Chapter C

Dear Peter:

I am continuing the letter I wrote you sometime ago. Of course, I am sending you these as a compilation. They are not in series; for if I should do that you would lose the trend. Probably you would become bored and when these letters came from time to time, you might throw them in the waste basket. It is impossible for me to judge your frame of mind from this distance after all these years. I cannot judge into what you have developed.

However, the first part is finished and the second part is also done with. This is the third part. The drawing of the thing to a conclusion—a finishing of it all. And after this is done, I shall sit down by my window and look out upon the passing world and wonder how long I shall live. How soon I shall have peace—a thing I have never had, or ever known.

I remember the day I left. It was cruel. You recollect the sky. The sun did not shine. The flowers in the garden as I went seemed to tuck their heads down under their leaves as if seeking protection from the cold. It was not cold. It was raining. It was warm.

I entered the car. I closed the door by myself. It appeared to me as if some one was closing me in some place, just as if I were being penned in a great prison, from which I should never come out. I shivered, Peter.

The last face I saw was that of Tizzia who stood at one of the windows. The tears were running down her face. Frantically she waved her hand to me, and then she was gone. It was all gone—the house, you and my happiness.

I wonder if Tizzia told you of my last conversation with her—the threats I made of the things I should do. I often think of that conversation and the stress I was under at the time. Funny as it may appear to you I did those things. I went forth from you—from all the things I thought were right and good.

You should have seen the man. I met him a short time after I left. His name was Bill—Slippery Bill, he was called. A vicious man. A drunkard of the most horrible kind. His mind was a morass of immorality. His sense of humor was beating a woman. He had killed one person, and when he was drunk he bragged to me and described how his victim had moaned and begged. He loved to tell me of the thing he killed. Of course, it was a woman. He was just a man—a coward.

Bill was a thief—a second-story man. One who lies in wait until a house is empty and then goes in safely. When he would steal he would come to me in the hovel we lived in and throw the things he had got on the table, and gloat on them, and brag about the ease with which he did this sort of thing. After that he would get drunk. For days and weeks he was in this condition. He amused me. He was so futile. His operations so foolish. With half the effort he could have made a good living.

Bill hated work. He wanted to live in what he called ease. Poor foolish Bill! He feared everything. The crack of a twig, the sound of the wind, a strange footstep. It was always the law coming for him. The police! He even feared me and sometimes in his frenzy of fear he would beat me. He thought I might betray him. It amused me. His fear was queer. I laughed at it when he was gone on one of his missions.

I met this creature not long after I had gone from you. I went down into the depths of shame and poverty. I lived in one tiny room. Around me was a host of queer furtive people who lived from day to day—seeking always something that might keep them until the morrow. It was sad, but it was interesting. I went to their haunts. I soon became known to them. I even acquired their furtive habits. I appeared to be seeking like they, the things that would keep me until the next day. Sometimes even in their extreme poverty they laughed. I would pretend that I had a good night. That I had seen some man who gave me part of what he had and I would give to them. A dollar now and then. Once I gave a poor old man, who had lived in his horrors for years, a five-dollar bill. You should have seen him. He became my shadow. There was no thankfulness in his manner. He thought he could get more. I found him in my room, going through my things. He found nothing. I took care of that. I cursed him for his temerity. He shrank out of the place, but he came back, for he hoped.

I came across Bill only four weeks after I left you. It was a short time after I took the miserable room in this quarter of this city. What city doesn’t make any difference. But it was not so far from you that I couldn’t watch you and what you did.

You should have seen the dive—dirt, ill-smelling, horrible. A ragged crew came and went. I entered, and I was poorly dressed—that is I had on the kind of finery of the people of the class I tried to identify myself with. I looked the part. I sat at one of the broken-down tables—filthy with stale beer and smeared with old pieces of cheese. Oh, how it smelt!

Bill was standing at the bar. He was partially drunk. He turned, as I sat down, and he saw me. A curious light went over his face, and I knew here was the man! The man who should teach me whether men loved women from their pound value or from love.

Drunkenly he walked over to the table and leaned his great bony knuckles upon it. He didn’t take off his hat. He looked at me. Even though I was dressed so badly, I was beautiful.

