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Not since the days Irene left the house of her husband had she heard from him directly; and only two or three times indirectly. She had never visited the city since her flight therefrom, and all her pleasant and strongly influencing associations there were, in consequence, at an end. Once her very dear friend Mrs. Talbot came up to sympathize with and strengthen her in the fiery trial through which she was passing. She found Irene's truer friend, Rosa Carman, with her; and Rose did not leave them alone for a moment at a time. All sentiments that she regarded as hurtful to Irene in her present state of mind she met with her calm, conclusive mode of reasoning, that took away the specious force of the sophist's dogmas. But her influence was chiefly used in the repression of unprofitable themes, and the introduction of such as tended to tranquilize the feelings, and turn the thoughts of her friend away from the trouble that was lying upon her soul like a suffocating nightmare. Mrs. Talbot was not pleased with her visit, and did not come again. But she wrote several times. The tone of her letters was not, however, pleasant to Irene, who was disturbed by it, and more bewildered than enlightened by the sentiments that were announced with oracular vagueness. These letters were read to Miss Carman, on whom Irene was beginning to lean with increasing confidence. Rose did not fail to expose their weakness or fallacy in such clear light that Irene, though she tried to shut her eyes against the truth presented by Rose, could not help seeing it. Her replies were not, under these circumstances, very satisfactory, for she was unable to speak in a free, assenting, confiding spirit. The consequence was natural. Mrs. Talbot ceased to write, and Irene did not regret the broken correspondence. Once Mrs. Lloyd wrote. When Irene broke the seal and let her eyes rest upon the signature, a shudder of repulsion ran through her frame, and the letter dropped from her hands to the floor. As if possessed by a spirit whose influence over her she could not control, she caught up the unread sheet and threw it into the fire. As the flames seized upon and consumed it, she drew a long breath and murmured,
"So perish the memory of our acquaintance!"
Almost a dead letter of suffering had been those two years. There are no events to record, and but little progress to state. Yes, there had been a dead level of suffering—a palsied condition of heart and mind; a period of almost sluggish endurance, in which pride and an indomitable will gave strength to bear.
Mr. Delancy and his daughter were sitting, as we have seen, on that sweet June day, in silent abstraction of thought, when the serving-man, who had been to the village, stepped into the portico and handed Irene a letter. The sight of it caused her heart to leap and the blood to crimson suddenly her face. It was not an ordinary letter—one in such a shape had never come to her hand before.
"What is that?" asked her father, coming back as it were to life.
"I don't know," she answered, with an effort to appear indifferent.
Mr. Delancy looked at his daughter with a perplexed manner, and then let his eyes fall upon the legal envelope in her hand, on which a large red seal was impressed.
Rising in a quiet way, Irene left the portico with slow steps; but no sooner was she beyond her father's observation than she moved toward her chamber with winged feet.
"Bless me, Miss Irene!" exclaimed Margaret, who met her on the stairs, "what has happened?"
But Irene swept by her without a response, and, entering her room, shut the door and locked it. Margaret stood a moment irresolute, and then, going back to her young lady's chamber, knocked for admission. There was no answer to her summons, and she knocked again.
"Who is it?"
She hardly knew the voice.
"It is Margaret. Can't I come in?"
"Not now," was answered.
"What's the matter, Miss Irene?"
"Nothing, Margaret. I wish to be alone now."
"Something has happened, though, or you'd never look just like that," said Margaret to herself, as she went slowly down stairs. "Oh dear, dear! Poor child! there's nothing but trouble for her in this world."
It was some minutes before Irene found courage to break the imposing seal and look at the communication within. She guessed at the contents, and was not wrong. They informed her, in legal phrase, that her husband had filed an application for a divorce on the ground of desertion, and gave notice that any resistance to this application must be on file on or before a certain date.
The only visible sign of feeling that responded to this announcement was a deadly paleness and a slight, nervous crushing of the paper in her hands. Moveless as a thing inanimate, she sat with fixed, dreamy eyes for a long, long time.
