Rose Clark Part 27

"'The children,' asked I, in surprise, 'are you going to send the children away? Where are they going?'

"'That's my affair,' he rudely answered.

"I asked no questions; I simply said 'The trunk shall be ready,' and went on with my sewing. I did not know then as I do now, that it was the first of a projected and deliberate series of attempts to injure me, by creating the impression that the children were not well cared for. He could not well have wounded me more deeply. I--who had so conscientiously striven to perform my duty to the motherless. I--who, when any little question between the children was to be decided, gave the preference to _his_ children, lest I might wrong them even in a trifle--those 'trifles,' which, to childhood are matters of as grave importance as our adult affairs.

"The cunning malignity of this act was worthy of Stahle. I made no complaint, I asked the children no question which I was too proud to ask the father. The little trunk was packed, and Stahle remarking that he should be gone two days, the carriage drove off. It was some comfort that the children ran up to me, and put up their lips spontaneously for a kiss, as they were leaving; it was more still that my conscience acquitted me before G.o.d of any intentional sin of omission toward them.

"I had just begun to see the good effect of systematic training on natures sweet and good, though neglected and misdirected. Their wardrobes were amply supplied, the books purchased to teach them--and now--well, I bore the cross uncomplainingly at least, and when Stahle returned, no trace of what had occurred was perceptible in my manner, or habits. He was evidently as much at a loss to understand my self-control, as to cope with it. He had expected a scene--an outburst of indignant feeling--an angry altercation in which his nature might vent itself in a brutal reply. He judged me by the women whom he had all his life known. He was at fault.

"His next step was to break up housekeeping and board out; for this also, he gave me no reason. Whole days he pa.s.sed without speaking to me, and yet, at the same time, no inmate of a harem was ever more slavishly subject to the gross appet.i.te of her master. It was now midwinter; I had a bad cough, and was suffering from want of flannels and thick under-clothes; he furnished me with no funds for the purpose. This was to compel me to do what would give him some advantage over me--run in debt. I foresaw this, and avoided it, confining myself to my insufficient clothing.

"Stahle always selected a boarding-house for our residence, the mistress of which was _her own mistress_--(_i. e._, a widow or a single woman).

Immediately upon going to such a house, a private understanding sprung up between Stahle and herself, and the servants taking their cue from their mistress, I found it quite impossible to get any thing I wanted.

This was less of a trial to me than it might have been, had I not been accustomed to wait upon myself; but one is necessarily circ.u.mscribed in a boarding-house; the cellar may not be visited for coal, or the kitchen for water, if the landlady does not see fit to have the bells answered; neither, if she chooses to decree otherwise, and your husband is in the conspiracy, can you be waited on at the table till every one else has been served. Stahle often finished his dinner and rose from the table while my plate and Arthur's, had not been once filled. He studiously insulted me by this public neglect, and to make it still more marked, helped every one else, even the men, within reach. Of this, also, I took no outward notice.

"One day the landlady came to me with a manner so bland that I was instantly on my guard. She complimented my hair, my figure, my manners.

She wondered I never came down out of my room into the public parlor.

She intimated that the gentlemen were very desirous of making my acquaintance, particularly one, by the name of Voom--with whom, by the way, I had seen Stahle leave the house, arm in arm. I saw through the plot at once--but received it as if I did not, treated her just as civilly as if she were not a female Judas, and resolutely kept my own apartment.

"To show you the pettiness of Stahle's revenge, I will mention one or two incidents:

"One evening, while walking my room, a needle penetrated the thin sole of my slipper, and was at once half buried in my foot. Three times, with all my strength, I tried to extricate it; the fourth, and I was still unsuccessful; both strength and courage now failed me. Stahle, from the other side of the room, looked coolly on, and, with a Satanic smile, said, 'Why don't you pull again?' With the courage inspired by this brutal question, I seized the protruding point of the needle with my trembling fingers, and finally succeeded in withdrawing it.

"That evening sharp pains commenced shooting through my foot, extending quite to my side. I began to grow uneasy as they increased, and requested Stahle to send for the doctor. This he peremptorily refused to do. I waited a while longer, my limb in the mean time growing more and more painful. Again I requested Stahle to go for the doctor, or I should be obliged to send some one. At this he put on his hat and coat, and went out. After a prolonged absence he returned, not with a doctor, but a bottle of leeches, which he said 'had been ordered,' and set down the bottle containing them on a table at the further end of the room.

"It had become by that time quite difficult for me to step, as the needle had penetrated the sole of my foot; but, by the help of chairs, I pushed myself along until I reached the bottle.