He spoke to me, I nodded my head. He ordered a glass of beer for me. He drank a concoction which he called whiskey. He was terribly dirty. Then he sat down. I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a repulsive creature as he was. A great head covered with long shaggy hair, that curled in a mass. His eyes were blue—a deep blue. In them one could see the depths of depravity he had sunk to. His mouth was weak and sloppy, but his chin, covered with a few days’ beard, was strong. He looked brutal. And, Peter, he was brutal.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I replied. I drank a little of the beer. He swallowed the drink he had before him at a gulp. He appeared to throw it down his throat. I noticed that none of the muscles either contracted or expanded with the effort.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“No one,” I replied.

“Where do you live?” he persisted.

I turned from him and arose from the table and left him staring after me. I knew he would follow. He did. We went out of the place together.

“My wife is dead,” he said.

“Well?” I answered.

“I want another.”

We stood outside of the door upon the pavement. In the light that came through the dirty windows. I moved away from him.

That was the beginning of the life I led with him. It was a curious sort of thing. He began to love me. He sought me out everywhere I went. There were many others. But Bill interested me more than any other man I met.

You should have heard him the night we walked together down one of the poorest streets in the city. He turned every few moments and looked back. He always walked near the walls of the buildings, for he told me that he was afraid. He knew he was suspected for all kinds of crimes.

He called me Magdalen. Bill had a slice of poetry in his make-up, and he reasoned well. He told me he loved me. He would even go straight for me. He would never drink again. He got drunk that night. I wouldn’t go with him. Bill was a liar like most men.

A long time went by. We met every night—in all kinds of places. All of them as dirty as the first. It ended by my going with him.

It happened one night we walked to the park. It was late. All the grog shops had closed. It was long after one o’clock. We sat upon a bench together. Bill was sober. He had washed. It was dreadfully dark. It was curious the feeling of disgust I had for the man; yet for some unaccountable reason I was attracted to him. I listened to him as he spoke. I compared his protestations with yours. His were stronger. Bill was only the offspring of the gutter. After a while as he went on he thrilled me. When he unbended his crooked figure and shook the mass of hair on his head, I wondered at the man. Women, Peter, are curious—even more curious than men. Underneath they love the cave man. They like strength and brutality. In this part of my life when I see with what insane cruelty this class of people beat and bruise their women, I wonder at them. But they do not leave—they weep, but they stay.

You should have heard him as he stood before me and looked at me the best he could in the dark. I could see his eyes flash.

I remember each word he spoke, as if it were yesterday. Yet Bill has been dead years and years, and he died in jail.

“You are different, Magdalen. I don’t understand you. I don’t care about that. I only know you came into my life. You are here. The first night I saw you, although I was drunk, I knew you were my woman. I don’t care where you came from, nor who you are. I love you, Magdalen. I would do anything for you. How long it has been since you came into this part of the world, makes no difference to me. I don’t know if you have ever loved before. I suppose you have. All women love at sometime. You don’t know what real love means. I love you—I want you. I am going to have you. It is funny, I never spoke to any women as I do to you. You seem to make me different. I’ve lost my strength; it has died in me. If you were like the rest I should take you. I would not ask. I would make you do as I want. But I cannot. That is the thing I don’t understand. I am afraid of you. Why?”

I whispered, “Yes, Bill.”

Women are curious. It seems as if they are forced to listen to men when they begin to lay before them what they term their hearts. Mostly it is the animal in them. They wish to propagate.

He went on as if I had not interrupted him. “Magdalen, I wonder if you know that the love of a man such as I am, is different from other kinds. We never select from personal advantage. It is more the man. The spirit of a beast. We want. We want physically. I have thought of you a great deal. And I can’t understand what it is in you that makes me look at you differently from the women I have been thrown with, but the difference is there. I don’t believe that you belong to the people you pretend you do. There is something behind. You eat differently. Your fingers are different. Your skin is different. You are beautiful. The people with whom I have always gone are only beautiful in their youth. They have the bloom and that is all. It soon dies. It may be the conditions surrounding them that causes this sort of thing. Tell me where you came from? Why are you here?”