A divorce! She had looked for this daily for more than a year, and often wondered at her husband's tardiness. Had she desired it? Ah, that is the probing question. Had she desired an act of law to push them fully asunder—to make the separation plenary in all respects? No. She did not really wish for the irrevocable sundering decree.
Since her return to her father's house, the whole life of Irene had been marked by great circumspection. The trial through which she had passed was enough to sober her mind and turn her thoughts in some new directions; and this result had followed. Pride, self-will and impatience of control found no longer any spur to reactive life, and so her interest in woman's rights, social reforms and all their concomitants died away, for lack of a personal bearing. At first there had been warm arguments with Miss Carman on these subjects, but these grew gradually less earnest, and were finally avoided by both, as not only unprofitable, but distasteful. Gradually this wise and true friend had quickened in the mind of Irene an interest in things out of herself. There are in every neighborhood objects to awaken our sympathies, if we will only look at and think of them. "The poor ye have always with you." Not the physically poor only, but, in larger numbers, the mentally and spiritually poor. The hands of no one need lie idle a moment for lack of work, for it is no vague form of speech to say that the harvest is great and the laborers few.
There were ripe harvest-fields around Ivy Cliff, though Irene had not observed the golden grain bending its head for the sickle until Rose led her feet in the right direction. Not many of the naturally poor were around them, yet some required even bodily ministrations—children, the sick and the aged. The destitution that most prevailed was of the mind; and this is the saddest form of poverty. Mental hunger! how it exhausts the soul and debases its heaven-born faculties, sinking it into a gross corporeal sphere, that is only a little removed from the animal! To feed the hungry and clothe the naked mean a great deal more than the bestowal of food and raiment; yes, a great deal more; and we have done but a small part of Christian duty—have obeyed only in the letter—when we supply merely the bread that perishes.
Rose Carman had been wisely instructed, and she was an apt scholar. Now, from a learner she became a teacher, and in the suffering Irene found one ready to accept the higher truths that governed her life, and to act with her in giving them a real ultimatum. So, in the two years which had woven their web of new experiences for the heart of Irene, she had been drawn almost imperceptibly by Rose into fields of labor where the work that left her hands was, she saw, good work, and must endure for ever. What peace it often brought to her striving spirit, when, but for the sustaining and protecting power of good deeds, she would have been swept out upon the waves of turbulent passion—tossed and beaten there until her exhausted heart sunk down amid the waters, and lay dead for a while at the bottom of her great sea of trouble!
It was better—oh, how much better!—when she laid her head at night on her lonely pillow, to have in memory the face of a poor sick woman, which had changed from suffering to peace as she talked to her of higher things than the body's needs, and bore her mind up into a region of tranquil thought, than to be left with no image to dwell upon but an image of her own shattered hopes. Yes, this was far better; and by the power of such memories the unhappy one had many peaceful seasons and nights of sweet repose.
All around Ivy Cliff, Irene and Rose were known as ministrant spirits to the poor and humble. The father of Rose was a man of wealth, and she had his entire sympathy and encouragement. Irene had no regular duties at home, Margaret being housekeeper and directress in all departments. So there was nothing to hinder the free course of her will as to the employment of time. With all her pride of independence, the ease with which Mrs. Talbot drew Irene in one direction, and now Miss Carman in another, showed how easily she might be influenced when off her guard. This is true in most cases of your very self-willed people, and the reason why so many of them get astray. Only conceal the hand that leads them, and you may often take them where you will. Ah, if Hartley Emerson had been wise enough, prudent enough and loving enough to have influenced aright the fine young spirit he was seeking to make one with his own, how different would the result have been!
In the region round about, our two young friends came in time to be known as the "Sisters of Charity." It was not said of them mockingly, nor in gay depreciation, nor in mean ill-nature, but in expression of a common sentiment, that recognized their high, self-imposed mission.
Thus it had been with Irene since her return to the old home at Ivy Cliff.
