Mary's proposal that a certain dress, her best indeed, though she
did not say so, which she had scarcely worn, and was not likely
to miss, should be made to fit Letty. It was a lovely black silk,
the best her father had been able to choose for her the last time
he was in London. A little pang did shoot through her heart at
the thought of parting with it, but she had too much of that
father in her not to know that the greatest honor that can be
shown any thing, is to make it serve a person; that
the dearest gift of love, withheld from human necessity, is
handed over to the moth and the rust. But little idea had Letty,
much as she appreciated her kindness, what a sacrifice Mary was
making for her that she might look her own sweet self, and worthy
of her renowned Tom!
When Tom came home that night, however, the look of the world and
all that is in it changed speedily for Letty, and terribly. He
arrived in great good humor--somebody had been praising his
verses, and the joy of the praise overflowed on his wife. But
when, pleased as any little girl with the prospect of a party and
a new frock, she told him, with gleeful gratitude, of the
invitation and the heavenly kindness which had rendered it
possible for her to accept it, the countenance of the great man
changed. He rejected the idea of her going with him to any
gathering of his grand friends--objected most of all to her going
to Mrs. Redmain's. Alas! he had begun to allow to himself that he
had married in too great haste--and beneath him. Wherever he
went, his wife could be no credit to him, and her presence would
take from him all sense of liberty! Not choosing, however, to
acknowledge either of these objections, and not willing, besides,
to appear selfish in the eyes of the woman who had given herself
to him, he was only too glad to put all upon another, to him
equally genuine ground. Controlling his irritation for the
moment, he set forth with lordly kindness the absolute
impossibility of accepting such an offer as Mary's. Could she for
a moment imagine, he said, that he would degrade himself by
taking his wife out in a dress that was not her own?
Here Letty interrupted him.
"Mary has given me the dress," she sobbed, "--for my very own."
"A second-hand dress! A dress that has been worn!" cried Tom.
"How could you dream of insulting me so? The thing is absolutely
impossible. Why, Letty, just think!--There should I be, going
about as if the house were my own, and there would be my wife in
the next room, or perhaps at my elbow, dressed in the finery of
the lady's-maid of the house! It won't bear thinking of! I
declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie here, that I feel my
face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason about such a thing
--with my own wife, too!"
"It's not finery," sobbed Letty, laying hold of the one fact
within her reach; "it's a beautiful black silk."
"It matters not a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug
to cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham!--A live dishonesty!
A jackdaw in peacock's feathers!--I am sorry, Letty, your own
sense of truth and uprightness should not prevent even the
passing desire to act such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a
fine fib--yourself would be but a walking fib. I have been taking
too much for granted with you: I must bring you no more novels. A
volume or two of Carlyle is what you want."
This was too much. To lose her novels and her new dress together,
and be threatened with nasty moral medicine--for she had never
read a word of Carlyle beyond his translation of that dream of
Richter's, and imagined him dry as a sand-pit--was bad enough,
but to be so reproved by her husband was more than she could
bear. If she was a silly and ignorant creature, she had the heart
of a woman-child; and that precious thing in the sight of God,
wounded and bruised by the husband in whom lay all her pride,
went on beating laboriously for him only. She did not blame him.
Anything was better than that. The dear, simple soul had a horror
of rebuke. It would break hedges and climb stone walls to get out
of the path of judgment--ten times more eagerly if her husband
were the judge. She wept and wailed like a sick child, until at
length the hard heart of selfish Tom was touched, and he sought,
after the fashion of a foolish mother, to read the inconsolable a
lesson of wisdom. But the truer a heart, the harder it is to
console with the false. By and by, however, sleep, the truest of
things, did for her what even the blandishments of her husband
could not.
When she woke in the morning, he was gone: he had thought of an
emendation in a poem that had been set up the day before, and
made haste to the office, lest it should be printed without the
precious betterment.
Mary came before noon, and found sadness where she had left joy.
