Wanderings of a beauty

New York, Aug. 10th.—Seated in the window of our parlor, I once more write my thoughts in my journal. The wind is sultry—scarce a movement stirs the trees in Madison Square, although the sun has long since sunk below the horizon. Mary is playing Chopin’s music on a fine piano of Chickering’s, sent here to wait our arrival—a graceful attention from Philip D’Arcy. I have just implored dear Mary to repeat that Impromptu, to which the twilight lends additional charm. Oh! how infinitely do I prefer instrumental to vocal music, especially to the conventionalism of the modern school of Italian singing; even when the latter is well executed, (which is rare) you know each intonation which will be given; all is too material, it chains you down to its own level—while the listening to a classical instrumental symphony is like following a long, closely connected chain of reasoning, and at the same time you are inspired with a thousand new ideas and sensations; or the phrases of musical diction accompany you in the train of thought you are at the time pursuing—brightening, poetizing all. How I love to wander with the serious, philosophic Beethoven, through mazes of tangled modulations, at the same time clear and intricate, to revel in the delicious harmonized melodies of the divine Mozart, to drink in the weird and plaintive tones of the melancholy Weber, to muse, and sigh with the poet pianiste Chopin, criticising naught, analyzing naught, floating as it were, in an ocean of sweet sounds, lost in a reverie of ineffable bliss. Oh! if our most intense and delicious emotions are those of the mind, the spirit, who can say that the individual perishes with the worthless clay of the body!

11th.—I had written thus far when Philip D’Arcy entered, unexpected—unannounced. Oh! sweet surprise! if partings here are painful, there is at least compensation in again meeting those we love, when the charm of their dear presence is as sunlight after storm, as rest to the weary—as the fragrance of spring flowers after the snows of winter. In D’Arcy especially, as I have before mentioned, this power of fascination is remarkable; he enters, and your very soul is illumined with gladness, he departs, and a shadow falls on all around. Softly, tenderly, happily, we conversed in the dim twilight, the three I love most on earth.

Sir Percy was from home—he is rarely with us—D’Arcy expressed the desire to make my husband’s acquaintance. My husband, how strangely from his lips did those words grate on my ear.

Aug. 15th.—Since I last wrote in my diary, only a few days have elapsed, and yet what events! It appears to me, as if I had dreamed a horrible dream and have at last awaked. We had decided on leaving the city on the morrow, escorted by D’Arcy, for his beautiful villa on the Hudson. Sir Percy, was, as usual, out—but Philip determined to wait his return in order to see him, and arrange with him about our journey—as yet they had never met.

Mary had retired early, feeling unwell, but at my request Ella remained to await with us Sir Percy’s appearance. At about eleven we heard his heavy step in the corridor, and he entered the room.

“What, not yet in bed?” he said.

“I waited,” I replied, “to present you——”

The sentence was never finished, for at this moment D’Arcy emerged from the shadow, into the full glare of the gas-light. I saw Sir Percy stagger, as a drunken man, and turn almost pale. Thinking him ill, I would have sprang towards him, but Philip caught my wrist and held it as in a vice. I turned to look at him. To say that hatred and scorn flashed from his eyes were little, his entire form seemed dilated with passion, his eyes glowed and flamed like live coals, his lip and nostril expressed the most profound contempt.

The baronet, on the other hand, seemed paralyzed with terror; his fingers worked, and his hands trembled fearfully; his eyes (never able to support a look without flinching), now rolled in restless agony. D’Arcy paused only for a moment, as the tiger before his deadly spring—then, with one bound he cleared the space between himself and his victim: “Oh! cursed, cursed serpent,” he muttered, between his clenched teeth, “how darest thou defile this pure Eden with the foul slime of thy presence? Demon in human form,” and the delicate and spiritual-looking man shook his sturdy and muscular adversary as a reed, “demon, I say, how darest thou violate the sanctity of this angel home. Vile, pitiless wretch, where is poor Alice Vivian? Answer, if thy lying tongue can frame one word of truth, didst thou not wed her, break her heart, drive her to madness, and then shut her up with gibbering maniacs in a madhouse? and now she lives—no denial, I say,” (as the hardened culprit made a movement of dissent), “she lives! by Heaven, she lives, thy wronged, thy wretched wife; a wreck in soul as in body. Oh! may the curse of a desolate heart and blighted affections recoil upon thee, may rest forsake thy pillow, and peace be forever a stranger to thy couch, that thy hard heart may be shivered at last, as into fragments, by blank despair—despair of pity here, of mercy hereafter! May God himself be deaf to the prayers wrung from thy bitter agony. No, go—I will not blaspheme: if thou bee’st a devil I cannot kill thee. Go, miserable man, and repent—if thou canst.”

D’Arcy still held the cowed and trembling wretch in his nervous grasp. Ella, pale, almost fainting, had quitted the room. Silent, motionless, horror-stricken, with dilated eyes, I watched, as in a nightmare, the fearful scene, powerless to speak or scream. I saw Philip at length open the door, violently ejecting, almost flinging the man from the room. I saw no more—my trembling limbs refused any longer to sustain me. I sank into the nearest chair, sick—sick, covering my face with my hands, a film before my eyes. On recovering consciousness, I was alone, and all was still.