University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
CHECKMATE.

IF ever our readers have observed two chess-players,
both ardent, skilful, determined, who have been
carrying on noiselessly the moves of a game, they will
understand the full significance of this decisive term.

Up to this point, there is hope, there is energy, there
is enthusiasm; the pieces are marshalled and managed
with good courage. At last, perhaps in an unexpected
moment, one, two, three adverse moves follow each
other, and the decisive words, check-mate, are uttered.

This is a symbol of what often goes on in the game
of life.

Here is a man going on, indefinitely, conscious in his
own heart that he is not happy in his domestic relations.
There is a want of union between him and his
wife. She is not the woman that meets his wants or
his desires; and in the intercourse of life they constantly
cross and annoy each other. But still he does
not allow himself to look the matter fully in the face.
He goes on and on, hoping that to-morrow will bring
something better than to-day, — hoping that this thing
or that thing or the other thing will bring a change,

and that in some indefinite future all will round and
fashion itself to his desires. It is very slowly that a
man awakens from the illusions of his first love. It is
very unwillingly that he ever comes to the final conclusion
that he has made there the mistake of a whole life-time,
and that the woman to whom he gave his whole
heart not only is not the woman that he supposed her
to be, but never in any future time, nor by any change
of circumstances, will become that woman, — that the
difficulty is radical and final and hopeless.

In “The Pilgrim's Progress,” we read that the poor
man, Christian, tried to persuade his wife to go with
him on the pilgrimage to the celestial city; but that
finally he had to make up his mind to go alone without
her. Such is the lot of the man who is brought to the
conclusion, positively and definitely, that his wife is
always to be a hinderance, and never a help to him, in
any upward aspiration; that whatever he does that is
needful and right and true must be done, not by her
influence, but in spite of it; that, if he has to swim
against the hard, upward current of the river of life, he
must do so with her hanging on his arm, and holding
him back, and that he cannot influence and cannot
control her.

Such hours of disclosure to a man are among the terrible
hidden tragedies of life, — tragedies such as are
never acted on the stage. Such a time of disclosure
came to John the year after Grace's marriage; and it
came in this way: —

The Spindlewood property had long been critically

situated. Sundry financial changes which were going
on in the country had depreciated its profits, and affected
it unfavorably. All now depended upon the
permanency of one commercial house. John had been
passing through an interval of great anxiety. He could
not tell Lillie his trouble. He had been for months
past nervously watching all the in-comings and outgoings
of his family, arranged on a scale of reckless
expenditure, which he felt entirely powerless to control.
Lillie's wishes were importunate. She was nervous
and hysterical, wholly incapable of listening to reason;
and the least attempt to bring her to change any of her
arrangements, or to restrict any of her pleasures, brought
tears and faintings and distresses and scenes of domestic
confusion which he shrank from. He often tried to
set before her the possibility that they might be obliged,
for a time at least, to live in a different manner; but
she always resisted every such supposition as so frightful,
so dreadful, that he was utterly discouraged, and
put off and off, hoping that the evil day never might
arrive.

But it did come at last. One morning, when he received
by mail the tidings of the failure of the great
house of Clapham & Co., he knew that the time had
come when the thing could no longer be staved off.
He was an indorser to a large amount on the paper of
this house; and the crisis was inevitable.

It was inevitable also that he must acquaint Lillie
with the state of his circumstances; for she was going
on with large arrangements and calculations for a Newport

campaign, and sending the usual orders to New
York, to her milliner and dressmaker, for her summer
outfit. It was a cruel thing for him to be obliged to
interrupt all this; for she seemed perfectly cheerful and
happy in it, as she always was when preparing to go on
a pleasure-seeking expedition. But it could not be.
All this luxury and indulgence must be cut off at a
stroke. He must tell her that she could not go to Newport;
that there was no money for new dresses or new
finery; that they should probably be obliged to move
out of their elegant house, and take a smaller one, and
practise for some time a rigid economy.