CHAPTER XXII
STRUCK DOWN
YES, Irene had looked for this—looked for it daily for now more than a year. Still it came upon her with a shock that sent a strange, wild shudder through all her being. A divorce! She was less prepared for it than she had ever been.
What was beyond? Ah! that touched a chord which gave a thrill of pain. What was beyond? A new alliance, of course. Legal disabilities removed, Hartley Emerson would take upon himself new marriage vows. Could she say, "Yea, and amen" to this? No, alas! no. There was a feeling of intense, irrepressible anguish away down in heart-regions that lay far beyond the lead-line of prior consciousness. What did it mean? She asked herself the question with a fainting spirit. Had she not known herself? Were old states of tenderness, which she had believed crushed out and dead along ago, hidden away in secret places of her heart, and kept there safe from harm?
No wonder she sat pale and still, crumpling nervously that fatal document which had startled her with a new revelation of herself. There was love in her heart still, and she knew it not. For a long time she sat like one in a dream.
"God help me!" she said at length, looking around her in a wild, bewildered manner. "What does all this mean?"
There came at this moment a gentle tap at her door. She knew whose soft hand had given the sound.
"Irene," exclaimed Rose Carman, as she took the hand of her friend and looked into her changed countenance, "what ails you?"
Irene turned her face partly away to get control of its expression.
"Sit down, Rose," she said, as soon as she could trust herself to speak.
They sat down together, Rose troubled and wondering. Irene then handed her friend the notice which she had received. Miss Carman read it, but made no remark for some time.
"It has disturbed you," she said at length, seeing that Irene continued silent.
"Yes, more than I could have believed," answered Irene. Her voice had lost its familiar tones.
"You have expected this?"
"Yes."
"I thought you were prepared for it."
"And I am," replied Irene, speaking with more firmness of manner. "Expectation grows so nervous, sometimes, that when the event comes it falls upon us with a painful shock. This is my case now. I would have felt it less severely if it had occurred six months ago."
"What will you do?" asked Rose.
"Do?"
"Yes."
"What can I do?"
"Resist the application, if you will."
"But I will not," answered Irene, firmly. "He signifies his wishes in the case, and those wishes must determine everything. I will remain passive."
"And let the divorce issue by default of answer?"
"Yes."
There was a faintness of tone which Rose could not help remarking.
"Yes," Irene added, "he desires this complete separation, and I can have nothing to say in opposition. I left him, and have remained ever since a stranger to his home and heart. We are nothing to each other, and yet are bound together by the strongest of bonds. Why should he not wish to be released from these bonds? And if he desires it, I have nothing to say. We are divorced in fact—why then retain the form?"
"There may be a question of the fact," said Rose.
"Yes; I understand you. We have discussed that point fully. Your view may be right, but I do not see it clearly. I will at least retain passive. The responsibility shall rest with him."
No life or color came back to the face of Irene. She looked as cold as marble; not cold without feeling, but with intense feeling recorded as in a piece of sculpture.
There were deeds of kindness and mercy set down in the purposes of our young friend, and it was to go forth and perform them that Rose had called for Irene this morning. But only one Sister of Charity went to the field that day, and only one for many days afterward.
Irene could not recover from the shock of this legal notice. It found her less prepared than she had been at any time during the last two years of separation. Her life at Ivy Cliff had not been favorable to a spirit of antagonism and accusation, nor favorable to a self-approving judgment of herself when the past came up, as it often came, strive as she would to cover it as with a veil. She had grown in this night of suffering, less self-willed and blindly impulsive. Some scales had dropped from her eyes, and she saw clearer. Yet no repentance for that one act of her life, which involved a series of consequences beyond the reach of conjecture, had found a place in her heart. There was no looking back from this—no sober questioning as to the right or necessity which had been involved. There had been one great mistake—so she decided the case—and that was the marriage.
From this fatal error all subsequent evil was born.
Months of waiting and expectation followed, and then came a decree annulling the marriage.
"It is well," was the simple response of Irene when notice of the fact reached her.