When she had heard as much as Letty thought proper to tell her,
she was filled with indignation, and her first thought was to
compass the tyrant's own exclusion from the paradise whose gates
he closed against his wife. But second thoughts are sometimes
best, and she saw the next moment not only that punishment did
not belong to her, but that the weight of such would fall on
Letty. The sole thing she could think of to comfort her was, to
ask her to spend the same evening with her in her room. The
proposal brightened Letty up at once: some time or other in the
course of the evening she would, she fancied, see, or at least
catch a glimpse of Tom in his glory!
The evening came, and with beating heart Letty went up the back
stairs to Mary's room. She was dressing her mistress, but did not
keep her waiting long. She had provided tea beforehand, and, when
Mrs. Redmain had gone down, the two friends had a pleasant while
together. Mary took Letty to Mrs. Redmain's room while she put
away her things, and there showed her many splendors, which,
moving no envy in her simple heart, yet made her sad, thinking of
Tom. As she passed to the drawing-room, Sepia looked in, and saw
them together.
But, as the company kept arriving, Letty grew very restless. She
could not talk of anything for two minutes together, but kept
creeping out of the room and half-way down the stair, to look
over the banister-rail, and have a bird's-eye peep of a portion
of the great landing, where indeed she caught many a glimpse of
beauty and state, but never a glimpse of her Tom. Alas! she could
not even imagine herself near him. What she saw made her feel as
if her idol were miles away, and she could never draw nigh him
again. How should the familiar associate of such splendid
creatures care a pin's point for his humdrum wife?
Worn out at last, and thoroughly disappointed, she wanted to go
home. It was then past midnight. Mary went with her, and saw her
safe in bed before she left her.
As she went up to her room on her return, she saw, through the
door by which the gardener entered the conservatory, Sepia
standing there, and Tom, with flushed face, talking to her
eagerly.
Letty cried herself to sleep, and dreamed that Tom had disowned
her before a great company of grand ladies, who mocked her from
their sight.
Tom came home while she slept, and in the morning was cross and
miserable--in part, because he had been so abominably selfish to
her. But the moment that, half frightened, half hopeful, she told
him where she was the night before, he broke into the worst anger
he had ever yet shown her. His shameful pride could not brook the
idea that, where he was a guest, his wife was entertained by one
of the domestics!
"How dare you be guilty of such a disgraceful thing!" he cried.
"Oh, don't, Tom--dear Tom!" pleaded Letty in terror. "It was you
I wanted to see--not the great people, Tom! I don't care if I
never see one of them again."
"Why should you ever see one of them again, I should like to
know! What are they to you, or you to them?"
"But you know I was asked to go, Tom!"
"You're not such a fool as to fancy they cared about you!
Everybody knows they are the most heartless set of people in the
world!"
"Then why do you go, Tom?" said Letty, innocently.
"That's quite another thing! A man has to cultivate connections
his wife need not know anything about. It is one of the
necessities laid on my position."
Letty supposed it all truer than it was either intelligible or
pleasant, and said no more, but let poor, self-abused, fine-
fellow Tom scold and argue and reason away till he was tired. She
was not sullen, but bewildered and worn out. He got up, and left
her without a word.
Even at the risk of hurt to his dignity, of which there was no
danger from the presence of his sweet, modest little wife in the
best of company, it had been well for Tom to have allowed Letty
the pleasure within her reach; for that night Sepia's artillery
played on him ruthlessly. It may have been merely for her
amusement--time, you see, moves so slowly with such as have no
necessities they must themselves supply, and recognize no duties
they must perform: without those two main pillars of life,
necessity and duty, how shall the temple stand, when the huge,
weary Samson comes tugging at it? The wonder is, there is not a
great deal more wickedness in the world. For listlessness and
boredness and nothing-to-do-ness are the best of soils for the
breeding of the worms that never stop gnawing. Anyhow, Sepia had
flashed on Tom, the tinder of Tom's heart had responded, and, any
day when Sepia chose, she might blow up a wicked as well as
foolish flame; nor, if it should suit her purpose, was Sepia one
to hesitate in the use of the fire-fan. All the way home, her
eyes haunted him, and it is a more dreadful thing than most are
aware to be haunted by anything, good or bad, except the being
who is our life. And those eyes, though not good, were beautiful.