John came into Lillie's elegant apartments, which
glittered like a tulip-bed with many colored sashes and
ribbons, with sheeny silks and misty laces, laid out in
order to be surveyed before packing.

“Gracious me, John! what on earth is the matter
with you to-day? How perfectly awful and solemn
you do look!”

“I have had bad news, this morning, Lillie, which I
must tell you.”

“Oh, dear me, John! what is the matter? Nobody
is dead, I hope!”

“No, Lillie; but I am afraid you will have to give
up your Newport journey.”

“Gracious, goodness, John! what for?”

“To say the truth, Lillie, I cannot afford it.”

“Can't afford it? Why not? Why, John, what is
the matter?”

“Well, Lillie, just read this letter!”

Lillie took it, and read it with her hands trembling.

“Well, dear me, John! I don't see any thing in this
letter. If they have failed, I don't see what that is to
you!”

“But, Lillie, I am indorser for them.”

“How very silly of you, John! What made you
indorse for them? Now that is too bad; it just makes
me perfectly miserable to think of such things. I know
I should not have done so; but I don't see why you
need pay it. It is their business, anyhow.”

“But, Lillie, I shall have to pay it. It is a matter
of honor and honesty to do it; because I engaged to
do it.”

“Well, I don't see why that should be! It isn't
your debt; it is their debt: and why need you do it?
I am sure Dick Follingsbee said that there were ways
in which people could put their property out of their
hands when they got caught in such scrapes as this.
Dick knows just how to manage. He told me of plenty
of people that had done that, who were living splendidly,
and who were received everywhere; and people thought
just as much of them.”

“O Lillie, Lillie! my child,” said John; “you don't
know any thing of what you are talking about! That
would be dishonorable, and wholly out of the question.
No, Lillie dear, the fact is,” he said, with a great gulp,
and a deep sigh, — “the fact is, I have failed; but I am
going to fail honestly. If I have nothing else left, I
will have my honor and my conscience. But we shall
have to give up this house, and move into a smaller one.

Every thing will have to be given up to the creditors to
settle the business. And then, when all is arranged, we
must try to live economically some way; and perhaps
we can make it up again. But you see, dear, there can
be no more of this kind of expenses at present,” he said,
pointing to the dresses and jewelry on the bed.

“Well, John, I am sure I had rather die!” said Lillie,
gathering herself into a little white heap, and tumbling
into the middle of the bed. “I am sure if we have got
to rub and scrub and starve so, I had rather die and
done with it; and I hope I shall.”

John crossed his arms, and looked gloomily out of
the window.

“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “I am sure I
should be glad to.”

“Yes, I dare say!” said Lillie; “that is all you care
for me. Now there is Dick Follingsbee, he would be
taking care of his wife. Why, he has failed three or four
times, and always come out richer than he was before!”

“He is a swindler and a rascal!” said John; “that is
what he is.”

“I don't care if he is,” said Lillie, sobbing. “His
wife has good times, and goes into the very first society
in New York. People don't care, so long as you are
rich, what you do. Well, I am sure I can't do any
thing about it. I don't know how to live without money,
— that 's a fact! and I can't learn. I suppose you
would be glad to see me rubbing around in old calico
dresses, wouldn't you? and keeping only one girl, and
going into the kitchen, like Miss Dotty Peabody? I

think I see myself! And all just for one of your Quixotic
notions, when you might just as well keep all your
money as not. That is what it is to marry a reformer!
I never have had any peace of my life on account of
your conscience, always something or other turning up
that you can't act like anybody else. I should think,
at least, you might have contrived to settle this place
on me and poor little Lillie, that we might have a house
to put our heads in.”

“Lillie, Lillie,” said John, “this is too much! Don't
you think that I suffer at all?”

“I don't see that you do,” said Lillie, sobbing. “I
dare say you are glad of it; it is just like you. Oh,
dear, I wish I had never been married!”

“I certainly do,” said John, fervently.

“I suppose so. You see, it is nothing to you men;
you don't care any thing about these things. If you
can get a musty old corner and your books, you are
perfectly satisfied; and you don't know when things
are pretty, and when they are not: and so you can talk
grand about your honor and your conscience and all
that. I suppose the carriages and horses have got to
be sold too?”

