The Big Book of Christmas

by Anton Chekhov

  "Good idea," agreed Dr. Dick. "But Ronnie need not come down on his wife for his hotel expenses! He is making a pot of money himself, now. You will be careful to report to Mrs. West exactly what I have said of his condition?"

  "I will write immediately. As we stay a night en route, and another is taken up in crossing, my cousin should receive my letter twenty-four hours before our arrival."

  "Impress upon her," said Dr. Dick, earnestly, "how dangerous any mental shock might be."

  "Do you fear brain fever?" questioned Aubrey.

  Dick laughed. "Brain fever is a popular fiction," he said. "It is not a term admitted by the faculty. If you mean meningitis—no, I trust not. But probably temporary loss of memory, and a complete upsetting of mental control; with a possible impairing, for a considerable time, of his brilliant mental powers."

  "In other words, my cousin's husband is threatened with insanity."

  "Lor, no!" exclaimed Dick, with vehemence. "How easily you good people hand a fellow-creature over to that darkest of all fates! Ronnie's condition is brought about by temporary circumstances which are not in the least likely to have permanent results. He has always had the eccentricity of genius; but, since his genius has been recognised, people have ceased to consider him eccentric. Now I must be off. But I will see him first. Will you show me his room?" "He is asleep," objected Aubrey. "Is it not a pity to disturb him?"

  "I doubt his being asleep," replied Dick. "But if he is, we shall not wake him."

  He stepped into the passage, his attitude one of uncompromising determination.

  Aubrey Treherne opened the door of Ronnie's room. It was in darkness. He stepped back into the passage, lighted a candle, handed it to Dick Cameron, and they entered quietly together.

  Ronnie lay on his back, sleeping heavily. His eyes were partly open, his face flushed, his breathing rapid. One arm was flung out toward a chair beside the bed, on which lay his pocket-book, his watch, and a small leather miniature-case containing a portrait of Helen. This lay open upon the watch, having evidently fallen from his fingers. A candle had burned down into the socket, and spluttered itself out.

  Dick picked up the miniature, held it close to the light of his own candle, and examined it critically.

  "He certainly went in for beauty," he remarked in a low voice to Aubrey Treherne, as he laid the miniature beside the pocket-book. "Of course Ronnie would. But it is also a noble face—a face one could altogether trust. Ronnie will be in safe hands when once you get him home."

  Aubrey's smile, in the flare of the candle, was the grin of a hungry wolf. He made no reply.

  Dr. Dick, watch in hand, stood silently beside the bed, counting the rapid respiration of his friend. Then he turned, took up an empty tumbler from the table behind him, smelt it, and looked at Aubrey Treherne.

  "I thought so," he said. "You meant well, no doubt. But don't do it again. Drugs to produce sleep may occasionally be necessary, but should only be given under careful medical supervision. Personally, I am inclined to think that any sort of artificial sleep does more harm to a delicately poised brain, than insomnia. However, opinions differ. But there is no question that your experiment of to-night must not be repeated. I have given him stuff to take during his homeward journey which will tend to calm him, lessen the fever, and clear his mind. See that he takes it."

  Young Dick Cameron walked out of Ronnie's room, blew out the candle he carried, and replaced the candlestick on a little ornamental bracket.

  Aubrey followed, inwardly fuming.

  If Dick had been at the top of the tree, the first opinion procurable from Harley Street, W., his manner could hardly have been more authoritative, his instructions more peremptory.

  "Upstart!" said Aubrey to himself. "Insolent Jackanapes!"

  When Dick Cameron reached the outer door his cap was on the back of his head, his hands were thrust deep into his coat pockets.

  "Good-evening," he said. "Excuse my long intrusion. I shall be immensely obliged if you will let me have a wire reporting your safe arrival, and a letter, later on, with details as to Ronnie's state. I put my address on the paper I gave you just now, with the name of the man Mrs. West must call in."

  Dick crossed the great entrance-hall, and ran lightly down the stone steps.