“I won’t tell you that. I am here. That is enough. Misfortune has placed me here. I like it. I am going to stay.”

“Then you love me. Is that the reason you stay?” He shook with emotion and walked up and down in the dark in front of me.

I was terribly attracted. He was a brute, but he was a man after all. He had been unfortunate. And yet I don’t think that exactly covers what I mean. I never asked him from where he had come, or by what fatality he had sunk so low. Bill was the dregs.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

Peter, I could not—I could not! And yet I knew in the end it would happen. I knew as I looked at this creature that to him I would be in name a wife. I trembled with fear. I hated it dreadfully. Every fiber in my body recoiled from any sort of personal contact with him. I wondered whether I would bear him children. I wondered whether he would beat me tomorrow or the day after. I knew he would. He did. Not then, but soon. It was queer, Peter, that after it happened—I mean after I took up life with him. Although he beat me, he did not kill the thing in me that you did. He always wept, when he got sober, and his contrition was wonderful. Unfortunately this did not deter him from beating me later. I think underneath that even though I thought about it all the time I loved him. How do you suppose that came about? I don’t know. Some people say a woman loves but once. Yet, here I was loving two distinct persons. And those persons so diametrically opposed.

It did happen. He kissed me. It was in the park in exactly the same place he had asked me before. He did not ask me. He took me in his arms. I struggled. I fought. I knew it was the end. I anticipated it was coming. I didn’t go with him into the park for weeks and weeks; yet he asked me to go innumerable times. At last I consented. I saw the end. It was written with fiery fingers on the wall. You know just like the words in the Bible. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin! I don’t suppose my words I saw meant the same thing. I don’t know what the Bible words mean; but I knew the words I saw. They were burnt into my brain.

Bill kissed me. He kissed me again and again. The animal came up in him. It was fearful and yet it was to me a wonderful experience. Eventually, I, being a woman, lay quietly in his arms. I could smell his dirty body—the sweat of years was upon it. His clothes were unkempt. His shirt was open at the neck and he looked precisely what he was—a thug.

I was close to my revenge. And yet, I was not getting precisely what I started out to get. I had failed again, Peter. I failed. I loved this thing—this thug. Why do you suppose that happened? I awoke to him. It must have been that unconquerable force—Nature. You know I hate dirt. I have always hated dirt. I mean immorality. And yet here I was an honest woman, a woman of instinct, doing this thing.

Bill kissed me as I say. Then he breathed a sigh. It came from his soul. If he had a soul, which I doubt. “Come, get up. It is late. We will go home.”

I got up from the seat. He controlled me. I could not refuse. I wanted to. I wanted to run. I thought death was better than this thing I was going into with my eyes open. I knew Bill. He took my hand in his. We walked silently through the park. I went easily. There was no drawback on my part.

Down into the streets, from one evil-smelling way to another, through an alley, fetid with decayed dirt that lay in masses, then into another long row of old houses. This was called a street. It was silent. There was no sign of life anywhere. A rat ran across the gutter in front of us occasionally. I held to him with fear. Bill plodded on. He knew where he was. I was in a mist. My mind wouldn’t work. If it had, I should have screamed.

How far I went I don’t know. We stopped. Bill dragged me into a place. It was dark. I stumbled up one stairway, then up another. It must have been the top of the house, before Bill kicked a door open. He lit a light. I don’t know what kind of light it was; but it struggled to dispel the gloom.

I can’t tell you of this room. I’ve lived in it a long time. I’ve suffered in it. But I have been loved for myself. I did not fail there. I have known real love. It has paid me from that standpoint. When I die I will have known something most women miss. I had no children. In this I was fortunate.

My story is nearly finished, Peter. Bill, as I said, went to the penitentiary. I think it was my fault. I wished for something. He couldn’t get it. We had nothing. He went to get it for me and got caught. Bill never failed me.

I left the country after Bill died. I am living in Paris. I am getting old. I am tired. But I don’t regret. I have had my revenge.

I sit all day in the sun. I am always in my garden. I never go out. I have no reason to go. The outside does not attract me.

Goodbye, Peter. It is finished. And I would not have had it otherwise.