“Certainly, Lillie,” said John, hardening his heart and
his tone.

“Well, well,” she said, “I wish you would go now
and send ma to me. I don't want to talk about it any
more. My head aches as if it would split. Poor ma!
She little thought when I married you that it was going
to come to this.”

John walked out of the room gloomily enough. He
had received this morning his check-mate. All illusion
was at an end. The woman that he had loved and idolized
and caressed and petted and indulged, in whom
he had been daily and hourly disappointed since he was
married, but of whom he still hoped and hoped, he now
felt was of a nature not only unlike, but opposed to his
own. He felt that he could neither love nor respect her
further. And yet she was his wife, and the mother of
his daughter, and the only queen of his household; and
he had solemnly promised at God's altar that “forsaking
all others, he would keep only unto her, so long as they
both should live, for better, for worse,” John muttered
to himself, — “for better, for worse. This is the worse;
and oh, it is dreadful!”

In all John's hours of sorrow and trouble, the instinctive
feeling of his heart was to go back to the memory
of his mother; and the nearest to his mother was his
sister Grace. In this hour of his blind sorrow, he walked
directly over to the little cottage on Elm Street, which
Grace and her husband had made a perfectly ideal home.

When he came into the parlor, Grace and Rose were
sitting together with an open letter lying between them.
It was evident that some crisis of tender confidence had
passed between them; for the tears were hardly dry on
Rose's cheeks. Yet it was not painful, whatever it was;
for her face was radiant with smiles, and John thought
he had never seen her look so lovely. At this moment
the truth of her beautiful and lovely womanhood, her
sweetness and nobleness of nature, came over him, in

bitter contrast with the scene he had just passed through,
and the woman he had left.

“What do you think, John?” said Grace; “we have
some congratulations here to give! Rose is engaged to
Harry Endicott.”

“Indeed!” said John, “I wish her joy.”

“But what is the matter, John?” said both women,
looking up, and seeing something unusual in his face.

“Oh, trouble!” said John, — “trouble upon us all.
Gracie and Rose, the Spindlewood Mills have failed.”

“Is it possible?” was the exclamation of both.

“Yes, indeed!” said John; “you see, the thing has
been running very close for the last six months; and
the manufacturing business has been looking darker and
darker. But still we could have stood it if the house
of Clapham & Co. had stood; but they have gone to
smash, Gracie. I had a letter this morning, telling me
of it.”

Both women stood a moment as if aghast; for the
Ferguson property was equally involved.

“Poor papa!” said Rose; “this will come hard on
him.”

“I know it,” said John, bitterly. “It is more for
others that I feel than for myself, — for all that are
involved must suffer with me.”

“But, after all, John dear,” said Rose, “don't feel so
about us at any rate. We shall do very well. People
that fail honorably always come right side up at last;
and, John, how good it is to think, whatever you lose,
you cannot lose your best treasure, — your true noble

heart, and your true friends. I feel this minute that
we shall all know each other better, and be more precious
to each other for this very trouble.”

John looked at her through his tears.

“Dear Rose,” he said, “you are an angel; and from
my soul I congratulate the man that has got you. He
that has you would be rich, if he lost the whole
world.”

“You are too good to me, all of you,” said Rose.
“But now, John, about that bad news — let me break
it to papa and mamma; I think I can do it best. I
know when they feel brightest in the day; and I don't
want it to come on them suddenly: but I can put it in
the very best way. How fortunate that I am just
engaged to Harry! Harry is a perfect prince in generosity.
You don't know what a good heart he has; and
it happens so fortunately that we have him to lean on
just now. Oh, I'm sure we shall find a way out of these
troubles, never fear.” And Rose took the letter, and
left John and Grace together.

“O Gracie, Gracie!” said John, throwing himself
down on the old chintz sofa, and burying his face in his
hands, “what a woman there is! O Gracie! I wish I
was dead! Life is played out with me. I haven't the
least desire to live. I can't get a step farther.”