  Aubrey heard the street door close behind him.

  Then he shut and double locked his own flat.

  "Upstart!" he said. "Jackanapes! Insolent fool!"

  It is sometimes consoling to call people that which you know they are not, yet heartily wish they were.

  Aubrey entered his sitting-room. He wanted an immediate vent for his ill-humour and sense of impotent mortification.

  The leaf from Dick's note-book lay on the table.

  Aubrey took it up, opened the iron door of the stove, and thrust the leaf into the very heart of the fire.

  Paradise Lost

  Aubrey Treherne sat at his writing-table, his head buried in his hands.

  Before him lay the closely-written sheets of his letter to Helen; beside them her pencil note which had fallen, unnoticed by Ronnie, from her letter to him.

  Presently Aubrey lifted his head. His face bore traces of the anguish of soul through which he had been passing.

  A man who has yielded himself to unrestrained wrong-doing, suffers with a sharpness of cold misery unknown to the brave true heart, however hard or lonely may be his honourable way.

  Before finally reading his own letter to Helen, Aubrey read again her pathetic note to her husband.

  "Ronnie, my own!

  "Excuse pencil and bad writing. Nurse has propped me up in bed, but not so high as I should like.

  "Darling, I am not ill, only rather weak, and very, very happy.

  "Ronnie, I must write to you on this first day of being allowed a pencil, though I shall not, of course, yet send the letter. In fact, I daresay I shall keep it, and give it to you by-and-by. But you will like to feel that I wrote at once.

  "Darling, how shall I tell you? Beside me, in your empty place, as I write, lies your little son—our own baby-boy, Ronnie!

  "He came three days ago.

  "Oh, Ronnie, it is so wonderful! He is so like you; though his tiny fingers are all pink and crinkled, and his palms are like little sea-shells. But he is going to have your artistic hands. When I cuddle them against my neck, the awful longing and loneliness of these past months seem wiped out. But only because he is yours, darling, and because I know you are soon coming back to him and to me.

  "I could not tell you before you went, because I know you would have felt obliged to give up going, and your book is so important; and I have not told you since, because you must not have anything to worry you while so far away. Also I was glad to bear it alone, and to save you the hard part. One soon forgets the hardness, in the joy.

  "Jane was with me.

  "We are sending no announcement to the papers, for fear you should see it on the way home. Very few people know.

  "Our little son will be six weeks old, when you get back. I shall be quite strong again.

  "I hope you will be able to read this tiny writing. Nurse would only give me one sheet of paper!

  "His eyes are blue. His little mouth is just like yours. I kiss it, but it doesn't kiss back! He is a darling, Ronnie, but—he isn't you!

  "Come back soon, to your more than ever loving wife,

  "HELEN.

  "Yes, the smudgy places are tears, but only because I am rather weak, and so happy."

  Crossing the first page came a short postscript, in firmer hand-writing:

  "After all I am sending this to Leipzig. I daren't not tell you before you arrive. I sometimes feel as if I had done something wrong! Tell me, directly you take me in your arms, that I did right, and that you are glad. I am down, as usual, now, and baby is quite well."

  Aubrey's hands shook as he folded the thin paper, opened a drawer, pushed the letter far into it, and locked the drawer.

  Then, with set face, he turned to his o
wn letter to Ronald West's wife.

  "My own Beloved—

  "Yes, I call you so still, because you were mine, and are mine. You threw me over, giving me no chance to prove that my love for you had made me worthy—that I would have been worthy. You sent me into outer darkness, where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth; where the worm of remorse dies—never. But, through it all, I loved you still. I love you to-night, as I never loved you before. The whole world is nothing to me, excepting as the place on which you walk.

  "I have seen the man—- the selfish, self-absorbed fool—on whom you threw yourself away, six months after you had cast me adrift. At this moment he is my guest, snoring in an adjoining room while I sit up writing to you.