Not even to Rose Carman did she reveal a thought that took shape in her mind, nor betray a single emotion that trembled in her heart. If there had been less appearance of indifference—less avoidance of the subject—her friends would have felt more comfortable as to her state of mind. The unnatural repose of, exterior was to them significant of a strife within which she wished to conceal from all eyes.
About this time her true, loving friend, Miss Carman, married. Irene did not stand as one of the bridesmaids at the ceremony. Rose gently hinted her wishes in the case, but Irene shrunk from the position, and her feeling was respected. The husband of Rose was a merchant, residing in New York, named Everet. After a short bridal tour she went to her new home in the city. Mr. Everet was five or six years her senior, and a man worthy to be her life-companion. No sudden attachment had grown up between them. For years they had been in the habit of meeting, and in this time the character of each had been clearly read by the other. When Mr. Everet asked the maiden's hand, it, was yielded without a sign of hesitation.
The removal of Rose from the neighborhood of Ivy Cliff greatly disturbed the even-going tenor of Irene's life. It withdrew also a prop on which she had leaned often in times of weakness, which would recur very heavily.
"How can I live without you?" she said in tears, as she sat alone with the new-made bride on the eve of her departure; "you have been everything to me, Rose—strength in weakness; light, when all around was cold and dark; a guide when I had lost my way. God bless and make you happy, darling! And he will. Hearts like yours create happiness wherever they go."
"My new home will only be a few hours' distant," replied Rose; "I shall see you there often."
Irene sighed. She had been to the city only a few times since that sad day of separation from her husband. Could she return again and enter one of its bright social circles? Her heart said no. But love drew her too strongly. In less than a month after Rose became the mistress of a stately mansion, Irene was her guest. This was just six years from the time when she set up her home there, a proud and happy young wife. Alas! that hearth was desolate, "its bright fire quenched and gone."
It was best for Irene thus to get back again into a wider social sphere—to make some new friends, and those of a class that such a woman as Mrs. Everet would naturally draw around her. Three years of suffering, and the effort to lead a life of self-denial and active interest in others, had wrought in Irene a great change. The old, flashing ardor of manner was gone. If she grew animated in conversation, as she often did from temperament, her face would light up beautifully, but it did not show the radiance of old times. Thought, more than feeling, gave its living play to her countenance. All who met her were attracted; as her history was known, observation naturally took the form of close scrutiny. People wished to find the angular and repellant sides of her character in order to see how far she might be to blame. But they were not able to discover them. On the subjects of woman's rights, domestic tyranny, sexual equality and all kindred themes she was guarded in speech. She never introduced them herself, and said but little when they formed the staple of conversation.
Even if, in three years of intimate, almost daily, association with Rose, she had not learned to think in some new directions on these bewildering questions, certain womanly instincts must have set a seal upon her lips. Not for all the world would she, to a stranger—no, nor to any new friend—utter a sentiment that could in the least degree give color to the thought that she wished to throw even the faintest shadow of blame on Hartley Emerson. Not that she was ready to take blame to herself, or give the impression that fault rested by her door. No. The subject was sacred to herself, and she asked no sympathy and granted no confidences. There were those who sought to draw her out, who watched her face and words with keen intentness when certain themes were discussed. But they were unable to reach the penetralia of her heart. There was a chamber of record there into which no one could enter but herself.
Since the separation of Irene from her husband, Mr. Delancy had shown signs of rapid failure. His heart was bound up in his daughter, who, with all her captious self-will and impulsiveness, loved him with a tenderness and fervor that never knew change or eclipse. To see her make shipwreck of life's dearest hopes—to know that her name was spoken by hundreds in reprobation—to look daily on her quiet, changing, suffering face, was more than his fond heart could bear. It broke him down. This fact, more perhaps, than her own sad experiences, tended to sober the mind of Irene, and leave it almost passive under the right influences of her wise young friend.
