University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
AN OPENING DOOR.

Three weeks went by without a single allusion having
been made to the passionate words Elizabeth had
spoken. Whether her husband believed them, understood

them in their full significance, or regarded them as
a momentary outbreak, born of “just the least little
touch of spleen,” she could not guess. He had ever since
treated her with his customary smooth politeness. It
had been seldom always that he gave her any thing
positive to complain of, but she had thought sometimes
that Torquemada himself never invented tortures keener
or subtler than hers.

Le Roy had once questioned within himself whether
the instinct of serfdom belonged to Elizabeth. If this
instinct provides that the serf shall love his chains,
assuredly she had none of it; for though she wore hers
in silence, every day they galled her more and more, and
her spirit grew more and more bitter and impatient.

“Was there really a God in Heaven?” she asked
herself sometimes, “who cared for His creatures? Had
He not rather framed some pitiless laws under which
He had set His universe in motion, and then, sitting
serene and far-off in His Heaven, undisturbed by any
groans or sighs, left them to crush every offender against
them to powder?” If she had only had a little faith;
but for her, in those days, neither the sun shone by
day, or the stars by night. Her heavens were as dark
as her earth.

One forenoon Le Roy came in, and found her sitting
idle and listless, as usual.

“I am off to-day,” he said, “with a party of gentlemen
for Havana.”

“And I?” she asked, lifting her eyes to his face.

“You will of course remain in your own house. You

will find that every necessary arrangement has been
made for your comfort. You need not be troubled
with any cares concerning money. Mrs. Murray is
competent for all indoor details. Jones will supply any
outside wants. You will find your credit excellent at
all the places where you are accustomed to trade; and
you need have no anxiety about any thing.”

Elizabeth understood him fully. She saw that she
was not to be trusted with money, lest she might use it
to baffle her keeper's will. She spoke the thought
which came uppermost.

“You might as well send me to a private mad-house
at once.”

He smiled, his cool, cynical smile.

“Oh, no, I do not think that will be necessary. Such
things have been done, when women have shown themselves
incapable of understanding their own interests.
In such a case a husband, of course, would not hesitate;
but you, I think, will be wiser. You have speculated
a good deal about social questions. You used,
I remember, to have quite fine-spun theories of life.”

Poor theories, she thought, — where had they brought
her?

She sat silent, and watched her husband as he moved
round the room, selecting a few things he wished to
take, and restoring others to their places. She began
to feel a sort of curiosity about their parting, thinking
of herself in a vague, questioning way, as if she were
a third person. Would that man kiss this waiting,
watchful woman when he bade her good-by, she wondered.

It was not that she wanted the kiss, or even
shrank from it. She felt a wholly impersonal curiosity,
such as I suppose every one of us may have felt about
ourselves, in moments when emotion has grown torpid
and observation is wide-awake. It was not his habit
to make affectionate farewells; but then he had never
gone on a sea voyage before; and she believed there
was some tradition about connubial kisses before long
partings. But, no; when he was quite ready he only
said, with that irritating, condescending politeness,
which always nearly maddened her, — “Good-by, Mrs.
Le Roy. You must manage to amuse yourself. I hope
you will not be dull during my absence.”

And then he was gone.

Elizabeth sat still where he left her. Her face was
like marble, but her soul was in arms. He could wander
where he liked, — he need not even go through the
idle ceremony of consulting her. His own pleasure was
his only law. For her there was no freedom of choice,
no change of place such as she would welcome, even
though it were only change of pain. She, this rich
man's wife, had not a paltry hundred dollars at her
command. Here she was, shut in by these brick walls,
held fast by Fate; and outside, still outside, was the
world, as much beyond her reach, with its great and
strange delights of chance and change, its bewildering
excitements for heart and brain, as it had been when
she lived among the lonely, lovely Lenox hills.

Just here I want to protest against being supposed
to endorse the course of my poor Elizabeth. I tell you

the story of a living, breathing, suffering woman; but
because I show her to you as she was, you have no
right to conclude that I show her to you as I think she
ought to have been. Unquestionably she would have
been nobler had she striven to conquer her fate, instead
of sitting and longing vainly for means to flee from it.
Many, many faults she had. She was rash, undisciplined,
wanting in faith as in patience; and yet, just
such as she was, I loved her very deeply, and would
rather pity than blame.

For a week after her husband went away, she sat
alone, and brooded in a kind of passionate despair over
the circumstances which environed her, at feud alike
with Fate and with Providence. Then there came to
her a letter with the Lenox post-mark. This was a
rare event, for during her married life she had seldom
heard from Lenox. She had not cared so much for any
of the Fordyces, that it had cost her any special pain
to let them drift out of her life. If she had been very
happy, she might possibly, after the manner of women,
have liked to summon them as witnesses of her felicity.
As it was, she had acquiesced willingly enough in her
husband's opinion, that “it would just be a bore to
have them there; country relations always wanted
showing round, and it was the most tedious thing in
life;” and therefore none of her cousins had ever visited
her. She had always sent them gifts at Christmas
time; and upon the announcement of Kate's marriage
to a well-to-do young Berkshireman, a handsome silver
set had gone to her, in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Le

Roy. But this letter from Lenox was not in the chirography
of either of the “three Graces.”

Elizabeth broke the seal, and first of all there fluttered
into her lap a piece of newspaper. She took it
up, and read the announcement of her uncle's death;
and after it a long obituary, setting forth his excellencies
as husband, father, man of business, member of
society at large.

“Poor old uncle,” Elizabeth said, with a sad smile,
“he has departed this life with all the honors.”

Then she took up her letter again. It was in two
sheets. The first, which enclosed the other, was from
a lawyer, whose name she recognized, but who was not
her uncle's customary legal adviser. She remembered
him as a man whose integrity stood in very high repute
in Lenox.

His letter informed her that three weeks ago the late
Mr. Fordyce had called upon him, and entrusted to his
care eight thousand dollars, with the understanding that
as soon as convenient, after his decease, it should be forwarded
to herself in the form of a draft on some good
New York bank. At that time Mr. Fordyce had shown
no signs of illness, but, notwithstanding his apparently
good health, had seemed to be impressed with a conviction
that he had not long to live; and, for some
domestic reasons, into the nature of which he did not
enter, had wished to have this money conveyed to Mrs.
Le Roy in such a manner that it need not come to the
knowledge of even his own family. Doubtless the enclosed
letter from her uncle, of the contents of which he

himself was entirely ignorant, would make the whole
matter clear to her. In a day or two after this interview,
Mr. Fordyce had been seized with the sudden
illness which terminated his life; and as soon as practicable
afterwards, arrangements had been made for carrying
out his instructions with regard to the money.
Mrs. Le Roy would find the draft enclosed. The late
Mr. Fordyce had provided for all the details; and Mr.
Mills had only to request of Mrs. Le Roy an acknowledgment
of the safe receipt of his letter and its enclosures.

With curious emotion Elizabeth took up the draft
and looked at it, — a draft in due form for eight thousand
dollars, payable to her order. Was there, after all,
a God in Heaven, whose ears were not deaf to the cry
of a weak woman's woe, — who heard prayers and answered
them? Her uncle must have gone to Lawyer
Mills about this matter just after those wild entreaties
of hers, that the God of Peter would open to her also
a door. And now her door was opening; for she never
doubted for one single instant what use she should
make of this money.

She broke open the dead man's letter next in order,
and this was what it said: —

Elizabeth's seldom falling tears wet the last words of
this letter.

“Poor old Uncle Isaac,” she said aloud; “you builded
better than you knew. You have opened my door, and
it is little to ask that not a soul on earth shall ever
know your secret.”