"I am not given to faintings or womanish fears, but from my childhood I have had a shuddering horror of any thing like a snake; so unconquerable was this aversion, that I was forced to date it back prior to my birth.

"Stahle was aware of this weakness, and as, with a strong effort at self-command, I took up the bottle and then set it down again in a paroxysm of terror at the squirming inmates, he laughed derisively. That laugh nerved me with new strength. I uncorked the bottle, holding its mouth close to my foot, that the leeches might fasten on it, without my touching them with my fingers.

"As the first one greedily struck at my foot, I fainted. The effort at self-control in my nervous, excited state, was too much for me.

"When I recovered, the broken bottle lay upon the floor, the leeches had disappeared, save the one which had fastened upon my foot, and Stahle had gone to bed.

"Not long after this, unable to go out myself, I sent my little Arthur of a necessary errand. He had attended to it successfully, and was returning, when a gig, furiously driven by two young men, turned rapidly a street-corner, ran against and prostrated him. Arthur was a very spirited little fellow, and, beside, had much of the Spartan in his temperament. A policeman who saw the transaction, stepped up and raised him upon his feet, the brave child stoutly maintaining that he was 'not much hurt.' With all this bravery, Arthur was also shy and sensitive, and the gathering crowd and the immediate proximity of the policeman annoyed and mortified him. The policeman, however, true to his duty, would not leave him, and Arthur, whose love to me no thought of self could ever obliterate, gave him the number of Stahle's place of business instead of our residence, lest I should be distressed or frightened in my invalid state by their sudden appearance.

"The policeman accordingly left him there, satisfied that he would be kindly cared for by a father. After he had gone, Stahle put his pen behind his ear, his hands in his pockets, and, surveying my boy a moment, said, 'Well, sir, go home to your mother.'

"Child as he was, he would have died rather than ask for the conveyance which he so much needed, or even for Stahle's helping hand on the way--for it was a long distance to our lodgings--and Stahle saw him limp out without offering either.

"The door opened, and with white lips my brave boy staggered into the room, and briefly narrated his misfortune, still persisting, though the pain was even then forcing tears from his eyes, that he was 'not hurt.'

I took off his clothes, and found his side already quite black with the bruise he had received, and so sore that, though he still refrained from complaining, he winced at the lightest touch of my finger.

"I had not a cent in my possession. I had not had for a long time, for I never had asked Stahle for money. This Stahle knew, and that day and night, and half of the following day he purposely absented himself, leaving me to get along in these circ.u.mstances as best I could with the child. On his return he asked no questions and took no notice of the occurrence, although Arthur was still a prisoner to the sofa. Not a word pa.s.sed my lips either on the subject, though this, to my maternal heart, had been the heaviest trial it had yet been called to bear.

"Time pa.s.sed on, and Arthur had become convalescent. I was now so extremely nervous from mental suffering, that I found it impossible to sleep unless I first wearied myself with out-door exercise.

"Tying on my bonnet, I went out one afternoon for the purpose. The noise and whirl of the street was an untold relief to me.

"Motion--motion--when the brain reels, and despair tugs at the heart-strings!

"On my return I was not obliged to ring at the front door, as some persons were standing upon the steps talking; I pa.s.sed them and my light footfall on the carpet, being noiseless, I entered the door of my room unheralded.

"Judge of my astonishment when I saw Stahle standing with his back to me, quite unaware of my presence, inspecting (by means of false keys) the contents of my private writing-desk! opening my husband's letters, sacred to me as the memory of his love; reading others from valued friends, received before my marriage with Stahle--not one of which, for any stain they cast on me, might not have been bared to the world's censorious eye.

"He then took up my husband's miniature--O, how unlike the craven face which bent over it! At last, I was choking with pa.s.sion; this was the br.i.m.m.i.n.g drop in my cup; you might have known it by the low, calm tone with which I almost whispered as I laid my trembling hand on my treasures--'these are _mine_ not yours--"

"They were the only words which escaped my lips, but there must have been something in the tone and in my face, before which his spirit cowered. He made no attempt to resist me as I took possession of them, but turning doggedly on his heel, muttered: 'the law says you can have nothing that is not mine.' O, how many crushed and bleeding hearts all over our land can endorse the truth of this brutal answer.

"Stahle began now to spend his nights away from home; I had never yet made a complaint or remonstrance except in the case just stated. I did not now. If it was his purpose with his usual want of insight into my character, to give me a long cord with which to hang myself, it failed, for my boy and I slumbered innocently and peacefully.