After the removal of Rose from the neighborhood of Ivy Cliff, the health of Mr. Delancy failed still more rapidly, and in a few months the brief visits of Irene to her friend in New York had to be intermitted. She could no longer venture to leave her father, even under the care of their faithful Margaret. A sad winter for Irene succeeded. Mr. Delancy drooped about until after Christmas, in a weary, listless way, taking little interest in anything, and bearing both physical and mental consciousness as a burden it would be pleasant to lay down. Early in January he had to give up and go to bed; and now the truth of his condition startled the mind of Irene and filled her with alarm. By slow, insidious encroachments, that dangerous enemy, typhoid fever, had gained a lodgment in the very citadel of life, and boldly revealed itself, defying the healer's art. For weeks the dim light of mortal existence burned with a low, wavering flame, that any sudden breath of air might extinguish; then it grew steady again, increased, and sent a few brighter rays into the darkness which had gathered around Ivy Cliff.
Spring found Mr. Delancy strong enough to sit, propped up with pillows, by the window of his chamber, and look out upon the newly-mantled trees, the green fields, and the bright river flashing in the sunshine. The heart of Irene took courage again. The cloud which had lain upon it all winter like a funereal pall dissolved, and went floating away and wasting itself in dim expanses.
Alas, that all this sweet promise was but a mockery of hope! A sudden cold, how taken it was almost impossible to tell—for Irene guarded her father as tenderly as if he were a new-born infant—disturbed life's delicate equipoise, and the scale turned fatally the wrong way.
Poor Irene! She had only staggered under former blows—this one struck her down. Had life anything to offer now? "Nothing! nothing!" she said in her heart, and prayed that she might die and be at rest with her father.
Months of stupor followed this great sorrow; then her heart began to beat again with some interest in life. There was one friend, almost her only friend—for she now repelled nearly every one who approached her—who never failed in hopeful, comforting, stimulating words and offices, who visited her frequently in her recluse life at Ivy Cliff, and sought with untiring assiduity to win her once more away from its dead seclusion. And she was at last successful. In the winter after Mr. Delancy's death, Irene, after much earnest persuasion, consented to pass a few weeks in the city with Mrs. Everet. This gained, her friend was certain of all the rest.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE HAUNTED VISION
GRADUALLY the mind of Irene attained clearness of perception as to duty, and a firmness of will that led her to act in obedience to what reason and religion taught her was right. The leading idea which Mrs. Everet endeavored to keep before her was this: that no happiness is possible, except in some work that removes self-consciousness and fills our minds with an interest in the well-being of others. While Rose was at Ivy Cliff, Irene acted with her, and was sustained by her love and companionship. After her marriage and removal to New York, Irene was left to stand alone, and this tried her strength. It was feeble. The sickness and death of her father drew her back again into herself, and for a time extinguished all interest in what was on the outside. To awaken a new and higher life was the aim of her friend, and she never wearied in her generous efforts. During this winter plans were matured for active usefulness in the old spheres, and Mrs. Everet promised to pass as much time in the next summer with her father as possible, so as to act with Irene in the development of these schemes.
The first warm days of summer found Irene back again in her home at Ivy Cliff. Her visit in New York had been prolonged far beyond the limit assigned to it in the beginning, but Rose would not consent to an earlier return. This winter of daily life with Mrs. Everet, in the unreserved intercourse of home, was of great use to Irene. Affliction had mellowed all the harder portions of her disposition, which the trouble and experiences of the past few years could not reach with their softening influences. There was good soil in her mind, well prepared, and the sower failed not in the work of scattering good seed upon it with a liberal hand—seed that felt soon a quickening life and swelled in the delight of coming germination.
It is not our purpose to record the history of Irene during the years of her discipline at Ivy Cliff, where she lived, nun-like, for the larger part of her time. She had useful work there, and in its faithful performance peace came to her troubled soul. Three or four times every year she paid a visit to Rose, and spent on each occasion from one to three or four weeks. It could not but happen that in these visits congenial friendship would be made, and tender remembrances go back with her into the seclusion of her country home, to remain as sweet companions in her hours of loneliness.