Bangladeshi-Bengali.Com: Online Story. Who Was She?

Stay! here is another fragment, more reckless in tone:

"I want to find the woman whom I can love--who can love me. But this is

a masquerade where the features are hidden, the voice disguised, even

the hands grotesquely gloved. Come! I will venture more than I ever

thought was possible to me. You shall know my deepest nature as I

myself seem to know it. Then, give me the commonest chance of learning

yours, through an intercourse which shall leave both free, should we

not feel the closing of the inevitable bond!"

After I had written that, the pages filled rapidly. When the appointed

hour arrived, a bulky epistle, in a strong linen envelope, sealed with

five wax seals, was waiting on my table. Precisely at six there was an

announcement: the door opened, and a little outside, in the shadow, I

saw an old woman, in a threadbare dress of rusty black.

"Come in!" I said.

"The letter!" answered a husky voice. She stretched out a bony hand,

without moving a step.

"It is for a lady--very important business," said I, taking up the

letter; "are you sure that there is no mistake?"

She drew her hand under the shawl, turned without a word, and moved

toward the hall door.

"Stop!" I cried: "I beg a thousand pardons! Take it--take it! You are

the right messenger!"

She clutched it, and was instantly gone.

Several days passed, and I gradually became so nervous and uneasy that

I was on the point of inserting another "Personal" in the daily papers,

when the answer arrived. It was brief and mysterious; you shall hear

the whole of it:

"I thank you. Your letter is a sacred confidence which I pray you never

to regret. Your nature is sound and good. You ask no more than is

reasonable, and I have no real right to refuse. In the one respect

which I have hinted, _I_ may have been unskilful or too narrowly

cautious: I must have the certainty of this. Therefore, as a generous

favor, give me six months more! At the end of that time I will write to

you again. Have patience with these brief lines: another word might be

a word too much."

You notice the change in her tone? The letter gave me the strongest

impression of a new, warm, almost anxious interest on her part. My

fancies, as first at Wampsocket, began to play all sorts of singular

pranks: sometimes she was rich and of an old family, sometimes

moderately poor and obscure, but always the same calm, reposeful face

and clear gray eyes. I ceased looking for her in society, quite sure

that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of suddenly

meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places and under

startling circumstances. However, the end of it all was patience--

patience for six months.

There's not much more to tell; but this last letter is hard for me to

read. It came punctually, to a day. I knew it would, and at the last I

began to dread the time, as if a heavy note were falling due, and I had

no funds to meet it. My head was in a whirl when I broke the seal. The

fact in it stared at me blankly, at once, but it was a long time before

the words and sentences became intelligible.

"The stipulated time has come, and our hidden romance is at an end. Had

I taken this resolution a year ago, it would have saved me many vain

hopes, and you, perhaps, a little uncertainty. Forgive me, first, if

you can, and then hear the explanation:

"You wished for a personal interview: _you have had, not one, but

many._ We have met, in society, talked face to face, discussed the

weather, the opera, toilettes, Queechy, Aurora Floyd, Long Branch and

Newport, and exchanged a weary amount of fashionable gossip; and you

never guessed that I was governed by any deeper interest! I have

purposely uttered ridiculous platitudes, and you were as smilingly

courteous as if you enjoyed them: I have let fall remarks whose

hollowness and selfishness could not have escaped you, and have waited

in vain for a word of sharp, honest, manly reproof. Your manner to me

was unexceptionable, as it was to all other women: but there lies the

source of my disappointment, of--yes--of my sorrow!

"You appreciate, I can not doubt, the qualities in woman which men

value in one another--culture, independence of thought, a high and

earnest apprehension of life; but you know not how to seek them. It is

not true that a mature and unperverted woman is flattered by receiving

only the general obsequiousness which most men give to the whole sex.

In the man who contradicts and strives with her, she discovers a truer

interest, a nobler respect. The empty-headed, spindle-shanked youths

who dance admirably, understand something of billiards, much less of

horses, and still less of navigation, soon grow inexpressibly wearisome

to us; but the men who adopt their social courtesy, never seeking to

arouse, uplift, instruct us, are a bitter disappointment.

"What would have been the end, had you really found me? Certainly a

sincere, satisfying friendship. No mysterious magnetic force has drawn

you to me or held you near me, nor has my experiment inspired me with

an interest which can not be given up without a personal pang. I am

grieved, for the sake of all men and all women. Yet, understand me! I

mean no slightest reproach. I esteem and honor you for what you are.

Farewell!"

There! Nothing could be kinder in tone, nothing more humiliating in

substance. I was sore and offended for a few days; but I soon began to

see, and ever more and more clearly, that she was wholly right. I was

sure, also, that any further attempt to correspond with her would be

vain. It all comes of taking society just as we find it, and supposing

that conventional courtesy is the only safe ground on which men and

women can meet.

The fact is--there's no use in hiding it from myself (and I see, by

your face, that the letter cuts deep into you own conscience)--she is a

free, courageous, independent character, and--I am not.

But who _was_ she?

THE END