“O John, John! don't talk so!” said Grace, stooping
over him. “Why, you will recover from this! You are
young and strong. It will be settled; and you can
work your way up again.”

“It is not the money, Grace; I could let that go. It

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 706EAF. Page 314. In-line Illustration. Image of a man seated with his head in his hands. A woman is standing over him looking concerned. She has her arms on his shoulders. The caption reads, "O Gracie! I wish I was dead!"] is that I have nothing to live for, — nobody and nothing.
My wife, Gracie! she is worse than nothing, —
worse, oh! infinitely worse than nothing! She is a
chain and a shackle. She is my obstacle. She tortures
me and hinders me every way and everywhere. There
will never be a home for me where she is; and, because
she is there, no other woman can make a home for me.
Oh, I wish she would go away, and stay away! I
would not care if I never saw her face again.”

There was something shocking and terrible to Grace
about this outpouring. It was dreadful to her to be

the recipient of such a confidence, to hear these words
spoken, and to more than suspect their truth. She was
quite silent for a few moments, as he still lay with his
face down, buried in the sofa-pillow.

Then she went to her writing-desk, took out a little
ivory miniature of their mother, came and sat down by
him, and laid her hand on his head.

“John,” she said, “look at this.”

He raised his head, took it from her hand, and looked
at it. Soon she saw the tears dropping over it.

“John,” she said, “let me say to you now what I
think our mother would have said. The great object
of life is not happiness; and, when we have lost our
own personal happiness, we have not lost all that life is
worth living for. No, John, the very best of life often
lies beyond that. When we have learned to let ourselves
go, then we may find that there is a better, a
nobler, and a truer life for us.”

“I have given up,” said John in a husky voice. “I
have lost all.”

“Yes,” replied Grace, steadily, “I know perfectly
well that there is very little hope of personal and individual
happiness for you in your marriage for years to
come. Instead of a companion, a friend, and a helper,
you have a moral invalid to take care of. But, John,
if Lillie had been stricken with blindness, or insanity,
or paralysis, you would not have shrunk from your duty
to her; and, because the blindness and paralysis are
moral, you will not shrink from it, will you? You
sacrifice all your property to pay an indorsement for a

debt that is not yours; and why do you do it? Because
society rests on every man's faithfulness to his engagements.
John, if you stand by a business engagement
with this faithfulness, how much more should you stand
by that great engagement which concerns all other
families and the stability of all society. Lillie is your
wife. You were free to choose; and you chose her.
She is the mother of your child; and, John, what that
daughter is to be depends very much on the steadiness
with which you fulfil your duties to the mother. I
know that Lillie is a most undeveloped and uncongenial
person; I know how little you have in common: but
your duties are the same as if she were the best and
the most congenial of wives. It is every man's duty to
make the best of his marriage.”

“But, Gracie,” said John, “is there any thing to be
made of her?”

“You will never make me believe, John, that there
are any human beings absolutely without the capability
of good. They may be very dark, and very slow to
learn, and very far from it; but steady patience and
love and well-doing will at last tell upon any one.”

“But, Gracie, if you could have heard how utterly
without principle she is: urging me to put my property
out of my hands dishonestly, to keep her in luxury!”

“Well, John, you must have patience with her. Consider
that she has been unfortunate in her associates.
Consider that she has been a petted child all her life,
and that you have helped to pet her. Consider how
much your sex always do to weaken the moral sense

of women, by liking and admiring them for being weak
and foolish and inconsequent, so long as it is pretty
and does not come in your way. I do not mean you in
particular, John; but I mean that the general course of
society releases pretty women from any sense of obligation
to be constant in duty, or brave in meeting emergencies.
You yourself have encouraged Lillie to live
very much like a little humming-bird.”

“Well, I thought,” said John, “that she would in
time develop into something better.”