  "He has spent the evening talking of nothing but himself, his journey, his wonderful book—the strongest thing he has done yet, etc., etc., etc.; till I could have risen up and strangled him with my two hands. Oh, Helen—my lovely one—he is altogether unworthy of you! I saw a letter of yours long ago, in which you said he was like a young sun-god. Handsome he is, I admit. He says he has never felt fitter in his life, and he looks it. But surely a woman wants more than mere vitality and vigour and outward beauty of appearance? Heart—he has none. The wonderful news in your letter has left him unmoved. He thinks more of a 'cello he has just bought than he does of your little son. When I remonstrated with him, he rose up and struck me on the mouth. But I forgave him for your sake, and he now sleeps under my roof.

  "Helen, he must have disappointed you over and over again. He will continue to disappoint you.

  "Helen, you loved me once; and when a woman loves once, she loves for always.

  "Helen, if he could leave you alone during seven months, in order to get local scenery for a wretched manuscript, he will leave you again, and again, and yet again. He married you for your money; he has practically admitted it to me; but now that he is making a yearly income larger than your own, he has no more use for you.

  "Oh, my beloved—my queen—my only Love—don't stay with a man who is altogether unworthy of you! If a man disappoints a woman she has a right to leave him. He is not what she believed him to be; that fact sets her free. If you had found out, afterwards, that he was already married to another, would you not have left him? Well, he was already wedded to himself and to his career. He had no whole-hearted devotion to give to you.

  "Helen, don't wait for his return. Directly you get this come out here to me. Bring your little son and his nurse. My flat will be absolutely at your disposal. I can sleep elsewhere; and I swear to you I will never stay one moment after you have bid me go. As soon as West has set you legally free, we can marry and travel abroad for a couple of years; then, when the whole thing has blown over, go back to live in the old house so dear to us both.

  "Helen, you will have twenty-four hours in which to get away before he returns. But even if you decide to await his return, it will not be too late. His utter self-absorption must give you a final disillusion.

  "See if his first words to you are not about his cursèd 'cello, rather than about his child and yours.

  "If so, treat him with the silent contempt he deserves, and come at once to the man who won you first and to whom you have always belonged; come, where tenderest consideration and the worship of a lifetime await you.

  "Yours till death—- and after,

  "AUBREY TREHERNE."

  The Pinnacle Of The Temple

  Aubrey's letter fell upon Helen as a crushing, stunning blow.

  At first her womanhood reeled beneath it.

  "What have I been—what have I done," she cried, "that a man dares to write thus to me?"

  Then her wifehood rose up in arms as she thought of Ronnie's gay, boyish trust in her; their happy life together; his joyous love and laughter.

  She clenched her hands.

  "I could kill Aubrey Treherne!" she said.

  Then her motherhood arose; and bowing her proud head, she burst into a passion of tears.

  At length she stood up and walked over to the window.

  "It will be bad for my little son if I weep," she said, and smiled through her tears.

  The trees were leafless, the garden beds empty. The park looked sodden, dank and cheerless. Summer was long dead and over, yet frosts had not begun, bringing suggestions of mistletoe and holly.

  But the mists were lifting, fading in white wreaths from off the grass; and, at that moment, the wintry sun, bursting through the November clouds, shone on the diamond panes, illumining the cross and the motto beneath it.

  "In hoc vince!" murmured Helen. "As I told my own dear boy, the path of clear shining is the way to victory. In hoc signo vinces! I will take this gleam of sunlight as a token of triumph. By the help of God, I will write such an answer to Aubrey as shall lead him to overcome his evil desires, and bring his dark soul out into the light of repentance and confession."

  The same post had brought her a short letter from Ronnie, written immediately on his arrival at Leipzig, evidently before receivinghers. It was a disappointment to have nothing more. As Aubrey had got a letter through after hearing the news, Ronnie might have done the same.

  But perhaps, face to face with her wonderful tidings, words had altogether failed him. He feared to spoil all he would so soon be able to say, by attempting to write.

  To-morrow—the day which should bring him to her—would soon be here.

  Meanwhile her reply to Aubrey must be posted to-day, and his letter consigned to the flames.