Evil, it is true, has neither part nor lot in beauty; it is
absolutely hostile to it, and will at last destroy it utterly;
but the process is a long one, so long that many imagine badness
and beauty vitally associable. Tom yielded to the haunting, and
it was in part the fault of those eyes that he used such hard
words to his wife in the morning. Wives have not seldom to suffer
sorely for discomforts and wrongs in their husbands of which they
know nothing. But the thing will be set right one day, and in a
better fashion than if all the woman's-rights' committees in the
world had their will of the matter.
About this time, from the top, left-hand corner of the last page
of "The Firefly," it appeared that Twilight had given place to
Night; for the first of many verses began to show themselves, in
which Twilight, or Hesper, or Vesper, or the Evening Star, was no
more once mentioned, but only and al-ways Nox, or Hecate, or the
dark Diana. Tenebrious was a great word with Tom about
this time. He was very fond, also, of the word interlunar.
I will not trouble my reader with any specimen of the outcome of
Tom's new inspiration, partly for this reason, that the verses
not unfrequently came so near being good, nay, sometimes were
really so good, that I do not choose to set them down where they
would be treated with a mockery they do not in themselves
deserve. He did not direct his wife's attention to them, nor did
he compose them at home or at the office. Mostly he wrote them
between acts at the theatre, or in any public place where
something in which he was not interested was going on.
Of all that read them, and here was a Nemesis awful in justice,
there was not one less moved by them than she who had inspired
them. She saw in them, it is true, a reflex of her own power--and
that pleased, but it did not move her. She took the devotion and
pocketed it, as a greedy boy might an orange or bull's-eye. The
verses in which Tom delighted were but the merest noise in the
ears of the lady to whom of all he would have had them
acceptable. One momentary revelation as to how she regarded them
would have been enough to release him from his foolish
enthrallment. Indignation, chagrin, and mortification would have
soon been the death of such poor love as Tom's.
Mary and Sepia were on terms of politeness--of readiness to help
on the one side, and condescension upon the other. Sepia would
have condescended to the Mother Mary. The pure human was an idea
beyond her, as beyond most people. They have not enough
religion toward God to know there is such a thing as
religion toward their neighbor. But Sepia never made an enemy-if
she could help it. She could not afford the luxury of hating--
openly, at least. But I imagine she would have hated Mary
heartily could she have seen the way she regarded her--the look
of pitiful love, of compassionate and waiting helpfulness which
her soul would now and then cast upon her. Of all things she
would have resented pity; and she took Mary's readiness to help
for servility--and naturally, seeing in herself willingness came
from nothing else, though she called it prudence and necessity,
and knew no shame because of it. Her children justify the
heavenly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom justifies her children.
Mary could not but feel how Sepia regarded her service, but
service, to be true, must be divine, that is, to the just and the
unjust, like the sun and the rain.
Between Sepia and Mr. Redmain continued a distance too great for
either difference or misunderstanding. They met with a cold good
morning, and parted without any good night. Their few words were
polite, and their demeanor was civil. At the breakfast-table,
Sepia would silently pass things to Mr. Redmain; Mr. Redmain
would thank her, but never trouble himself to do as much for her.
His attentions, indeed, were seldom wasted at home; but he was
not often rude to anybody save his wife and his man, except when
he was ill.
It was a long time before he began to feel any interest in Mary.
He knew nothing of her save as a nice-looking maid his wife had
got--rather a prim-looking puss, he would have said, had he had
occasion to describe her. What Mary knew of him was merely the
reflection of him in the mind of his wife; but, the first time
she saw him, she felt she would rather not have to speak to him.
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