"You may ask why, with these feelings toward me, he did not desert me; for two reasons. 1st. He had a religious character to sustain; during all this time he was more constant than ever, if that were possible, at every church and vestry-meeting, often taking part in the exercises, and always out-singing and out-praying every other church-member. 2d. It was his expectation by these continuous private indignities, which many a wife suffers in silence, to force _me_ to leave _him_, and thus preserve his pietistic reputation untarnished. All these plans, which I perfectly understood, failed. He could find nothing upon which to sustain a charge against me, either in my daily conduct, or in my private correspondence, dated, long years before he knew me, but which the _law allowed him to inspect_.

"I contracted no debts because he would not supply my necessary wants. I took no advantage of his absence from home to forfeit my own self-respect. What was to be done? He must move cautiously, for the maintenance of a religious character was his stock in trade.

"Returning from a walk one day with my little Arthur, I found a note on my table from Stahle, saying 'that he had suddenly been called South on business, and should remain a few days.' I have never seen him since.

Not that I did not hear from him, for the plan was legally concocted.

Letters were written to me by him, saying 'that he was searching for a good business-situation, and would send for me when he found it.'

Sending for me to join him, but making no mention of my boy. Sending for me to come hundreds of miles away under the escort of his brother, whom I had ascertained to have uttered the foulest slanders about me (and who was to be my protector and purser on the occasion). Every letter was legally worded; 'my dear Gertrude' was at the top of the letter, and 'your affectionate husband' at the bottom. They were always delivered to me by two witnesses, that I might not dodge having received them. And yet each one, though without a flaw in the eye of the law, was so managed as to render compliance with it impossible, had I desired to rejoin a man who had done, and was still covertly doing, all in his power to injure my good name. In the meanwhile, what he dared not do openly, he did by the underground railroad of slander; insinuations were made by those in his employ; eyebrows were raised, shoulders were shrugged, hints thrown out that my extravagance had rendered it necessary for him to leave me. (I, who had never asked for a cent since our marriage, whose nimble needle had replenished his own and his children's dilapidated wardrobes.)

"Men stared insolently at me in the street; women cast self-righteous scornful glances; 'friends' worse than foes, were emboldened by _his_ villainy to subject themselves to a withering repulse from her who sought to earn her _honest_ bread.

"Did I go out in search of employment--I was 'parading to show myself.'

Did I stay within doors--'there was no doubt a good reason why I _dared_ not go out.' Did I keep my own and my boy's small stock of clothing whole, tidy, and neat--'they would like to know who kept me in clothes now.'"

"Surely," said Rose, interrupting her, "surely, dear Gertrude, there must have been those who knew, and could bear witness, that you were good and innocent."

"True," answered Gertrude, "there were those who could do so, but admitting this fact, what plausible excuse could they make for not being my helpers and defenders on all needful occasions? No, dear Rose, the world is a selfish one, and degrading as it is to human nature to a.s.sert it, it is nevertheless true, that there are many, like those summer friends of mine, who would stand by with dumb lips and see the slanderer distill, drop by drop, his poison into the life-blood of his victim, rather than bring forward, at some probable cost to themselves, the antidote of truth in their possession. Even blood relations have been known to circulate what they knew to be a slander to cover their parsimony. And those people, who are the most greedy listeners to the slanderer's racy tale, are the people who "never meddle in such things,"

when called upon to refute it.

"Did these bitter taunts crush me? Was I to become, through despair, the vile thing Stahle and his agents wished?"

"No! The nights I walked my chamber-floor, with my finger-nails piercing my clinched palms till the blood came, were not without their use. I weighed every faculty G.o.d had given me, measured every power, with a view to its marketable use. I found one yet untried. I seized my pencil, and I triumphed even with the blood-hounds on my track, for G.o.d helped the innocent."

"Oh, teach me that, strong-hearted, n.o.ble Gertrude, teach me that! for I have no stay this side Heaven!" and, with sobbing utterance, Rose poured into Gertrude's sympathizing heart the checkered story of her life.

Did she whose courage had parted the stormy waters of trouble, and who had come out triumphant, turn a deaf ear to that wail of despair?

Is woman _always_ the bitterest foe of her crushed sister? always the first to throw a stone at her?

No--G.o.d be thanked! For the first time Rose was folded to a loving sister's heart, and in the sweet words of Ruth to Naomi, Gertrude said, as she bade Rose good-night,

"Whither thou goest I will go; whither thou lodgest I will lodge; naught but death shall part thee and me."

Was the watchman's midnight cry, "All's well," beneath the window, a prophecy?