  Feeling unable to go to the nursery with that letter unanswered, she sat down at once and wrote to her cousin.

  "I only read your letter, Aubrey, half an hour ago. I am answering it at once, because I cannot enter the presence of my little son, with such a letter as yours still in my possession. As soon as I have answered it I shall burn it.

  "I may then be able to rise above the terrible sense of shame which completely overwhelmed me at first, at the thought that any man—above all a man who knew me well—should dare to write me such a letter!

  "At first my whole soul cried out in horror: 'What am I? What have I been? What have I done—that such words should be written—such a proposition made—to me?' The sin of it seemed to soil me; the burning wickedness, to brand me. I seemed parted from my husband and my child, and dragged down with you into your abyss of outer darkness.

  "Then, into my despair, sacred words were whispered for my comfort. 'He was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet without sin,' and, through my shame and tears, I saw a vision of the Holy One, standing serene and kingly on the pinnacle of the temple, where, though the devil dared to whisper the fiendish suggestion: 'Cast Thyself down,' He stood His ground without a tremor—tempted, yet unsoiled.

  "So—with this vision of my Lord before me—I take my stand, Aubrey Treherne, upon the very summit of the holy temple of wifehood and motherhood, and I say to you: 'Get thee gone, Satan!' You may have bowed my mind to the very dust in shame over your wicked words, but you cannot cause my womanhood to descend one step from off its throne.

  "This being so, poor Aubrey, I feel able to forgive you the other great wrong, and to try to find words in which to prove to you the utter vileness of the sin, and yet to show you also the way out of your abyss of darkness and despair, into the clear shining of repentance, confession, and forgiveness.

  "As regards the happenings of the past, between you and me—you state them wrongly. I did not love you, Aubrey, or I would never have sent you away. I could have forgiven anything to an honest man, who had merely failed and fallen.

  "But you had lived a double life; you had deceived me all along the line. I had loved the man I thought you were—the man you had led me to believe you were. I did not love the man I found you out to be.

  "I could not marry a man I did not love. Therefore, I sent you away. There was no question then of giving you, or not giving you, a chance to prove yourself worthy. I was not concerned just then with what you might eventually prove yourself. I did not
love you; therefore, I could not wed you. Though, as a side issue, it is only fair to point out—if you wish to stand upon your possible merits—that this letter, written four years later, confirms my then estimate of your true character.

  "Aubrey, I cannot discuss my husband with you; nor can I bring myself to allude to the subject of my relations with him, or his with me.

  "To defend him to you would be to degrade him in all honest eyes.

  "To enlarge upon my love for him, would be like pouring crystal water into a stagnant polluted pool, in order to prove how pure was the fountain from which that water flowed. Nothing could be gained by such a proceeding. Pouring samples of its purity into the tainted waters of the pool, would neither prove the former, nor cleanse the latter.

  "But, in order to free my own mind from the poison of your suggestions and the shame of the fact that they were made to me, I must answer, in the abstract, one statement in your letter. Please understand that I answer it completely in the abstract. You have dared to apply it to my husband and to me. I do not admit that it applies. But, even if it did, I should not let it pass unchallenged. I break a lance with you, Aubrey Treherne, and with all men of your way of thinking, on behalf of every true wife and mother in Christendom!

  "You say, that if a man has disappointed his wife, she has a right to leave him; the fact of that disappointment sets her free?

  "I say to you, in answer: when a woman loves a man enough to wed him, he becomes to her as her life—her very self.

  "I often fail, and fall, and disappoint myself. I do not thereupon immediately feel free to commit suicide. I face my failure, resolve to do better, and take up my life again, as bravely as may be, on higher lines.

  "If a woman leaves her husband she commits moral suicide. By virtue of his union with her, he is as her own self. If disappointment and disillusion come to her through him, she must face them as she does when they come through herself. She must be patient, faithful, understanding, tender; helping him, as she would help herself, to start afresh on higher ground; once more, with a holy courage, facing life bravely.