“Well, there lies your mistake; you expected too
much. The work of years is not to be undone in a
moment; and you must take into account that this is
Lillie's first adversity. You may as well make up your
mind not to expect her to be reasonable. It seems to
me that we can make up our minds to bear any thing
that we know must come; and you may as well make
up yours, that, for a long time, you will have to carry
Lillie as a burden. But then, you must think that she
is your daughter's mother, and that it is very important
for the child that she should respect and honor her
mother. You must treat her with respect and honor,
even in her weaknesses. We all must. We all must
help Lillie as we can to bear this trial, and sympathize
with her in it, unreasonable as she may seem; because,
after all, John, it is a real trial to her.”

“I cannot see, for my part,” said John, “that she
loves any thing.”

“The power of loving may be undeveloped in her,
John; but it will come, perhaps, later in life. At all

events take this comfort to yourself, — that, when you
are doing your duty by your wife, when you are holding
her in her place in the family, and teaching her child to
respect and honor her, you are putting her in God's
school of love. If we contend with and fly from our
duties, simply because they gall us and burden us, we
go against every thing; but if we take them up bravely,
then every thing goes with us. God and good angels
and good men and all good influences are working with
us when we are working for the right. And in this
way, John, you may come to happiness; or, if you do
not come to personal happiness, you may come to something
higher and better. You know that you think it
nobler to be an honest man than a rich man; and I
am sure that you will think it better to be a good man
than to be a happy one. Now, dear John, it is not I
that say these things, I think; but it seems to me it
is what our mother would say, if she should speak
to you from where she is. And then, dear brother,
it will all be over soon, this life-battle; and the only
thing is, to come out victorious.”

“Gracie, you are right,” said John, rising up: “I
see it myself. I will brace up to my duty. Couldn't
you try and pacify Lillie a little, poor girl? I suppose
I have been rough with her.”

“Oh, yes, John, I will go up and talk with Lillie,
and condole with her; and perhaps we shall bring her
round. And then when my husband comes home next
week, we 'll have a family palaver, and he will find some
ways and means of setting this business straight, that it

won't be so bad as it looks now. There may be arrangements
made when the creditors come together. My
impression is that, whenever people find a man really
determined to arrange a matter of this kind honorably,
they are all disposed to help him; so don't be cast
down about the business. As for Lillie's discontent,
treat it as you would the crying of your little daughter
for its sugar-plums, and do not expect any thing more
of her just now than there is.”

We have brought our story up to this point. We
informed our readers in the beginning that it was not a
novel, but a story with a moral; and, as people pick all
sorts of strange morals out of stories, we intend to put
conspicuously into our story exactly what the moral of
it is.

Well, then, it has been very surprising to us to see
in these our times that some people, who really at heart
have the interest of women upon their minds, have
been so short-sighted and reckless as to clamor for an
easy dissolution of the marriage-contract, as a means of
righting their wrongs. Is it possible that they do not
see that this is a liberty which, once granted, would
always tell against the weaker sex? If the woman
who finds that she has made a mistake, and married a
man unkind or uncongenial, may, on the discovery of
it, leave him and seek her fortune with another, so also
may a man. And what will become of women like
Lillie, when the first gilding begins to wear off, if the
man who has taken one of them shall be at liberty to

cast her off and seek another? Have we not enough now
of miserable, broken-winged butterflies, that sink down,
down, down into the mud of the street? But are women-reformers
going to clamor for having every woman
turned out helpless, when the man who has married
her, and made her a mother, discovers that she has not
the power to interest him, and to help his higher
spiritual development? It was because woman is helpless
and weak, and because Christ was her great Protector,
that he made the law of marriage irrevocable.
“Whosoever putteth away his wife causeth her to commit
adultery.” If the sacredness of the marriage-contract
did not hold, if the Church and all good men and
all good women did not uphold it with their might and
main, it is easy to see where the career of many women
like Lillie would end. Men have the power to reflect
before the choice is made; and that is the only proper
time for reflection. But, when once marriage is made
and consummated, it should be as fixed a fact as the
laws of nature. And they who suffer under its stringency
should suffer as those who endure for the public
good. “He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth
not, he shall enter into the tabernacle of the
Lord.”